Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/207

Rh In a wild turmoil of running, shouting men, backing wagons and rearing horses, he managed to extricate the clumsy monster that had been put under his care, brought it laboring and snorting out on higher ground and fell to work again. The barrier they had set up with so much toil was tumbling and collapsing in great gaps where the hungry current flung against it, but it held just long enough for them to raise another wall, longer, higher, firmer than the other and built with the frantic haste of desperate men.

The hours went by, it was long after midnight, with the sky growing pale for the morning. Once or twice Oliver had seen Anthony Crawford working among the rest, carrying sacks of sand, jostled and cursed by the men about him, but in spite of their abuse, toiling steadily onward. When the dike collapsed and the men ran for their lives, one wagon lurched off the road; its driver was flung from the seat and caught under the wheel, while the horses, having jammed the tongue against the bank, reared and plunged helplessly. Oliver saw Anthony Crawford run out, with the swift, muddy water flowing knee-deep around him, watched him extricate the man, drag him to the seat, and back the frantic horses away from the bank to bring them struggling through the water to safety. There was no time for words of commendation. Both men at once went back to their task of carrying sacks as the slow building of another wall began.