The cows in the barn began to bleat. Jan, the hired hand, woke up first. He jumped down from the hayrack on which he slept with Jurek and found himself in ankle-deep water.

"Jurek, wake up! There's a flood!"

From the stable came the frightened whinnies of the horses. The water had reached the animals' quarters first, because the farmhouse stood on a low rise.

Jurek groped in the darkness. Water was everywhere. "Where is it coming from?" he asked.

"The Wisla's overflowed. Go get the horses."

"The Wisla? It's far away."

"Don't talk now. Run! I'll get the cows."

"Pan Cherka! There's a flood! There's a flood!"

A kerosene lamp shone yellow in the window. The door opened. Wojciech Cherka peered out and yelled, "Wife! There's a flood! Wake Christina!"

"The pigs!" shouted Pani Cherka.

Jan joined them, and they all splashed together to the pigsty. Everyone grabbed a piglet or two and brought it to the farmhouse. Oinking angrily, the mother sow trotted after them and ran into the house on their heels. Pan Cherka slammed the door. Water trickled through the cracks between the planks.

"Everyone up to the attic!" he ordered.

First they carried the piglets. Then they tried pushing the sow up the stairs. She balked and wouldn't move.

"Leave her alone," Pan Cherka said. "Bring up the furniture. She'll come by herself when the water gets high."

"What about the horses and cows?" Jurek asked Jan.

"When they have to, they'll swim. If they can find some high ground and keep from drowning, they'll come back. And don't ask so many questions, because Pan Cherka is going to smack you."

They began carrying things to the attic.

A gray, foggy morning found the sow floating in the downstairs room, half-propped on the stairs. The water had reached the windows. As soon as there was enough light to see, Jan and Pan Cherka pulled the sow up the stairs while Pani Cherka, Christina, and Jurek held her squealing piglets in the air to entice her. She oinked back at them and let herself be hauled to the safety of the attic.

In the afternoon, a rescue team of Polish soldiers arrived in rubber boats. Jurek was excited to see soldiers in Polish uniforms. For the first time he really believed the war was over. The soldiers helped the villagers down from the roofs. In the end, a boat reached their attic.

"We're staying here," Pan Cherka told the soldiers through the attic window. "Just take the boy. He's not ours and I don't want to be responsible for him."

He picked Jurek up and passed him through the window to a soldier.

The soldier squeezed Jurek into the crowded boat between babies and piglets. They cast off from the house. Jurek turned to say goodbye to the Cherkas. Christina stuck her head through the window and waved.

They motored over the vast flood, past inundated villages and treetops. No one spoke. Everyone had his own worries and tried not to move to keep the boat from tipping and filling with water. They headed for a section of the Wisla where the levees had held and moored in a little harbor. A soldier tied the boat, and they climbed carefully out of it onto a wet wooden dock. The soldiers took them to a church.

"Where are your parents?" a soldier asked Jurek.