of our window and
beginning to inundate the power house before we fairly comprehended our
peril.

"We have done the work," said Mr. Edison, smiling grimly. "Now we had
better get out of this before the flood bursts upon us."

The warning came none too soon. It was necessary to act upon it at once
if we would save our lives. Even before we could reach the entrance to
the long passage through which we had come into the great engine room,
the water had risen half-way to our knees. Colonel Smith, catching Aina
under his arm, led the way. The roar of the maddened torrent behind
deafened us.

As we ran through the passage the water followed us, with a wicked
swishing sound, and within five seconds it was above our knees; in ten
seconds up to our waists.

The great danger now was that we should be swept from our feet, and once
down in that torrent there would have been little chance of our ever
getting our heads above its level. Supporting ourselves as best we could
with the aid of the walls, we partly ran, and were partly swept along,
until when we reached the outer end of the passage and emerged into the
open air, the flood was swirling about our shoulders.

Here there was an opportunity to clutch some of the ornamental work
surrounding the doorway, and thus we managed to stay our mad progress,
and gradually to work out of the current until we found that the water,
having now an abundance of room to spread, had fallen again as low as
our knees.

But suddenly we heard the thunder of the banks tumbling behind us, and
to the right and left, and the savage growl of the released water as it
sprang through the breaches.

To my dying day, I think, I shall not forget the sight of a great fluid
column that burst through the dike at the edge of the grove of trees,
and, by the tremendous impetus of its rush, seemed turned into a solid
thing.

Like an enormous ram, it plowed the soil to a depth of twenty feet,
uprooting acres of the immense trees like stubble turned over by the
plowshare.

The uproar was so awful that for an instant the coolest of us lost our
self-control. Yet we knew that we had not the fraction of a second to
waste. The breaking of the banks had caused the water again rapidly to
rise about us. In a little while it was once more as high as our waists.

In the excitement and confusion, deafened by the noise and blinded by
the flying foam, we were in danger of becoming separated in the flood.
We no longer k