Last watch(Continued)

The stones, which hosted yesterday's dipper, were invisible now under a deep, but restless torrent that turned the music into pandemonium. Florence remained at her post, watching her restless neighbour behave with a brutality it had never displayed in all the years of her surveillance. The nearest boats, moored where the river flowed into the quay, strained at their chains and rattled their masts with increasing irritation. Branches joined the flotsam sweeping downriver as the water mounted the side arches of the bridge.

"Florence is up late", observed Jerry as he looked from his hotel across the river.
Phyllis peered over his shoulder, "I expect she's watching the storm"
If the weather had been clear they would have waved, but Florence herself was barely visible - just a silhouette in the light that shone from her kitchen through her unlit living room. They continued watching, and Phyllis frowned as she notice the river rising steadily towards the bridge.
"If it gets much higher we'll be in danger of flooding. D'you thing we should do something about it?"
"I don't think you should worry. It's never come over before".

Darkness closed in, but the river raged louder. It rolled boulders down the hill demonstrating how the dipper's stones had arrived in the town. It lifted massive branches and piles of rubbish and stacked them against the bridge, forming a natural dam. It hurled a small tree at the parapet and burst through with a roar as it summoned its strength to pour destruction on the town. It lashed at the street furniture, burst through riverfront windows and made unaccustomed companions of cars and boats as it swept them together out to sea.

Phyllis and Jerry's hotel was repaired after months of labour and was open in time for the next holiday season. The cottage across the river was damaged beyond repair; the river-view window, and the angular bay of which it formed a part, had been sliced from the front of the house. The town's faithful watcher disappeared with her window and her body was never found.