he was thanking heaven he was not in the jam of traffic in the
main canal. He rather, I think, overestimated the probable rush of
waters; he dreaded being swept away, he explains, and smashed against
houses and trees.

He does not give any estimate of the time it took between the bursting
of the dykes and the arrival of the waters, but it was probably an
interval of about twenty minutes or half an hour. He was working now
in darkness--save for the light of his lantern--and in a great wind. He
hung out head and stern lights....

Whirling torrents of steam were pouring up from the advancing waters,
which had rushed, it must be remembered, through nearly incandescent
gaps in the sea defences, and this vast uprush of vapour soon veiled the
flaring centres of explosion altogether.

'The waters came at last, an advancing cascade. It was like a broad
roller sweeping across the country. They came with a deep, roaring
sound. I had expected a Niagara, but the total fall of the front could
not have been much more than twelve feet. Our barge hesitated for a
moment, took a dose over her bows, and then lifted. I signalled for full
speed ahead and brought her head upstream, and held on like grim death
to keep her there.

'There was a wind about as strong as the flood, and I found we were
pounding against every conceivable buoyant object that had been between
us and the sea. The only light in the world now came from our lamps,
the steam became impenetrable at a score of yards from the boat, and
the roar of the wind and water cut us off from all remoter sounds. The
black, shining waters swirled by, coming into the light of our lamps out
of an ebony blackness and vanishing again into impenetrable black.
And on the waters came shapes, came things that flashed upon us for a
moment, now a half-submerged boat, now a cow, now a huge fragment of a
house's timberings, now a muddle of packing-cases and scaffolding.
The things clapped into sight like something shown by the opening of a
shutter, and then bumped shatteringly against us or rushed by us. Once I
saw very clearly a man's white face....

'All the while a group of labouring, half-submerged trees remained ahead
of us, drawing very slowly nearer. I steered a course to avoid them.
They seemed to gesticulate a frantic despair against the black steam
clouds behind. Once a great branch detached itself and tore shuddering
by me. We did, on the whole, make headway. The last I saw of Vreugd