“How many can you carry?” he inquired.

“Six at a time,” answered Colonel Menard.  “To try to do more would hardly be safe, in this rough water.”

“Were the boats at the wharf swept away?”

“It is not now easy to tell where the wharf was.  But some of the large craft seem wedged among trees along the bluff.  By daylight we shall get some out.  And I have sent to the governor for all the boats he can muster for us.”

Angelique came to the dormer window and touched her father’s shoulder.

“Are you all ready?” he asked.

“Tante-gra’mere will not go into the boat.”

“But she must.  There will be six of you, with Peggy; and Colonel Menard cannot much longer hang by the eaves.”

“Perhaps if you pick her up and run with her, papa, as you did from the danger below, she may allow it.”

“She must go into the boat directly,” said Captain Saucier; and the negroes paid out the rope as he stalked to the screened corner.

Angelique leaned over the sill and the chill wilderness of waters.  The wind sung in her ears.  She could not distinctly see Colonel Menard, and there was such a sound of waves that she was not sure it was best to try her voice against them.  His man had an oar thrust into the broken window below, and was thereby able to hold the boat against the current.

“Monsieur the colonel!” called Angelique; and she saw the swift removal of his hat.

“Mademoiselle, have you been alarmed?”

“Yes, monsieur.  Even my father was unable to do anything for the family until you came.  But it seems when we find one relief we get another anxiety with it.”

“What other anxiety have you now?”

“I am afraid you will be drowned trying to carry us out.”

“My bel-o-ved, would you care?” said Pierre Menard, speaking English, which his slave could not understand, and accenting on the first syllable the name he gave her.

“Yes; it would be a serious inconvenience to me,” replied Angelique.

“Now that is worth coming here for.  De northwest wind, I do not feel it since you say that.”

“I was thinking before you came, monsieur, what if I should never see you again?  And if I saw you plainly now I could not talk so much.  But something may happen.  It is so strange, and like another world, this water.”

Tante-gra’mere screamed, and Angelique disappeared from the window-sill.  It was not the mere outcry of a frightened woman.  The keen small shriek was so terrible in its helplessness and appeal to Heaven that Captain Saucier was made limp by it.

“What shall I do?” he asked his family.

“I cannot force her into the boat when she cries out like that.”

“Perhaps she will go at dawn,” suggested Angelique.  “The wind may sink.  The howling and the darkness terrify her more than the water.”

“But Colonel Menard cannot wait until dawn.  We shall all be drowned here before she will budge,” lamented Madame Saucier.