“We can find a track,” answered the colonel.  “Push off, boy.”

The boat labored out, and the click of oars in rowlocks became presently a distant thumping, and then all sound was lost in the wash of water.

Angelique went to the dormer window in the gable.  As she threw the sashes wide she was partly drenched by a wave, and tante-gra’mere sent from the screens a shrill mandate against wind which cut to the bone.  Captain Saucier fastened the sashes again.  He was a crestfallen man.  He had fought Indians with credit, but he was not equal to the weakest member of his household.

Occasionally the rafters creaked from a blow, and a wave rushed up the roof.

“It is rising higher,” said Peggy.

Angelique wished she had not mentioned Mademoiselle Zhone.  Perhaps, when the colonel had risked his life to bring the sick girl out of a swamped house, her family might prefer to wait until morning to putting her in the boat now.

The bells kept ringing, now filling the attic with their vibrations, and then receding to a faint and far-off clamor as the wind swept by.  They called to all the bluff-dwellers within miles of Kaskaskia.

The children sat down, and leaned their heads against their mother’s knee.  The others waited in drawing-room chairs; feeling the weariness of anxiety and broken domestic habits.  Captain Saucier watched for the return of the boat; but before it seemed possible the little voyage could be made they felt a jar under the gable window, and Rice Jones’s voice called.

The gable of the house had a sloping roof, its window being on a level with the other windows.  Captain Saucier leaned far out.  The wind had extinguished the boat’s lantern.  The rowers were trying to hold the boat broadside to the house, but it rose and fell on waves which became breakers and threatened to capsize it.  All Kaskaskia men were acquainted with water.  Pierre Menard had made many a river journey.  But the Mississippi in this wild aspect was new to them all.

“Can you take her in?” shouted Rice.  “My sister thinks she cannot be got ashore alive.”

“Can you lift her to me?”

“When the next wave comes,” said Rice.

He steadied himself and lifted Maria.  As the swell again tossed the boat upward, he rose on a bench and lifted her as high as he could.  Captain Saucier caught the frail bundle and drew the sick girl into the attic.  He laid her down on the children’s bed, leaving her to Angelique, while he prepared to put them and their mother into the boat.  Rice crept over the wet strip of gable roof, and entered the window after his sister.  By lantern light he was a strong living figure.  His austerely white face was full of amusement at the Kaskaskian situation.  His hat had blown away.  The water had sleeked down his hair to a satin skullcap on his full head.

“This is a wet night, madame and mesdemoiselles,” he observed.