“There wouldn’t be much that we could put into one of these cockleshell canoes,” Dick returned. “But we can go around on the levee and get to the house easy by wading a little.” That seemed perfectly feasible, so long as the levee was still holding, so they ran stumbling along in the uncertain light of the fires to the main street, which was on a fill, and thus reached the wide embankment bordering on the river. Here they had as good a view as the rain and darkness permitted of the situation, a view which had been hitherto cut off by the levee. On the “seaward” side of the levee, so to speak, the river was running bank-full, a muddy, tumultuous flood carrying wreckage of every description, uprooted trees, rafts of fence posts still linked together by their barbed wire, the gatherings from stream-side sawmills and lumber yards, and now and then a chicken coop or some other out-building bobbing up and down or rolling over as the strong current laid hold of it. Near at hand was the main bridge connecting the college suburb with the town, substantial steel trusses resting upon stone piers. It was still standing, and was apparently intact, though the water was up to the level of the floor, and the flood was constantly hurling floating drift wreckage against it. “How about it?” said Dick, with awe in his voice. “Think it’ll hold?” “Don’t seem as if it could,” Larry doubted. Then: “We’ll have to hurry. If the bridge should go, we’d be cut off. It would take the levee with it, sure.” It was a rather foolhardy thing to do; to risk their lives for the sake of a trifling property salvage, but in such times of excitement even a pretty level-headed person is likely to do things that wouldn’t stand the test of a little cool reasoning and good judgment. Hurrying along on the inner edge of the wide embankment, they soon came opposite the house they had marked from the other side, but it was only to find that the seepage lake was already lapping half-way up the window openings, and that there was no possible chance of saving anything. “Hard luck for the poor woman,” said Dick, and then, at a great splash and a shudder that set the solid embankment trembling under their feet: “Look at that, will you?” “That” was a huge landslide on the river side of the levee; a gigantic bite taken out of the solid earth a short distance from where they were standing. What it meant became instantly apparent. With the flood gnawing hungrily in the gap it would be but a short time until the levee must be breached and the river would pour through.