The Campers Out: or, The Right Path and the Wrong
TextHe spoke the truth!
CHAPTER XXVII – A RACE FOR LIFE
Those who have been so unfortunate as to be placed in the path of an overwhelming flood, which after slowly gathering for weeks and months finally bursts all barriers, need not be told that the awful roar caused by the resistless sweep can never be mistaken for anything else.
The mill-dam, to which we have made more than one reference, had not been erected, like that at Johnstown, to afford fishing grounds for those who were fond of the sport, but was reared fully twenty years before to provide water-power for a company of capitalists, who proposed erecting a series of mills and manufactories in the valley below. They progressed as far in their enterprise as the formation of a substantial dam when the company collapsed, and that was the end of their scheme.
The dam remained, with its enormous reservoir of water, which, in summer, furnished excellent fishing and, in the winter, fine skating; but during all that time the valuable store of power remained idle.
The sudden breakage of the dam, without apparent cause, was unaccompanied by the appalling features which marked the great disaster in Pennsylvania a short time since. The town of Piketon was not in the course of the flood, nor were there any dwelling-houses exposed to the peril with the exception of the home of a single humble laborer.
The water became a terrific peril for a brief while, but such masses speedily exhaust themselves, though it was fortunate indeed that the topography of the country was so favorable that the uncontrollable fury was confined in so narrow a space.
But the camp of the Piketon Rangers lay exactly in the course of the flood. Bob Budd and his friends had pitched their tent there because the spot was an inviting one in every respect, and no one had ever dreamed of danger from the breaking of the reservoir above.
It was night when that fearful roar interrupted the conversation of the Rangers. The young men were silent on the instant, and stared with bated breath in each other’s faces.
“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Bob Budd, rising partly from his seat, “the dam has burst!”
“And I can’t swim a stroke!” gasped the terrified Wagstaff.
“Nor me either!” added McGovern; “I guess the end has come, boys.”
“I can swim,” replied Bob, trembling from head to foot, “but that won’t help me at such a time as this.”
“Are we going to stay here and be drowned?” demanded Jim, rousing himself; “we might as well go down fighting; every one for himself!”
As he uttered this exclamation he dashed through the tent and among the trees outside, where the rays of the moon could not penetrate, and it was dark as Egypt.
A strong wind seemed to be blowing, though a few minutes before the air was as still as at the close of a sultry summer afternoon. The wind was cool. It was caused by the rush of waters through the dense forest.
It was evident to McGovern and the rest that there was but one possible means of escape – possibly two – and he attempted that which first occurred to him: that was by dashing at right angles to the course of the torrent. If he could reach ground higher than the surface of the water, as it came careering through the wood, he would be safe; but he and his companions knew when the awful roar broke upon them that the waters were close, while it was a long run to the elevated country on either side.
But if anything of the kind was to be attempted there was not a moment to spare. One second might settle the question of life and death.
“Maybe I can make it!” was the thought that thrilled McGovern as he began fighting his way through the wood, stumbling over bushes, bumping against trunks, and picking his way as best he could; “it isn’t very far to the high ground, but I have to go so blamed slow – great thunder! my head’s sawed off!”
At that moment a stubby limb caught under the chin of the frantic fugitive and almost lifted him off his feet. He quickly freed himself and dashed wildly on again with feelings that must have resembled those of the multitude fleeing from before the sweep of the overwhelming lava.
A vine enclosed the ankle of the fugitive and he fell headlong; he was instantly up again and collided with a tree, which he did not detect soon enough in the gloom; at any other time McGovern would have taken his own time in rising and vented his feelings, but he did not do so now; his single thought was one wild, desperate hope that he might escape.
He never exerted himself so before, for, despite the stirring experiences through which he had passed in his short life, he had never encountered anything like this.
Those who have hovered on the verge of death have made known that in the few seconds when life was passing, the whole record of their former lives has swept like a panorama before them. The events of months and years have clustered in those few fearful moments.
Jim McGovern’s experience was somewhat similar. There were mighty few seconds at his command, while struggling with the whole energy of his nature to reach the rising ground beyond reach of the flood; but in some respects that brief interval of time was as so many years to him.
How well it will be if, when we reach that supreme moment which must come to all of us, the hasty retrospect brings us pleasure and hope rather than remorse and despair!
There was nothing of this nature in the review that surged through the brain of the miserable fellow. Broken promises, disobedience to parents, wrangling, thievery, drinking – these were the scarlet tints of the picture which memory painted for him in vivid colors.
“If you’ll only save me,” he gasped, addressing the sole One who could rescue him, “I will stop the bad things I’ve been doing all my life, and do my best to live right always.”
Would he never pass the boundary of this narrow valley? It had always seemed straight to him before, but now its width was expanded not to yards and rods, but to miles. And never were the trees so close together or the bushes, vines, and undergrowth so dense, or his own wind so short, or his muscles so weak.
Suddenly something cold was felt against his ankle.
He knew what it was – it was water!
The fringe of the flood had reached him. Where the bursting away was so instantaneous and the released volume was so enormous, the flow could not be like that of an ordinary torrent, which rises rapidly because of the swiftly-increasing mass behind it. The awful rush at Johnstown resembled the oncoming of a tidal wave or wall of water, so high, so prodigious, so resistless that nothing less than the side of a granite mountain could check it.
It would have been the same in the case we are describing, though of course to a less degree, but for the interposing wood, which, beginning at the very base of the dam, continued the entire length of the valley, which was several miles in extent.
Some of these trees were uprooted as if by a cyclone, others were bent and partly turned over, while the sturdiest, which did not stand near the middle of the path, held their own, like giants resisting death tugging at their vitals.
The woods also acted as a brake, so to speak, on the velocity of the terrific rush of waters. The flow could not be stopped nor turned aside, but it was hindered somewhat, and, as it came down the hollow, was twisted and driven into all manner of eddies, whirlpools, and currents, in which the most powerful swimmer was as helpless as an infant.
“It’s no use!” panted McGovern, when he felt the cold current rising about his ankles like the coiling of a water-snake; “I must die, and with all my sins on my head! Heaven have mercy! do not desert me now when a little farther and I will be saved!”
Never was a more agonized appeal made to his Creator than that by the despairing McGovern.
CHAPTER XXVIII – A CRY FROM THE DARKNESS
Within a few seconds after McGovern felt the water about his ankles it touched his knees. He was still able to make progress, and with the same despairing desperation as before, struggled onward.
At the next step he went to his waist, and fell with a splash.
“I’m drowning!” he gasped; but fortunately for him he had plunged into a small hollow, out of which he was swept the next moment, and, with no effort on his part, flung upon his feet.
The roar was overpowering. It seemed as if he were in the appalling swirl of Niagara, with the raging waters all around him clamoring for his life. He grasped a limb which brushed his face, and the next step showed that he had struck higher ground.
But the torrent was ascending faster than he. It was gaining in spite of all he could do, but hope was not yet dead. Another step and the water was below his waist, and he was able to make progress with the help of his hands. When he lifted one foot it was swept to one side, and only by throwing his full weight upon it was he able to sustain himself.
He had now reached a point where the trees were not so near together. While this enabled him to see something of his surroundings, it gave the sweeping volume greater power, and he was in despair again.
But the dim light of the moon showed that at that moment the boundary of the current was only a few paces beyond him. Could he pass that intervening distance before it further expanded he would be safe.
Rousing his flagging energies he fought on, cheered by the view of a figure on the margin, which had evidently caught sight of him.
“A little farther and you will be all right!” shouted the stranger, stepping into the torrent and extending his hand.
“I can’t do it!” moaned McGovern, struggling on, but gaining no faster than the terrible enemy against which he was fighting.
“Yes, you will! don’t give up! take my hand!”
McGovern reached out, but he was short of grasping the friendly help. Then the brave friend stepped into the rushing torrent at the risk of his own life, and, griping the cold hand, exerted himself with the power of desperation, and dragged the helpless youth into the shallow margin.
“Don’t stop!” he shouted, still pulling him forward; “we are not yet out of danger!”
Helped by the stranger who had appeared so opportunely, the two splashed through the flood, which seemed striving to prevent their escape, and would drag them down in spite of themselves.
But the rescuer was cool-headed, strong, and brave, and he kept the weak McGovern going with a speed that threatened to fling him prostrate in spite of himself.
The ground rose more sharply than before. A few more hurried steps and their feet touched dry land. Still a few paces farther and they were saved.
The torrent might roar and rage, but it could not seize them. They had eluded its wrath, like the hunter who leaps aside from the bound of the tiger.
McGovern stood for a minute panting, limp, and so exhausted that he could hardly keep his feet. His companion did not speak, but kept his place beside him, curiously gazing into his countenance, and waiting until he should fully recover before addressing him.
The youth speedily regained his self-command, and for the first time looked in his rescuer’s face. They were now beyond the shadow of the trees, and could discern each other’s features quite distinctly in the favoring moonlight.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “I think you and I have met before.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if we had,” was the reply; “you tried to destroy my bicycle last night.”
“And you saved me from drowning in the mill-pond.”
“I believe I gave you a little help in that way.”
“And now you have saved my life again.”
“I am glad I was able to do something for you, for you seemed to be in a bad way.”
“I should think I was! If you had been a minute later it would have been the last of Jim McGovern, and I tell you, Dick Halliard, he was in no shape to die.”
No person escaping death by such a close call could throw off at once the moral effect of his rescue. The bad youth was humbled, frightened, and repentant. He was standing in the presence of him who had twice been the instrument of saving his life in a brief space of time, and that, too, after McGovern had tried to do him an injury.
“I don’t know whether you can forgive me,” he said, in the meekest of tones, “but I beg your pardon all the same.”
“I have no feeling against you,” replied Dick, “and though you sought to do me an injury, you inflicted the most on yourself; but,” added the young hero, starting up, “where are Bob Budd and Tom Wagstaff?”
“Heaven only knows! They must be drowned,” replied McGovern, glancing at the raging waters so near him with a shudder, as if he still feared they would reach and sweep him away.
“Where did you leave them? How did you become separated?”
“We were in our tent when we heard the waters coming. We felt we couldn’t help each other, and all made a break, some in one direction and some another. They must have been drowned, just as I would have been but for you.”
But what could he do to help them? He was standing as near to the torrent as he dare. It had already submerged the spot where the tent had been erected to the depth of twenty feet at least. Bob and Tom could not have stayed there had they wished, nor was there any means of reaching them.
“I wish I could do something,” said Dick, as if talking with himself, “but I see no way.”
“There is none,” added McGovern, who was speedily recovering from the ordeal through which he had passed, “but it is too bad; I would do anything I could for poor Bob and Tom.”
It seemed hopeless indeed, but Dick could not stand idle, knowing that others near him might be in most imminent need of help.
“If they are alive, which I don’t believe,” said McGovern, “they must have drifted below us by this time.”
“I agree with you,” replied Dick, moving slowly along the margin of the torrent, which, on account of the unevenness of the ground, encroached at times and compelled them to retreat for a brief space; “I should think if they were alive they would call for help.”
“Did you hear me?” asked McGovern, looking round in the face of his companion.
“Yes, though I happened to be quite near when the flood came, and had to scramble myself to get out of the way – ”
“Hark!” interrupted McGovern, “that was a voice!”
“So it was, and it is below us!”
As he spoke he broke into a run, with the larger youth at his heels. They had caught a cry, but it was so smothered and brief that it was impossible to tell the point whence it came, except that it was below them.
“Help! help! for the love of Hiven, help!”
“That’s the voice of Terry Hurley,” said Dick, who recalled that the Irishman lived with his family a short distance away, and in the path of the flood. In the whirl of events young Halliard had forgotten this man and his wife and their two little girls.
But that cry showed they were in imminent extremity, and possibly aid might reach them in time. McGovern, since his own rescue, was as anxious as the brave Dick to extend assistance to whomsoever were in peril.
The calamity had come with such awful suddenness that not the least precautionary step could be taken. It was too early for neighbors to arrive, but all Piketon and the vicinity would be on the spot in the course of a few hours.
A brief run brought the boys in sight of the imperiled family. The humble home of Terry Hurley did not stand in the centre of the valley, like the tent of the Piketon Rangers, but well up to one side. Thus it escaped the full force of the current, which, however, was violent enough to fill the lower story in a twinkling, and threaten to carry the structure from its foundations.
The two little girls, Maggie and Katie, had just said their prayers at their bedside in the upper story, and Terry was in the act of lighting his pipe when the shock came. The husband and wife might have escaped by dashing out of the door and fleeing, but neither thought for an instant of doing so. Both would have preferred to perish rather than abandon the innocent ones above them.
Calling to his wife to follow, Terry bounded up a few steps and dashed to the bedside. At the same instant that he seized one in his arms, his wife caught up the younger.
“Whither shall we go, Terry?” asked the distracted mother, starting to descend the stairs.
“Not there! not there!” he called, “but to the roof!”
By standing on a chair the trap-door was easily reached and the covering thrown back. Then he pushed Maggie through, warning her to hold fast, and the rest would instantly join her.
Next little Katie was passed upward.
“Now,” said Terry, “I will jine the wee spalpeens and thin give ye a lift, Delia.”
The Irishman was a powerful man, and the task thus far was of the easiest character. He drew himself through the door on the roof, and extending one brawny hand to his wife, was in the act of lifting her after him, when a scream from Maggie caused him to loose his hold and look round.
“What’s the matter wid ye, Maggie?” he asked.
“Kate has just rolled off the roof!” was the terrifying reply.
CHAPTER XXIX – A SAD DISCOVERY
The horror-stricken Terry thought no more about his wife, whom he was in the act of lifting through the trap-door, but let go her hand, allowing her to drop with a crash that shook the whole building.
“Where is the child?” he asked, facing the elder daughter.
“Yonder; I was trying to hold her when she slipped away and rolled down the slope of the roof – ”
But the father waited to hear no more. Just then the cry of his baby reached his ear, and he caught a glimpse of the white clothing which helped to buoy her up. Like an athlete, running along a spring-board to gather momentum for his tremendous leap, he took a couple of steps down the incline of the roof to the edge, from which he made a tremendous bound far out in the muddy torrent.
It was the energy of desperation and the delirium of paternal affection itself which carried him for a long way over the water, so that when he struck, one extended arm seized the shoulder of his child, while the other sustained both from sinking.
Poor Katie, who had been gasping for breath, now began crying, and the sound was welcome to the parent, for it proved that she was alive. Had she been quiet he would have believed she was drowned.
The trees which grew so thickly in the little valley served another good purpose in addition to that already named. The most powerful swimmer that ever lived could not make headway against such a torrent, nor indeed hold his own for a moment.
Terry would have been quickly swept beyond sight and sound of the rest of his family had he not grasped a strong, protruding limb by which he checked his progress.
“Are ye there, Terry?”
It was his wife who called. She had heard the frenzied cry of the elder girl at the moment she went downward herself with such a resounding crash. She was as frantic as her husband, and did that which would have been impossible at any other time. Grasping the sides of the trap-door, she drew herself upward and through with as much deftness as her husband a few minutes before. She asked the agonized question at the moment her head and shoulders appeared above the roof.
“Yis, I’m here, Delia,” he called back, “and Katie is wid me.”
“Hiven be praised!” was the fervent response of the wife; “I don’t care now if the owld shanty is knocked into smithereens.”
The speech was worthy of an Irishwoman, who never thought of her own inevitable fate in case the catastrophe named should overtake her dwelling while she was on the roof. She could dimly discern the figures of her husband and child, as the former clung to the friendly limb.
“If yer faat are risting so gintaaly on the ground,” said the wife, who supposed for the moment he was standing on the earth and grasping the branch to steady himself, “why doesn’t ye walk forward and jine us?”
“If my faat are risting on the ground!” repeated Terry: “and if I were doing the same, I would be as tall as a maating-house wid the staaple thrown in.”
“Thin would ye loike to have us join ye?” persisted the wife.
“Arrah, Delia, now are ye gone clean crazy, that ye talks in that style? Stay where ye be, and I would be thankful if I could get back to ye, which the same I can’t do.”
The wife had been so flustered that her questions were a little mixed, but by the time she was fairly seated on the roof, with one arm encircling Maggie, who clung, frightened and crying, to her, she began to realize her situation.
“Terry,” she called again, “are ye not comfortable?”
“Wal, yis,” replied the fellow, whose waggery must show itself, now that he believed the entire family were safe from the flood, “I faals as comfortable, thank ye, as if I was standing on me head on the top of a barber’s pole. How is it wid yerself, me jewel?”
“I’m thankful for the blissing of our lives; but why don’t ye climb into the traa and take a seat?”
“I will do so in a few minutes.”
There was good ground for this promise. Although Terry had been sustaining himself only a brief while, he felt the water rising so rapidly that the crown of his head, which was several inches below the supporting limb, quickly touched it, and as he shifted his position slightly it ascended still farther. While sustaining his child he could not lift both over the branch, but, with the help of the current, would soon be able to do so.
Requesting his wife to hold her peace for the moment, he seized the opportunity the instant it presented itself, and with comparatively little outlay of strength, placed himself astride the branch. This was all well enough, provided the flood did not keep on ascending, but it was doing that very thing, and his perch must speedily become untenable.
His refuge, however, was a sturdy oak, whose top was fully twenty feet above him, and, like its kind, was abundantly supplied with strong branches, so near each other that it was not difficult for the father to climb to a safe point, where he was confident the furious waters could never reach him.
Having seated himself in a better position than before, he surveyed his surroundings with some degree of composure.
“Delia,” he called, “I obsarve ye are there yit.”
“I’m thankful that yer words are the thruth, and if ye kaap on climbing ye’ll be in the clouds by morning.”
Now, while the rising torrent had proven of great assistance in one way to Terry and his infant child, it threatened a still graver peril to the mother and Maggie, who remained on the roof.
The house, being of wood, was liable to be lifted from its foundations and carried in sections down-stream. In that event it would seem that nothing could save the couple from immediate drowning.
Neither the husband nor wife thought of this calamity until she called out, under the stress of her new fear:
“Terry, the owld building can’t stand this.”
“What do ye maan, me darling?”
“I faal it moving under me as though its getting onaisy – oh! we’re afloat!”
The exclamation was true. The little structure, after resisting the giant tugging at it as though it were a sentient thing, yielded when it could hold out no longer. It popped up a foot or two like a cork, as if to recover its gravity, and the next moment started down the torrent.
It was at this juncture that Terry uttered the despairing cry which brought Dick Halliard and Jim McGovern hurrying to the spot on the shore directly opposite.
But unexpected good fortune attended the shifting of the little building from its foundations. Swinging partly around, it drifted against the tree in which Terry had taken refuge with his child. His wife and Maggie were so near that he could touch them with his outstretched hand.
“Climb into the limbs,” he said, “for the owld shebang will soon go to pieces.”
He could give little help, since he had to keep one arm about Katie, but the wife was cool and collected, now that she fully comprehended her danger. The projecting limbs were within convenient reach, and it took her but a minute or two to ensconce herself beside her husband and other child.
Quick as was the action it was not a moment too soon, for she was hardly on her perch and safely established by the side of all that was dear to her when the house broke into a dozen fragments, the roof itself disintegrating, and every portion quickly vanished among the tree-tops in the darkness.
“Helloa, Terry, are you alive?” called Dick Halliard.
“We’re all alive, Hiven be praised!” replied the Irishman, “and are roosting among the tree-tops.”
“It will be all right with you then,” was the cheery response, “for I don’t think the flood will rise any higher.”
“Little odds if it does, for we haven’t raiched the top story of our new risidence yit.”
Just then a dark object struck the ground at the feet of the boys, swinging around like a log of wood. Seeing what it was, Dick Halliard stooped down and drew it out of the current.
“What is it?” asked McGovern, in a whisper, seeing as he spoke that it was a human body. “Great Heavens! it is Tom Wagstaff!”
“So it is,” replied Dick, “and he is dead.”
“And so is Bobb Budd!”