Presently they saw, on either hand, long strings of sheep swimming down the current with plaintive bleatings to their death; heard, too, shrill neighings and bellowings of drowning cattle and horses. Round and round they swept, although they knew it not, towards the raging central current, where disaster was inevitable; whilst Daisy sat with white face, mute, and almost hopeless, and Bridget crouched, one arm around a table leg, mumbling over her beads; and Barton’s Jackaroo, the man without a backbone, toiled steadily and watchfully, still finding time, at intervals, to throw a word of cheer to his helpless companions. Crash! and a log overtaking them and hitting them end-on, sent the raft spinning; whilst to his dismay Fortescue felt the slabs begin to loose and spread. Decidedly, a few more knocks like that, and they would all find themselves in the water. ‘I’m afraid, Herbert, it’s going to pieces,’ whispered Daisy, who had crept close to where he knelt. It was the first time she had ever used that name when addressing him, and her voice sounded so inexpressibly sweet that, without even glancing at Bridget, he turned and took the girl in his arms and kissed her, a caress which she, thinking her end at hand, and loving him, returned. Smash! and they are amongst the stout upper branches of what must be a giant tree. But, in place of pushing off, Fortescue hugs and pulls, and calls upon the women to help him, which they do until the raft is moored, so to speak, hard and fast between forks and branches, the only ones visible now over all that brown, bare waste of water with silver patches of moonlight here and there upon it. It was a grateful thing to be at rest, even so precariously, after all the twisting and twirling they had come through; and Bridget, rising stiffly and shaking herself, with the fear of present death gone out of her soul, said,— ‘Praise the saints! Sure, Misther Fortyskeu, sorr, we oughter to be thankful for gettin’ this far wid clane shkins, so we ought! Sorra a one ov me ’ll go any furder if I can help it! Is the wather raisin’ yet, does ye think, sorr?’ ‘I’m afraid it is, Bridget,’ said Fortescue, as he sat on a stout limb supporting Daisy beside him. ‘I hope, though, it won’t rise over the top of this tree.’ But, disquieted by the idea, he presently got into the water and tightened the lashings of the raft as well as he was able. It was a long, dreary night, especially after the moon went down. Fortunately it was warm and fine. Indeed, throughout that trying time of flood, curiously enough, not a single point of rain fell in that region. They talked of many things, these two, nestling snugly in a great fork of the giant apple-tree, but their chief subject was the old, old story; whilst Bridget, just below them, alternately invoked heavenly succour and lamented earthly losses.