d.

He found but one policeman there; the rest, and Ransome at their head,
were doing their best; all but two, drowned on their beat in the very
town of Hillsborough.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Round a great fire in the Town Hall were huddled a number of half-naked
creatures, who had been driven out of their dilapidated homes; some
of them had seen children or relatives perish in the flood they had
themselves so narrowly escaped, and were bemoaning them with chattering
teeth.

Little spoke them a word of comfort, promised them all clothes as soon
as the shops should open, and hurried off to the lower part of the town
in search of Ransome.

He soon found the line the flood had taken. Between Poma Bridge and
Hillsborough it had wasted itself considerably in a broad valley,
but still it had gone clean through Hillsborough twelve feet high,
demolishing and drowning. Its terrible progress was marked by a layer of
mud a foot thick, dotted with rocks, trees, wrecks of houses, machinery,
furniture, barrels, mattresses, carcasses of animals, and dead bodies,
most of them stark naked, the raging flood having torn their clothes off
their backs.

Four corpses and two dead horses were lying in a lake of mud about the
very door of the railway station; three of them were females in absolute
nudity. The fourth was a male, with one stocking on. This proved to be
Hillsbro' Harry, warned in vain up at Damflask. When he actually heard
the flood come hissing, he had decided, on the whole, to dress, and had
got the length of that one stocking, when the flying lake cut short his
vegetation.

Not far from this, Little found Ransome, working like a horse, with the
tear in his eyes.

He uttered a shout of delight and surprise, and, taking Little by both
shoulders, gazed earnestly at him, and said, "Can this be a living man I
see?"

"Yes, I am alive," said Little, "but I had to work for it: feel my
clothes."

"Why, the are dryer than mine."

"Ay; yet have been in water to the throat; the heat of my body and my
great exertions dried them. I'll tell you all another day: now show me
how to do a bit of good; for it is not one nor two thousand pounds I'll
stick at, this night."

"Come on."

Strange sights they saw that night.

They found a dead body curled round the top frame of a lamppost, and, in
the suburbs, another jammed between a beam and the wall of a house.

They found some houses with the front wall carried clean away, and,