“How long have I been asleep?”

“Only a few hours, tante-gra’mere.  It is early in the night.”

Her withered face was quite wrathful.

“The water is all over the floor, madame.  We are standing to our ankles.  In a few minutes we shall be standing to our knees.  Look at it.  Do you hear the roaring and the wash outside?  Kaskaskia is under water, and the people have to climb to the roofs.”

The aged woman always listened incredulously to Peggy.  She now craned over the side of the bed, and examined for herself streams like quicksilver slipping along the dark boards.

“Why did you not do something to prevent this, instead of coming in here to break my rest?” she inquired.

Captain Saucier extended his hands to lift her, but she lay down again, holding the whip bolt upright.

“If I go to the attic, Captain Saucier, my bed goes with me.”

“There is not time to move it.”

“And there is such a beautiful bed up there, quite ready, with all your cushions.”

“My bed goes with me,” repeated tante-gra’mere.

“There will soon be water enough to carry it,” remarked Peggy, “if it will float.”

Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra’mere’s closed shutters and spurted between the sashes.  This freak of the storm devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a crow gives to the dubious figure set to frighten it.  The majesty of the terror which was abroad drove back into their littleness those sticks and pieces of cloth which she had valued so long.  Again came the crash of water, and this time the shutters bowed themselves and a sash blew in, and the Mississippi burst into the room.

The candles were out, but Captain Saucier had caught up his relative as the water struck.  Angelique groped for her mother, and she and Peggy led that dazed woman through the hall, laughing at their own shudders and splashes, and Captain Saucier waded after them.  So the last vestige of human life forsook this home, taking to the shelter of the attic; and ripples drove into the fireplaces and frothed at the wainscots.

The jangling of the bells, to which the family had scarcely listened in their nearer tumult and frantic haste, became very distinct in the attic.  So did the wind which was driving that foaming sea.  All the windows were closed, but moisture was blown through the tiniest crevices.  There were two rooms in the attic.  In the first one the slaves huddled among piles of furniture.  The west room held the children’s pallets and tante-gra’mere’s lowly substitute for her leviathan bed.  She sat up among pillows, blinking resentfully.  Angelique at once had a pair of bedroom screens brought in, and stretched a wall of privacy across the corner thus occupied; but tante-gra’mere as promptly had them rearranged to give her a tunnel for observation.  In chaotic anger and terror she snapped her whip at intervals.