This done, he begged Ransome to cross the water, and relieve the poor wretches who had escaped so narrowly with him. Ransome consented at once; but then came a difficulty--the bridge, like every bridge that the flying lake had struck, was swept away.
However, the stream was narrow, and, as they were already muddy to the knee, they found a place where the miscellaneous ruin made stepping-stones, and by passing first on to a piece of masonry, and from that to a broken water-wheel, and then on to a rock, they got across.
They passed the coiner's house. It stood on rather high ground, and had got off cheap. The water had merely carried away the door and windows, and washed every movable out of it.
Ransome sighed. "Poor Shifty!" said he; "you'll never play us another trick. What an end for a man of your abilities!"
And now the day began to dawn, and that was fortunate, for otherwise they could hardly have found the house they were going to.
On the way to it they came on two dead bodies, an old man of eighty and a child scarce a week old. One fate had united these extremes of human life, the ripe sheaf and the spring bud. It transpired afterward that they had been drowned in different parishes. Death, that brought these together, disunited hundreds. Poor Dolman's body was found scarce a mile from his house, but his wife's eleven miles on the other side of Hillsborough; and this wide separation of those who died in one place by one death, was constant, and a pitiable feature of the tragedy.
At last they got to the house, and Little shuddered at the sight of it; here not only was the whole front wall taken out, but a part of the back wall; the jagged chimneys of the next house still clung to this miserable shell, whose upper floors were slanting sieves, and on its lower was a deep layer of mud, with the carcass of a huge sow lying on it, washed in there all the way from Hatfield village.
The people had all run away from the house, and no wonder, for it seemed incredible that it could stand a single moment longer; never had ruin come so close to demolition and then stopped.
There was nothing to be done here, and Ransome went back to Hillsborough, keeping this side the water.
Daybreak realized his worst fears: between Poma Bridge and the first suburb of Hillsborough the place was like a battle-field; not that many had been drowned on the spot, but that, drowned all up the valley by the flood at its highest, they had been brought down and deposited in the thick layer of mud left by the abating waters.
Some were cruelly gashed and mangled by the hard objects with which they had come in contact. Others wore a peaceful expression and had color in their cheeks. One drew tears from both these valiant men.
It was a lovely little girl, with her little hands before her face to keep out the sight of death.
Here and there, a hand or a ghastly face appearing above the mud showed how many must be hidden altogether, and Ransome hurried home to get more assistance to disinter the dead.
Just before the suburb of Allerton the ground is a dead flat, and here the flying lake had covered a space a mile broad, doing frightful damage to property but not much to life, because wherever it expanded it shallowed in proportion.
In part of this flat a gentleman had a beautiful garden and pleasure-grounds overnight: they were now under water, and their appearance was incredible; the flood expanding here and then contracting, had grounded large objects and left small ones floating. In one part of the garden it had landed a large wheat-rick, which now stood as if it belonged there, though it had been built five miles off.
In another part was an inverted summer-house and a huge water-wheel, both of them great travelers that night.
In the large fish-pond, now much fuller than usual, floated a wheel-barrow, a hair mattress, an old wooden cradle, and an enormous box or chest.
Little went splashing through the water to examine the cradle: he was richly rewarded. He found a little child in it awake but perfectly happy, and enjoying the fluttering birds above and the buoyant bed below, whose treacherous nature was unknown to him.