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The night was bright and starlight, but we could not sleep much for thinking of our father and Sam Dawes. We resolved as early as we could see in the morning to go back to them. We were awoke early in the morning by a peculiar murmuring and hollow sound. As soon as it was daylight we looked out over the flooded country. We asked others if they had heard the noise. They replied that they had, and that it was caused by the water rushing over the land. “Then the flood must have increased,” exclaimed Malcolm and I with anxiety.

“No doubt about it, boys,” was the unsatisfactory reply.

We were for starting off immediately, but one of the farmer’s wives, to whom we had given up our tent, insisted on preparing some breakfast for us, and in putting a supply of food into our canoe.

“It is a long voyage, my boys, and you do not know what you may require before you return,” she observed.

We paddled on very anxiously. We had only the line of eastern hills we were leaving and some high land to the south to guide us, but we thought that we could not help hitting upon the spot where our abode stood. For a long way we paddled on easily enough, only taking care not to run against stumps of trees, and as we got nearer the settlement, stakes or ruined buildings were our chief danger. Too many evidences met us on either side that the water had increased considerably since the previous day. In vain our eyes ranged around, in no direction was our cottage visible. We must have mistaken the locality. The current was here very strong, we thought that we might have drifted down further than we had calculated on doing. We went further west, and then steered south, where the current was less strong. After going some way, Malcolm stopped paddling suddenly, and exclaimed–

“Look, Harry! look there! Do you know that tree?”

“Its head is very like one that grows close to the house,” I answered.

We had both mechanically turned the head of the canoe in the direction in which he pointed. We had been engaged in fastening a flag-staff to the tree near our house. A minute would decide whether this was it. Our hearts sank within us, our paddles almost dropped from our hands, when we perceived among the bare branches the rope and the pole which we had been about to erect. Where was our cottage? where our kind father and the faithful Sam? Not a vestige of the cottage remained, it had too evidently been carried away by the flood.

“Had they been able to escape with the cattle?” was the question we asked each other. We hoped they might; but still it was too possible that our father would have persisted in remaining in the house, as a sailor will by his ship, to the last, and Sam, we knew, would never have deserted him. We could just distinguish the heads of some strong palings above the water, marking the position of our cottage. We made fast to the tree for a few minutes to rest and recover ourselves, and to consider what course to pursue. We naturally turned our eyes towards the rising ground in the south-west, to which our father intended to drive the cattle. It seemed a long, long way off, still we determined to attempt to reach it. We felt thankful that the farmer’s wife had supplied us with provisions, though we were too anxious just then to be hungry. We left the tree and paddled on, but it was very hard work, for there was a current against us setting towards Lake Winnipeg; but the canoe was light, and as there was no wind we managed to stem it. Hitherto the sky had been bright, and there had been a perfect calm, but as we paddled on we saw clouds rising above the high ground for which we were steering. They rose, and rose, and then rushed across the sky with fearful rapidity, and the water ahead of us, hitherto bright and clear, seemed turned into a mass of foam, which came sweeping up towards us.