As they lay in their beds at night, if they wakened and found that the rain had ceased, the people of the town hoped that the end had come at last, and that the waters would soon subside, but before they had framed their congratulations, the gentle patter of the rain was heard on their roofs once more, which continued through the long night, ceasing only occasionally, that the cries of distress and the alarms from the bottom might be heard, whereupon the rain commenced again with joyful vigor, sure that its fury was not without result.
The rocky hills above and below the town were oozy and wet; and those who roamed about heard great splashes in the water, and knew that portions of the bluff were tumbling into the river, as if tired of being steady and reliable while everything else was failing, and anxious to join the tide and aid in the general destruction, as well as to get away from a place which seemed so unfortunate.
The mild river, patient and uncomplaining so long, was master now, and it roared like a monster proud of its conquest, and declaring its intention to be wicked and fierce forever. The observers could not understand, so great was the awful flood, how the waters could ever subside, for surely all the lower country must have been flooded days before, and even those who lived in the hills were filled with grave apprehensions.
Every morning the simple registers, which the people put up along the creeks and sloughs, showed an alarming rise, and they feared that if the rain continued the earth itself would become liquid at last, and resolve itself into a vast sea without shores.
No one knew how the news came, but there seemed to be whispers in the air that in the upper country the flood was even worse than at Davy's Bend, which added to the general apprehension, and many believed that the rainbow was about to prove faithless at last. Houses of a pattern barely familiar to the people occasionally floated past the town in the current, and in one of them rode a man who refused to leave his property when the relief boats put off to him; for he said that he came from hundreds of miles above, and that since the world seemed to be turning into water, he preferred his strange craft to the crumbling hills. As he floated away, stark mad from excitement, fear, and hunger, he called back to the men to follow if they valued their lives; for a wave twenty feet high was coming down the river, carrying the towns along the bluffs with it.