"Eh?" The old man was tired and rambling. Too bad; now it was all on his shoulders. But when he got at him later he'd remind him that he had, in a way, saved his life, that he didn't expect anything for himself, but that he wanted to do something for the community-- "There's a light!" screamed Mrs. Chesbro. It seemed to be a filling station; there were the pumps and there was a two-storey frame building behind them. One of those crossroads groceries, Chesbro thought as they swept past. "But aren't you going to stop, Arthur?" she asked. "Nonsense, dear," he grunted. "We started for Hebertown and that's where we're going." How little we know our land, thought the burgess again. For there, ahead in the twin beams, was a sheet of muddy water. Their speed was such that they plowed into it with a tremendous gush of spray. "We'll make it," Chesbro cried. Water rose chillingly inside the car to their calves as they plowed heavily forward and then lurched to a stop. Chesbro said between his teeth: "Like last time." He ground the starter three times; the fourth time he tramped on the button nothing happened. The battery was shorted out. "Here we are," Mrs. Chesbro said inanely. Chesbro tramped on the dead button again and again. "It's rising, isn't it?" said the burgess. "Let's get out and wade before we have to swim." Hating him, his wife and himself, hating the car and the water, Arthur Chesbro opened the door; more water swirled in, seat-high. "Let's go," he said gruffly. "Five minutes and we'll be in that filling station, grocery, whatever it was." He gingerly lowered himself into the water; it came to his waist and chilled the bone. "I'll lead," he said. "Come on." Surprisingly there was a strong current; he had thought it would be a sort of pond. Instead it was a temporary catch basin for the living water that was thundering down from the heavens on its way to the river and finally the sea. They were simply in a low spot where water was detained for a while before rushing on. The same cubic yard of water could wash out a power line running along a high ridge, wash out a dirt road lower down on the hill, pour through a farmhouse lower down smashing the windows and depositing stinking mud on the floor, short his battery here, trapping the three of them, and still rage on with a long career of ruin before it. It was the secret of the flood's destructiveness. Chesbro inched his way forward, taking care to keep the current abeam of him, feeling for the hardtop with his feet. The burgess and his wife held the skirt of his raincoat, one to a side. He stepped on something slippery and crashed face-forward into the muddy water; it was the burgess who, with unexpected wiry strength hauled him upright again while he floundered. "Fish or something," he sputtered.