But the poor chickens! What an awful noise they made, as they tried to keep on the dry side of the floating house!
The ducks, of course, didn't mind it, but they added their queer quacking to the noise.
"We can never catch any of the chickens," said Harry. "We ought to have arope and pull the house in.""A rope," called Tom to the crowd on the shore."Throw us a rope!"Someone ran off and got one, and it was quickly thrown out to the boys in the boat.
"Push up closer," Tom told Harry and Bert, who had the oars now. Tom made a big loop on the rope and threw it toward the house. But it only landed over a chicken, and caused the frightened fowl to fly high up in the air and rest in a tree on the bank.
"Good!" cried the people on the edge. "One is safe, anyhow!"Tom threw the rope again. This time it caught on a corner of the henhouse, and as he pulled the knot tight they had the floating house secure.
"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the people.
By this time Mr. Mason and Uncle Daniel had reached the spot in their boat.
"Don't pull too hard!" called the men to the boys. "You'll upset your boat.""Throw the line to us," added Uncle Daniel,This the boys did, and as it was a long stretch of rope the men were able to get all the way in to shore with it before pulling at the house.
"Now we'll have a tug of war," said Mr. Mason.
"Wait for us!" cried the boys in the boat "We want to have a pull at that."All this time the chickens were cackling and screeching, as the house in the water lunged from one side to the other. It was a large new coop and built of strong material that made it very heavy.
"Now," said Uncle Daniel, as the boys reached the shore and secured their boat, "all take a good hold."Every inch of the rope that crossed the water's edge was soon covered with somebody's hand.
"All pull now!" called Mr. Mason, and with a jerk in came the floating house, chickens, ducks and all, and down went everybody that had pulled. The force of the jerk, of course, threw them all to the ground, but that was only fun and gave the boys a good chance to laugh.
Just as soon as the chickens reached the shore they scampered for home -some flying, some running, but all making a noise.
"We may as well finish the job," said Mr. Mason."Tom, go hitch Sable up tothe cart and we'll bring the henhouse back where it belongs." By running across the fields that were on the highest part of the road Tomwas able to get to his barn without a boat, and soon he returnedwith thecart and Sable.
It took all hands to get the henhouse on the cart, but this was finally done, and away went Sable up the road with the queer load after him in the dump cart.
"You had better put it up on the hill this time," Peter told them. "The water isn't gone down yet." So at last the chicken coop was settled, and not a hen was missing.
There were many sights to be seen about Meadow Brook that afternoon, and the boys enjoyed the flood, now that there was no longerany danger to life.
Bert caught a big salmon and a black-spotted lizard that had been flooded out from some dark place in the mountains, Harry found a pretty toy canoe that some smal1 boy had probably been playing with in the stream before the water rose, and Jack was kept busy towing in all kinds of stuff that had broken loose from barns along the pond.
Freddie had boots on, and was happy sailing his "ark" up and down the road. He insisted on Snoop taking a ride, but cats do not fancy water and the black kitten quickly hid himself up in the hay loft, out of Freddie's reach.
Little by little the water fell, until by the next afternoon there was no longer a river running through the roads. But there were plenty of wet places and enough of streams washing down the rain the gutters to give Freddie a fine canal to sail boats in.
Nan and Flossie had boats too which Bert and Harry made for them. In fact, all the girls along Meadow Brook road found something that would sail while the flood days lasted.
As it was still July the hot sun came down and dried things up pretty quickly, but many haymows were completely spoiled, as were summer vegetables that were too near the pond and came in for their share of the washout.
This loss, however, was nothing compared with what had been expected by the farmers, and all were satisfied that a kind Providence had saved the valley houses from complete destruction.
