David, standing in front, straightening his tall form to its utmost height, his head bare, his black hair floating in the wind, his eye sometimes fixed on the almost submerged farmhouse, and sometimes on objects which might prove an obstacle in their course,--cool, prudent and attentive, showed a calm intrepidity. For some moments the progress of the boat was unimpeded, but suddenly the preceptor called: "Hold oars!" Frederick executed this order, and after a few seconds the boat stopped. David, leaning over the craft in front, sounded with his boat-hook the spot where he had seen light bubbles rising to the surface, for fear the boat might break against some obstacle under the water. In fact, David discovered that the boat was almost immediately over a mass of willow branches, in which the little craft might have become entangled if it had been going at its highest speed. Leaning then his boat-hook against a log he met in the water, David turned his boat out of the way of this perilous obstruction. "Now, my child," said he, "row in front of you, turning a little to the left, so as to reach those three tall poplars you see down there, half submerged in the water. Once arrived there, we will enter the middle of the overflow's current, which we feel even here, although we are still in dead water." At the end of a few minutes David called again: "Hold oars!" And with these words David hooked his boat-hook among the branches of one of the poplars toward which Frederick was rowing; these trees, thirty feet in height, were three-quarters submerged. Sustained by the boat-hook, the little craft remained immovable. "What! we are going to stop, M. David?" cried Frederick. "You must rest a moment, my child, and drink a few swallows of this wine." Then David, with remarkable coolness, uncorked a bottle of wine, which he offered to his pupil. "Stop to rest!" cried Frederick, "while those poor people are waiting for us!" "My child, you are panting for breath, your forehead is covered with perspiration, your strength is being exhausted; I perceived it by the shaking of your oars. We will reach these people in time; the water is not rising any longer, I have seen by sure signs. We are going to need all our energy and all our strength. Now, five minutes' rest taken at the right time may ensure those persons' safety as well as our own. Come, drink a few swallows of wine." Frederick followed this advice, and realised the benefit of it, for already, without having dared confess it to David, he felt in the joints of his arms that numbness and rigidity which always succeed too much fatigue and muscular tension. During this period of enforced delay the preceptor and his pupil looked upon the scene around them with silent horror. From the point where they were they commanded an immense extent of water, no longer dead, such as they had just passed over, but rapid, foaming, impetuous as the course of a torrent.