“The banks are giving on all sides!” Michael said, as the household crowded round him. “We were near caught time an’ again as we came along. The water kept bursting through behind us before we were barely clear. The marsh-road’s gone--ay, an’ the main road an’ all, I doubt! There’s a gap like the mouth o’ hell just below there where we galloped in. The Let’s going all round the marsh, but the Lugg’s not gone yet!” He looked at Lup, rigid and silent, and went on slowly. “I feel somehow we’d know right off if the Lugg went.” Young Whinnerah nodded. He had not looked at Francey since he came in, nor attempted to question Brack. The time for wonder was past. “I must get out, some way,” he said. “I must learn if they are safe. Happen it’d be possible back o’ t’ house, over the land. Which of you’s game to come along?” They were all game--no question about that--and the women made no protest. Storm and tide were no new things to the folk of the marsh, and in this case friends of tried worth were in peril out in the night. Brack dragged himself up, and joined the rest as they furnished themselves with sticks and splashed across the yard to the drier land. He had done his share already, but that did not keep him. His car was sunk in a swirling torrent, but he never thought of it. Through the web of conceit which had sealed his heart to his kin, there had sounded at last the call of the clan. They formed a human chain and groped, with the big sticks scouting before them, in imminent danger all the time, and more than once utterly bewildered and all but lost. Wading often to their waists, trapped by deep holes, by wire fencing wrenched into sunk snares for their stumbling feet, blinded, dripping, breathless and stunned, buffeted by the wild gusts and clouds of spray beating in through the mighty breaks in the bank, they yet held on until there seemed to stretch before them a limitless expanse, and knew that the floodgates at Ninekyrkes must have smashed. For long enough they tried to get round, but in vain, and at last, in the same perilous fashion, they struggled back to the house. All over the marsh men were doing the same, risking their lives for news of each other’s safety, or in attempts to rescue stock, counting it all as just so much in a bad day’s work. In the big bedroom upstairs, the women had lighted a fire and set food, and called the weary band to it. Michael, the old man, heartened himself to hearten the rest. “The Lugg’s standing,” he said more than once. “I tell you we’d know right off if the Lugg went! It’ll hold its own as it’s always done. It’ll win through this lot an’ all.” And Brack held his peace. * * * * * “For Loyalty is still the same Whether it win or lose the game, True as the dial to the sun Although it be not shined upon.”