Below the Main Street bridge in Elmvale, the channel of the river was much wider than above the bridge. It was navigable for small vessels, too, from Seacove to that point.
Schooners and barges moored to the docks below the bridge were cast up on the crest of the flood, their hawsers snapped like packthread, and they were whirled away, some to be cast later far back from the established bank of the stream.
It was tidewater below the bridge, and fortunately it was low tide. The channel of the river, therefore, could take the greater bulk of the flood, and the valley widening so quickly, the depth of the outflow of the dam was much decreased directly below the wrecked hamlet.
The rushing automobile was two-thirds of the way to Seacove in five minutes. Then the advance wave of the flood caught them.
They saw the saplings along the bank of the stream bend and snap under the force of the water. Some were uprooted. Chicken houses and other small structures were snatched from their places and flung wildly along with the charging water.
With a roar and a cloud of spray the water surged around the automobile on the road. Running, as the car was, at top speed, the flood picked it up and drove it forward even more swiftly for several rods.
"Shut her off! Shut her off!" yelled Frenchy excitedly.
But Torry was wiser than that. The water flattened out, and the whirling wheels bit into the road again. They did not skid, and the car remained upright. For the next half mile they ran through more than a foot of water; but it was plain the danger was over.
Near the river bank the water flooded the first floors of the houses in the suburbs of Seacove; but there was little other damage done at this distance from the dam.
As the water subsided from about them, however, Torry turned the machine around and headed up the road again.
"Yes, we'll go back," Whistler agreed. "Drive slowly, Torry. Maybe we can help somebody. I'm afraid there were some people who did not get away in time."
They found enough to do, it was true, all that night. After getting back to the outskirts of Elmvale they could not drive the machine over the slime and mud in the roadway. There were deep washouts, too; and in some places the wreck of light buildings barred the way.