s more than mortal strong at that dread
hour.

"What! live with him," she cried, "when I can die with you!"

She folded her arms, and her pale face was radiant, no hope, no fear.

Now came a higher wave, and the water reached above the window-sills of
the bedroom floor and swept away the ladder; yet, driven forward like a
cannon-bullet, did not yet pour into the bed-rooms from the main stream;
but by degrees the furious flood broke, melted, and swept away the
intervening houses, and then hacked off the gable-end of Grace's house,
as if Leviathan had bitten a piece out. Through that aperture the flood
came straight in, leveled the partitions at a blow, rushed into the
upper rooms with fearful roar, and then, rushing out again to rejoin the
greater body of water, blew the front wall clean away, and swept Grace
out into the raging current.

The water pouring out of the house carried her, at first, toward the
tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her. He awoke from his
stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but then the main
force of the mighty water drove her away from him toward the house; her
helpless body was whirled round and round three times, by the struggling
eddies, and then hurried away like a feather by the overwhelming
torrent.

CHAPTER XLV.

The mighty reflux, which, after a short struggle, overpowered the rush
of water from the windows, and carried Grace Carden's helpless body away
from the tree, drove her of course back toward the houses, and she was
whirled past Little's window with fearful velocity, just as he was going
to leap into the flood, and perish in an insane attempt to save her.
With a loud cry he seized her by her long floating hair, and tried to
draw her in at the window; but the mighty water pulled her from him
fiercely, and all but dragged him in after her; he was only saved by
clutching the side of the wall with his left hand: the flood was like
some vast solid body drawing against him; and terror began to seize on
his heart. He ground his teeth; he set his knee against the horizontal
projection of the window; and that freed his left hand; he suddenly
seized her arm with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth
together, and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of
the water by an effort almost superhuman. Such was the force exerted by
the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that not
her shoes only, but her s