Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  In the distance a line of dark gray water was the only thing which marked the horizon.

  About six hundred steps from the boat they saw the farmhouse.

  The roof had almost completely disappeared under the waters, and human forms grouped around the chimney could be vaguely distinguished.

  Every moment, at a little distance from the craft, protected from collision by the three poplars, which served as a sort of natural palisade, thanks to David’s foresight, floated all kinds of rubbish, carried along on the current which the little boat was to cross in a few moments.

  On one side, beams and girders, and fragments of carpentry proceeding from the crumbling buildings; on the other side, enormous haycocks and stacks of straw, lifted from their base and dragged solidly along by the waters, like so many floating mountains, submerging everything they encountered; again, gigantic trees, torn up by the roots, rushed rapidly by as lightly as bits of straw upon a babbling brook, while in their rear followed doors unloosed from their hinges, furniture, mattresses, and casks, and sometimes in the midst of these wrecks could be seen cattle, some drowned, others struggling above the abyss soon to disappear under it, and, in strange contrast, domestic ducks, instinctively following the other animals, floated over the water in undisturbed tranquillity. Elsewhere, heavy carts were whirled above the gulf, and sometimes sank under the irresistible shock of immense floats of wood a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide borne along with the drift.

  It was in the midst of these floating perils, upon an impetuous and irresistible current, that David and Frederick were forced to direct their boat in order to reach the farmhouse.

  Then the danger of the salvage was becoming more imminent.

  Frederick felt it, and as he saw David survey the terrible scene with an expression of distress, he said, in a firm and serious tone:

  “You were right, my friend, we shall soon need all our strength and all our energy. This rest was necessary, but it seems cruel to take a rest with such a spectacle under our eyes.”

  “Yes, my child, courage is necessary even to take rest; blind recklessness does not see and does not try to see the danger, but true courage coolly looks at the chances. Hence, it generally triumphs over danger. If we had not taken some rest, we would certainly be dragged into the middle of the gulf that we are about to cross, and we would be destroyed.”

  Thus speaking, David examined with minute care the equipment of the boat and renewed one of the tholes, which had split under the pressure of Frederick’s oar. For greater surety, David, by means of two knots of cord sufficiently loose, fastened the oars to the gunwale a little below their handle; in this way they could have free play, without escaping from Frederick’s hands in the accident of a violent collision.

  The rest of the five minutes had reached its end when Frederick, uttering an exclamation of involuntary surprise, became deathly pale, and could not conceal the distortion of his features.

  David raised his head, followed the direction of Frederick’s eyes, and saw what had alarmed his pupil.

  As we have said, the inundation, without limit in the north and the east, was bounded in the west by the border of the forest of Pont Brillant, whose tall trees had disappeared half-way under the waters.

  One of the woods of this forest, advancing far into the inundated valley, formed a sort of promontory above the sheet of water.

  For some time, Frederick had observed, issuing from this promontory, so to speak, and rowing against the current, a long canoe, painted the colour of goat leather, and relieved by a wide crimson railing or guard.

  On the benches, six oarsmen, wearing chamois skin jackets and crimson caps, were rowing vigorously; the cockswain seated at the back, where he controlled the canoe, seemed to follow the orders of a young man, who, erect upon one of the benches, with one hand in the pocket of his mackintosh of a whitish colour, indicated with the index finger of the other hand a point which could be nothing else than the submerged farmhouse, as, in that part of the valley, no other building could be seen.

  David’s little boat was too far from this canoe to enable him to distinguish the features of the person who evidently directed the manœuvre, but from the expression of Frederick’s countenance he did not doubt that the master of the bark was Raoul de Pont Brillant.

  The presence of the marquis on the scene of the disaster was explained by the message that the gendarme, whom David met, had carried in haste to the castle, demanding boats and men.

  At the sight of Raoul de Pont Brillant, whose presence affected Frederick so suddenly, David felt as much surprise as satisfaction; the meeting with the young marquis seemed providential, and, fixing a penetrating glance on his pupil, David said to him:

  “My child, you recognise the Marquis de Pont Brillant?”

  “Yes, my friend,” answered the young man.

  And he continued to follow, with a keen and restless eye the movements of the yawl, which, evidently, was trying to reach the submerged farmhouse, from which it was more distant than the little boat. However, the six oarsmen of the patrician craft were rapidly diminishing the distance.

  “Come, Frederick,” said David, in a firm voice, “the Marquis de Pont Brillant, like us is going to the help of the unfortunate farmer. It is brave and generous of him. Now is the time for you to envy, to be jealous of the young marquis indeed!”

  “Oh, I will get there before he does!” exclaimed Frederick, with an indescribable exaltation.

  “To your oars, my child! One last thought of your mother, and forward! The hour has come.”

  So saying, David disengaged his boat-hook from the entanglement of the branches of the poplar-trees.

  The little boat, set in movement by the vigorous motion of the oars, in a few minutes arrived in the middle of the current it must cross in order to reach the farmhouse.

  CHAPTER XXX.

  THEN BEGAN A terrible, obstinate struggle against the dangers threatened by the elements of nature.

  While Frederick rowed with incredible energy, over-excited at the sight of the canoe of the marquis, on which from time to time he would cast a look of generous emulation, David, sitting in front of the boat, guarded it from shocks with an address and presence of mind which was marvellous.

  Already he had approached the farmhouse near enough to see distinctly the unfortunate family clinging to the roof, when an enormous stack of straw, carried by the waters, advanced on the right of the boat, which presented to the obstacle its breadth in cutting the current.

  “Double your strokes, Frederick!” cried David. “Courage! let us avoid that stack of straw.”

  The son of Madame Bastien obeyed.

  Already the prow of the little boat had gone beyond the stack of straw, which was not more than ten steps distant, when the young man, stiffening his arm as he threw himself violently back, so as to give more power to his stroke, made too sudden a movement, and broke his right oar. Soon, the left oar forming a lever, the boat turned about, and, instead of her breadth, presented her prow to the stack, which threatened to engulf her beneath its weight.

  David, surprised by the sudden jolt, lost for a moment his equilibrium, but had time to cry:

  “Row firmly with the oar left to you.”

  Frederick obeyed more by instinct than by reflection. The little boat turned again, presented its breadth, and, half raised by the eddy around the spheroid mass which had already touched the prow, swung on the single oar as if it had been a pivot, thus describing a half circle around the floating obstruction, and escaping from it in such a way as to receive only a slight shock.

  While all this was taking place with the rapidity of thought, David, seizing a spare oar from the bottom of the boat, fixed it in the thole, saying to Frederick, who was excited by the frightful danger he had just escaped:

  “Take this new oar and go forward; the canoe is gaining on us.”

  Frederick seized the oar, at the same time throwing a glance on the craft of the young marquis.

>   It was going directly toward the farmhouse, standing in the current, while the little boat was cutting it crosswise.

  So, supposing they were of equal speed, the two craft, whose course formed a right angle, would meet at the farmhouse.

  But, as we have said, the canoe, although it ascended the current, being managed by six vigorous oarsmen, was considerably in advance, thanks to the accident to which the little boat had nearly fallen a victim.

  Frederick, seeing the marquis precede him, reached such a degree of excitement that for a given time his natural strength was raised to an irresistible power, and enabled him to accomplish wonders.

  One would have said that the son of Madame Bastien had communicated his feverish ardour to inanimate objects, and that the little craft trembled with impatience in its entire frame, while the oars seemed to receive not only motion, but life, with such precision and harmony did they obey Frederick’s every movement.

  David himself, surprised at this incredible energy, continued to watch in front of the little boat, casting a radiant look on his pupil, whose heroic emulation he understood so well.

  Suddenly Frederick uttered an exclamation of profound joy.

  The little boat was only twenty-five steps from the farmhouse, while the yawl was still distant about a hundred steps.

  Suddenly, prolonged cries of distress, accompanied by a terrible crash, rose above the sound of the roaring waters.

  One of the gable ends of the farmhouse, undermined by the force of the current, fell down with a loud noise, and a part of the roof was giving way at the same time.

  Then the family grouped around the chimney had no other support for their feet than some fragments of carpentry, the slow oscillations of which predicted their speedy fall.

  In a few minutes, the gable end where the chimney was built, in its turn, sank into the abyss.

  The unfortunate sufferers presented a heartrending picture, worthy of the painter of the Deluge.

  The father standing half clothed, livid, his lips blue, his eye haggard, holding on to the tottering chimney with his left hand; two of the eldest children, locked in each other’s arms, he bore upon his shoulders; around his right wrist was wrapped a rope, which he had been able to fasten to the opposite side of the chimney; by means of this rope, which girded the loins of his wife, he supported her, and prevented her fall into the water; for the poor woman, paralysed by cold, fatigue, and terror, had lost almost all consciousness; maternal instinct enabled her to press her nursing infant in her rigid arms to her bosom, and, in her desperation, the better to hold it, she had caught between her teeth the woollen skirt of the child’s dress, to which she clung with the tenacity of a convulsion.

  The agony of these wretched beings had already lasted five hours. Overcome by terror, they seemed no longer to see or to hear.

  When David, arriving within the range of the voice, called out to them, “Try to seize the rope that I throw to you!” there was no response. Those whom he had come to save seemed absolutely petrified.

  Realising that the shipwrecked were often incapable of assisting in their own rescue, David acted promptly, for the gable end, as well as the remainder of the roof, threatened to sink in the abyss every moment.

  The little boat, pushed by the current, was managed in such a way as to touch the ruins of the building on the side opposite to that most likely to fall; then, while Frederick, hanging on with both hands to a projecting beam, held the craft on the side of the roof, David, one foot on the prow, and the other on the unsteady rafters, took hold of the mother with a strong arm, and placed her and the child in the bottom of the boat. Then the intelligence of the poor people, stupefied by cold and fright, seemed suddenly to awaken.

  Jean François, holding by one hand to the rope, handed his two children over into the arms of David and Frederick, and then descended himself into the little boat, and stretched himself out by the side of his wife and children under the warm covering, — all remaining as motionless as possible for fear of upsetting the craft in its passage to the dead waters. Scarcely had Frederick taken up his oars to row away from the ruins of the farmhouse, when the whole mass was engulfed.

  The reflux caused by the sinking of this mass of ruins was so violent, that a tremendous surge lifted the little boat a moment, then, when it sank, Frederick discovered, about ten steps from him in the middle of a wave of spouting foam, the yawl of the marquis, turned half-way, on its gunwale, and ready to capsize under the weight of an entanglement of carpentry and stones, for the canoe had touched the farmhouse ruins just about the time of the final wreck.

  Frederick, at the sight of the canoe’s danger, suspended the motion of his oars an instant, and cried, as he turned around to David:

  “What is to be done to help them? Must I—”

  He did not finish.

  He left his oars, and leaped to the front of the little boat, and plunged into the water.

  To seize the oars so imprudently abandoned by Frederick and row with desperate energy to the spot where the young man had just disappeared was David’s first movement; at the end of two minutes of inexpressible anguish, he saw Frederick rise above the gulf, swimming vigorously with one hand, and dragging a body after him.

  With a few strokes of the oar, David joined his pupil.

  The latter, seizing the prow of the little boat with the hand with which he had been swimming, sustained with the other hand, above the water, Raoul de Pont Brillant, pale, inanimate, and his face covered with blood.

  The marquis, struck on the head by a piece of the wreck which came near sinking the yawl, had been, by the same violent blow, thrown into the water, while the frightened oarsmen were occupied in relieving the craft from the timber which encumbered it. The canoe had hardly recovered her equilibrium, when the coxswain, seeing that his master had disappeared, looked around the craft in consternation, and at last discovered the marquis as he was held by the rescuing hand of Frederick.

  The six oarsmen soon gained the spot where the little boat lay, and took on board Raoul de Pont Brillant, who had fainted.

  Frederick, with David’s assistance, came out of the water, and entered the little boat, when the oarsmen from the castle cried out to him in terror:

  “Take care! a float of wood!”

  “SEIZING THE PROW OF THE LITTLE BOAT.”

  In fact, the floating mass, coming rapidly behind the little boat, had not been seen by David, who was entirely occupied with Frederick.

  At this new danger the preceptor recovered his presence of mind; he threw his boat-hook on the canoe of the marquis, and by means of this support drew himself to her, and thus escaped the shock threatened by the float of wood.

  “Ah, monsieur,” said the coxswain of the oarsmen, while the little boat was lying some seconds by the side of the canoe, “what is the name of the courageous young man who has just saved the marquis?”

  “The wound of the Marquis de Pont Brillant may be serious,” said David, without answering the coxswain’s question. “It is the most prudent thing to return to the castle without delay.”

  Then, disengaging the boat-hook from the canoe, so as to give freedom of action to the little boat, David said to Frederick, who with radiant countenance was throwing back his long hair dripping with water:

  “To your oars, my child. God is with us. When we once reach the dead waters, we are safe.”

  God, as David had said, was protecting the little boat. They reached the dead waters without further accident. There danger ceased almost entirely.

  The preceptor, finding his watch at the prow no longer necessary, took the oars from the weary hands of Frederick, who hastened to make the unfortunate sufferers drink a little wine.

  Ten minutes after, the little boat landed upon the shore.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  AT THEIR DISEMBARKING David and Frederick found Madame Bastien.

  The young woman had assisted at a few of the episodes of this courageous salvage, by the aid of David’s field-g
lass, leaving the scene, and taking another view by turns, as the danger seemed imminent or surmounted.

  Sometimes Marie found her strength unequal to the sight of the heroic struggle of her son, whom she could not encourage by word or gesture.

  Again, she would yield to the irresistible desire to know if Frederick had escaped the dangers which threatened him every moment.

  During this period of admiration, tears, transports, hope, and agonies of terror, Marie had more than one opportunity of judging of David’s brave solicitude for Frederick, and it would be hardly possible to describe the joy of the young mother when she saw the little boat land, and welcomed not only David and her son, but the unfortunate sufferers whom they had so courageously rescued.

  But Marie’s happiness became a sort of religious meditation when she learned from David that Raoul de Pont Brillant owed his life to Frederick.

  Thus had the unhappy child providentially expiated the crime of his attempted homicide.

  Thus disappeared from his life the only stain which his restoration had not been able utterly to efface.

  The farmer and his family, loaded with favours and the sympathetic care of Madame Bastien, were installed at the farm, for the miserable beings had nothing left in the world.

  Nor did that day or that night see the end of Madame Bastien’s provident care.

  The highways, cut off by this sudden inundation against which it was impossible to provide, rendered the means of salvage very scarce, and within the radius of country called the Valley, the little boat belonging to Frederick was the sole resource.

  The lowland, almost entirely submerged, contained a great number of isolated farmhouses; some were completely destroyed and their inmates drowned, other houses resisted the impetuosity of the waters, but were so near as to be invaded by the rising of the overflow, and Frederick and David in the afternoon of the same day and in the next day accomplished the salvage of many families, and carried clothing and provisions to other victims of the disaster who had taken refuge in their garrets while the waters held possession of the lower story.