“What is it, dear tante-gra’mere?” Angelique would inquire.

“Send Wachique down to bring up my bedstead.”

“But, dear tante-gra’mere, Wachique would drown.  The water is already half way up the attic stairs.”

“Am I to lie here on the floor like a slave?”

“Dear, there are six feather beds under you.”

“How long is this to last?”

“Not long, I hope.”

Peggy stood at the gable window and looked out at the seething night.  To her the peninsula seemed sinking.  She could not see anything distinctly.  Foam specked the panes.  The bells kept up their alarm.  Father Olivier was probably standing on the belfry ladder cheering his black ringer, and the sisters took turns at their rope with that determined calmness which was the rule of their lives.  Peggy tried to see even the roof of her home.  She was a grateful daughter; but her most anxious thoughts were not of the father and mother whose most anxious thoughts would be of her.

When the fury of the cloudburst had passed over, and the lightning no longer flickered in their faces, and the thunder growled away in the southeast, the risen water began to show its rolling surface.  A little moonlight leaked abroad through cloudy crevices.  Angelique was bathing her mother’s face with camphor; for Madame Saucier sat down and fainted comfortably, when nothing else could be done.  Something bumped against the side of the house, and crept crunching and bumping along, and a voice hailed them.

“That is Colonel Menard!” cried Angelique.

Her father opened one of the dormer windows and held the lantern out of it.  Below the steep roof a boat was dashed by the swell, and Colonel Menard and his oarsman were trying to hold it off from the eaves.  A lantern was fastened in the prow.

“How do you make a landing at this port?”

“The saints know, colonel.  But we will land you.  How dared you venture out in the trail of such a storm?”

“I do not like to wait on weather, Captain Saucier.  Besides, I am a good swimmer.  Are you all safe?”

“Safe, thank Heaven,” called Madame Saucier, reviving at the hint of such early rescue, and pressing to the window beside her husband.  “But here are twenty people, counting our slaves, driven to the roof almost without warning; and who can say where the water will stop?”

“On that account, madame, I came out with the boat as soon as I could.  But we shall be stove in here.  Monsieur the captain, can you let the family down the roof to me?”

Captain Saucier thought he could, and he saw it would have to be done quickly.  By dim lantern light the Saucier children were hurried into their clothing, and Wachique brought a wrap of fur and wool for tante-gra’mere.  Three of the slave men were called in, and they rigged a rope around their master’s waist, by which they could hold and guide him in his attempt to carry living freight down the slippery roof.