“It sweeps into the standing timber with a hoarse roar, foaming around sturdy trunks, and here and there one sees a tall tree swaying to and fro like a drunken man: then caught in some fierce eddy, it is twisted from its roots, and reeling around and around it falls into that tremendous current and is swept away to swell the tangled dams of drift beyond.”
As far inland as the eye can reach there is nothing but flood to be seen, the currents opening out and racing away in every direction. At some distance away may be seen a flooded settlement, the water washing the windows of fifteen or twenty abandoned cottages. On a huge mound some five or six feet out of the outflow, is a group of disconsolate horses and mules who have taken refuge from the rising flood, and other hungry-looking brutes wander over the levee.
But once out of the immediate neighborhood of the break, the character of the scene changes. The current slackens, as the water spreads out like an immense fan, and at length becomes almost imperceptible. It may come in the night, giving no warning of its approach. It steals through the grass-lands like a serpent. The slumbering family hear no sound. The water creeps stealthily around the house, like the Red men in the olden days.
The morning sun finds it lapping uneasily in the breeze against the threshold. The wakening family find it crawling across the floor toward their beds. They look upon a region that appears a vast marsh; grass tops, bushes, little islets and tall trees, everywhere rising out of the water. In the barnyard the drowsy cattle chew their cuds in peaceful unconsciousness of the wily foe. The pig in the lower corner of the lot grunts contentedly to find his wallow freshly moistened. The quacking duck paddles complacently about the fields. The farmer watches anxiously the progress of the flood, trusting that there may be no necessity of leaving. Valuable property that can not be removed is taken to the second floor, if there be one. A boat, if there be one, is carefully overhauled to be ready for an emergency.
Noon comes. The flood has risen but a few inches. The cattle eye the water curiously. The negroes in their cabins speculate upon the future, and each tells his tale of “hair-breadth ’scapes and ventures” in other days, and one and all agree that “_dis_ ain’t no flood--sho! no! You orter hab seed the big high water way back in seventy-four. _Dat_ was sumfin’ like;” and in humble submission to the opinions of some old granny of unknown age and grizzled wool, it is unanimously allowed that “we ain’t got no cause to be skeered _dis_ time; not much!” So the happy-go-lucky fellows sit and chat, while some oily skinned picaninnies wade to deeper parts of the water, cast in their hooks and begin to swap tales of the wonderful fish their progenitors had caught in other floods, and to wonder if more brilliant achievements may not be recorded of them.