un away the great wheel
anyhow, like the hoop of a child sent trundling. I heard no scream or
shriek; and, indeed, the bellow of a lion would have been a mere whisper
in the wild roar of the elements. Only, where the mill had been, there
was nothing except a black streak and a boil in the deluge. Then scores
of torn-up trees swept over, as a bush-harrow jumps on the clods of the
field; and the unrelenting flood cast its wrath, and shone quietly in
the lightning.

"Oh, Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam!" I cried. But there was not a sign to be seen
of him; and I thought of his gentle, good, obstinate ways, and my heart
was almost broken. "What a brute--what a wretch I am!" I kept saying, as
if I could have helped it; and my fear of the lightning was gone, and I
stood and raved with scorn and amazement.

In this misery of confusion it was impossible to think, and instinct
alone could have driven my despair to a desperate venture. With my
soaked clothes sticking between my legs, I ran as hard as they would go,
by a short-cut over a field of corn, to a spot where the very last bluff
or headland jutted into the river. This was a good mile below the mill
according to the bends of channel, but only a furlong or so from the
rock upon which I had taken refuge. However, the flood was there before
me, and the wall of water dashed on to the plains, with a brindled comb
behind it.

Behind it also came all the ruin of the mill that had any floatage, and
bodies of bears and great hogs and cattle, some of them alive, but the
most part dead. A grand black bull tossed back his horns, and looked at
me beseechingly: he had frightened me often in quiet days, but now I was
truly grieved for him. And then on a wattle of brush-wood I saw the form
of a man--the Sawyer.

His white hair draggled in the wild brown flood, and the hollow of
his arms was heaped with froth, and his knotted legs hung helpless.
Senseless he lay on his back, and sometimes the wash of the waves went
over him. His face was livid, but his brave eyes open, and a heavy
weight hung round his neck. I had no time to think, and deserve no
praise, for I knew not what I did. But just as an eddy swept him near
me, I made a desperate leap at him, and clutched at something that tore
my hands, and then I went under the water. My senses, however, were
not yet gone, and my weight on the wattle stopped it, and I came up
gurgling, and flung one arm round a fat, woolly sheep going by me. The
sheep