The shock of a cold flood around Angelique’s ears sent life as vivid as fire through her brain.  The exhaustion and stupor of the night were gone.  She felt her body swallowed.  It went down to the floor where the girls had walked when they chanted, “Hempseed, I sow thee.”  It rose, and all the rapturous advantage which there was in continuing to inhabit it took mighty possession of her.  She was so healthily, so happily lodged.  It was a sin to say she was longing for the mystery hereafter, when all the beautiful mysteries here were unknown to her.  Then Colonel Menard was holding her up, and she was dragged to sight and breathing once more, and to a solid support under her melting life.  She lay on the floor, seeing the open sky above her, conscious that streams of water poured from her clothes and her hair, ran down her face, and dripped from her ears.  A slow terror which had underlain all these physical perceptions now burst from her thoughts like flame.  Her great-grand-aunt, the infant of the house, was all this time lying at the bottom of the old college.  It was really not a minute, but minutes are long to the drowning.  Angelique caught her breath, saying, “Tante-gra’mere!” She heard a plunge, and knew that Colonel Menard had stood on the platform only long enough to cast aside his coat and shoes before he dived.

The slaves, supporting themselves on their palms, stretched forward, open-mouthed.  There was the rippling surface, carrying the shadow of the walls.  Nothing came up.  A cow could be heard lowing on the bluffs to her lost calf.  The morning twitter of birds became an aggressive and sickening sound.

“Where is he?” demanded Angelique, creeping also to her trembling knees.  “Where is monsieur the colonel?”

Both men gave her the silent, frightened testimony of their rolling eyes, but Wachique lay along the floor with hidden face.  Not a bubble broke the yellow sheet smothering and keeping him down.

As the driving of steel it went through Angelique that the aching and passion and ferocity which rose in her were love.  She loved that man under the water; she so loved him that she must go down after him; for what was life, with him there?  She must have loved him when she was a child, and he used to take off his hat to her, saying, “Good-day, mademoiselle.”  She must have felt a childish jealousy of the woman called Madame Menard, who had once owned him,—­had owned the very coloring of his face, the laugh in his eye, the mastery of his presence among men.  She loved Colonel Menard—­and he was gone.

“Turn over the boat!” screamed Angelique.  “He is caught in the cellars of this old house,—­the floors are broken.  We must find him.  He will never come up.”

The men, ready to do anything which was suggested to their slow minds, made haste to creep along the weakened flooring, which shook as they moved, and to push the boat from its lodgment.  The oars were fast in the rowlocks, and stuck against beams or stones, and made hard work of getting the boat righted.