his
bedstead, and his drawers, and his chairs, all slowly rising toward the
ceiling, lifted by that cold, putrescent, liquid death.

But all men, and even animals, possess greater powers of mind, as well
as of body, than they ever exert, unless compelled by dire necessity:
and it would have been strange indeed if a heart so stanch, and a brain
so inventive, as Little's, had let his darling die like a rat drowned in
a hole, without some new and masterly attempt first made to save her.

To that moment of horror and paralysis succeeded an activity of mind
and body almost incredible. He waded to the drawers, took his rifle
and fired both barrels at one place in the ceiling bursting a hole, and
cutting a narrow joist almost in two. Then he opened a drawer, got an ax
and a saw out, and tried to wade to the bed; but the water now took him
off his feet, and he had to swim to it instead; he got on it, and with
his axe and his saw he contrived to paddle the floating bed under the
hole in the ceiling, and then with a few swift and powerful blows of
his ax soon enlarged that aperture sufficiently; but at that moment the
water carried the bedstead away from the place.

He set to work with his saw and ax, and paddled back again.

Grace, by this time, was up on her knees, and in a voice, the sudden
firmness of which surprised and delighted him, asked if she could help.

"Yes," said he, "you can. On with my coat."

It lay on the bed. She helped him on with it, and then he put his ax and
saw into the pockets, and told her to take hold of his skirt.

He drew himself up through the aperture, and Grace, holding his skirts
with her hands and the bed with her feet, climbed adroitly on to the
head of the bed--a French bed made of mahogany--and Henry drew her
through the aperture.

They were now on the false ceiling, and nearly jammed against the roof:
Little soon hacked a great hole in that just above the parapet, and they
crawled out upon the gutter.

They were now nearly as high as Coventry on his tree; but their house
was rocking, and his tree was firm.

In the next house were heard the despairing shrieks of poor creatures
who saw no way of evading their fate; yet the way was as open to them as
to this brave pair.

"Oh, my angel," said Grace, "save them. Then, if you die, you go to
God."

"All right," said Henry. "Come on."

They darted down the gutter to the next house. Little hacked a hole in
the slates, and then in the w