Then David, with remarkable coolness, uncorked a bottle of wine, which he offered to his pupil.
"Stop to rest!" cried Frederick, "while those poor people are waiting for us!"
"My child, you are panting for breath, your forehead is covered with perspiration, your strength is being exhausted; I perceived it by the shaking of your oars. We will reach these people in time; the water is not rising any longer, I have seen by sure signs. We are going to need all our energy and all our strength. Now, five minutes" rest taken at the right time may ensure those persons" safety as well as our own.
Come, drink a few swallows of wine."
Frederick followed this advice, and realised the benefit of it, for already, without having dared confess it to David, he felt in the joints of his arms that numbness and rigidity which always succeed too much fatigue and muscular tension.
During this period of enforced delay the preceptor and his pupil looked upon the scene around them with silent horror.
From the point where they were they commanded an immense extent of water, no longer dead, such as they had just pa.s.sed over, but rapid, foaming, impetuous as the course of a torrent.
From this vast expanse of water arose such a roar that from one end of the little boat to the other Frederick and David were obliged to shout aloud, in order to hear each other.
In the distance a line of dark gray water was the only thing which marked the horizon.
About six hundred steps from the boat they saw the farmhouse.
The roof had almost completely disappeared under the waters, and human forms grouped around the chimney could be vaguely distinguished.
Every moment, at a little distance from the craft, protected from collision by the three poplars, which served as a sort of natural palisade, thanks to David"s foresight, floated all kinds of rubbish, carried along on the current which the little boat was to cross in a few moments.
On one side, beams and girders, and fragments of carpentry proceeding from the crumbling buildings; on the other side, enormous hayc.o.c.ks and stacks of straw, lifted from their base and dragged solidly along by the waters, like so many floating mountains, submerging everything they encountered; again, gigantic trees, torn up by the roots, rushed rapidly by as lightly as bits of straw upon a babbling brook, while in their rear followed doors unloosed from their hinges, furniture, mattresses, and casks, and sometimes in the midst of these wrecks could be seen cattle, some drowned, others struggling above the abyss soon to disappear under it, and, in strange contrast, domestic ducks, instinctively following the other animals, floated over the water in undisturbed tranquillity. Elsewhere, heavy carts were whirled above the gulf, and sometimes sank under the irresistible shock of immense floats of wood a hundred feet long and twenty feet wide borne along with the drift.
It was in the midst of these floating perils, upon an impetuous and irresistible current, that David and Frederick were forced to direct their boat in order to reach the farmhouse.
Then the danger of the salvage was becoming more imminent.
Frederick felt it, and as he saw David survey the terrible scene with an expression of distress, he said, in a firm and serious tone:
"You were right, my friend, we shall soon need all our strength and all our energy. This rest was necessary, but it seems cruel to take a rest with such a spectacle under our eyes."
"Yes, my child, courage is necessary even to take rest; blind recklessness does not see and does not try to see the danger, but true courage coolly looks at the chances. Hence, it generally triumphs over danger. If we had not taken some rest, we would certainly be dragged into the middle of the gulf that we are about to cross, and we would be destroyed."
Thus speaking, David examined with minute care the equipment of the boat and renewed one of the tholes, which had split under the pressure of Frederick"s oar. For greater surety, David, by means of two knots of cord sufficiently loose, fastened the oars to the gunwale a little below their handle; in this way they could have free play, without escaping from Frederick"s hands in the accident of a violent collision.
The rest of the five minutes had reached its end when Frederick, uttering an exclamation of involuntary surprise, became deathly pale, and could not conceal the distortion of his features.
David raised his head, followed the direction of Frederick"s eyes, and saw what had alarmed his pupil.
As we have said, the inundation, without limit in the north and the east, was bounded in the west by the border of the forest of Pont Brillant, whose tall trees had disappeared half-way under the waters.
One of the woods of this forest, advancing far into the inundated valley, formed a sort of promontory above the sheet of water.
For some time, Frederick had observed, issuing from this promontory, so to speak, and rowing against the current, a long canoe, painted the colour of goat leather, and relieved by a wide crimson railing or guard.
On the benches, six oarsmen, wearing chamois skin jackets and crimson caps, were rowing vigorously; the c.o.c.kswain seated at the back, where he controlled the canoe, seemed to follow the orders of a young man, who, erect upon one of the benches, with one hand in the pocket of his mackintosh of a whitish colour, indicated with the index finger of the other hand a point which could be nothing else than the submerged farmhouse, as, in that part of the valley, no other building could be seen.
David"s little boat was too far from this canoe to enable him to distinguish the features of the person who evidently directed the manoeuvre, but from the expression of Frederick"s countenance he did not doubt that the master of the bark was Raoul de Pont Brillant.
The presence of the marquis on the scene of the disaster was explained by the message that the gendarme, whom David met, had carried in haste to the castle, demanding boats and men.
At the sight of Raoul de Pont Brillant, whose presence affected Frederick so suddenly, David felt as much surprise as satisfaction; the meeting with the young marquis seemed providential, and, fixing a penetrating glance on his pupil, David said to him:
"My child, you recognise the Marquis de Pont Brillant?"
"Yes, my friend," answered the young man.
And he continued to follow, with a keen and restless eye the movements of the yawl, which, evidently, was trying to reach the submerged farmhouse, from which it was more distant than the little boat. However, the six oarsmen of the patrician craft were rapidly diminishing the distance.
"Come, Frederick," said David, in a firm voice, "the Marquis de Pont Brillant, like us is going to the help of the unfortunate farmer. It is brave and generous of him. Now is the time for you to envy, to be jealous of the young marquis indeed!"
"Oh, I will get there before he does!" exclaimed Frederick, with an indescribable exaltation.
"To your oars, my child! One last thought of your mother, and forward!
The hour has come."
So saying, David disengaged his boat-hook from the entanglement of the branches of the poplar-trees.
The little boat, set in movement by the vigorous motion of the oars, in a few minutes arrived in the middle of the current it must cross in order to reach the farmhouse.
CHAPTER x.x.x.
Then began a terrible, obstinate struggle against the dangers threatened by the elements of nature.
While Frederick rowed with incredible energy, over-excited at the sight of the canoe of the marquis, on which from time to time he would cast a look of generous emulation, David, sitting in front of the boat, guarded it from shocks with an address and presence of mind which was marvellous.
Already he had approached the farmhouse near enough to see distinctly the unfortunate family clinging to the roof, when an enormous stack of straw, carried by the waters, advanced on the right of the boat, which presented to the obstacle its breadth in cutting the current.
"Double your strokes, Frederick!" cried David. "Courage! let us avoid that stack of straw."
The son of Madame Bastien obeyed.
Already the prow of the little boat had gone beyond the stack of straw, which was not more than ten steps distant, when the young man, stiffening his arm as he threw himself violently back, so as to give more power to his stroke, made too sudden a movement, and broke his right oar. Soon, the left oar forming a lever, the boat turned about, and, instead of her breadth, presented her prow to the stack, which threatened to engulf her beneath its weight.
David, surprised by the sudden jolt, lost for a moment his equilibrium, but had time to cry:
"Row firmly with the oar left to you."
Frederick obeyed more by instinct than by reflection. The little boat turned again, presented its breadth, and, half raised by the eddy around the spheroid ma.s.s which had already touched the prow, swung on the single oar as if it had been a pivot, thus describing a half circle around the floating obstruction, and escaping from it in such a way as to receive only a slight shock.
While all this was taking place with the rapidity of thought, David, seizing a spare oar from the bottom of the boat, fixed it in the thole, saying to Frederick, who was excited by the frightful danger he had just escaped:
"Take this new oar and go forward; the canoe is gaining on us."