’There was something discontinuous in this impact.  At one moment I was a lonely watcher in a sleeping world; the next saw every one about me afoot, the whole world awake and amazed....

’And then the wind had struck me a buffet, taken my helmet and swept aside the summerhouse of Vreugde bij Vrede, as a scythe sweeps away grass.  I saw the bombs fall, and then watched a great crimson flare leap responsive to each impact, and mountainous masses of red-lit steam and flying fragments clamber up towards the zenith.  Against the glare I saw the country-side for miles standing black and clear, churches, trees, chimneys.  And suddenly I understood.  The Central Europeans had burst the dykes.  Those flares meant the bursting of the dykes, and in a little while the sea-water would be upon us....’

He goes on to tell with a certain prolixity of the steps he took—­and all things considered they were very intelligent steps—­to meet this amazing crisis.  He got his men aboard and hailed the adjacent barges; he got the man who acted as barge engineer at his post and the engines working, he cast loose from his moorings.  Then he bethought himself of food, and contrived to land five men, get in a few dozen cheeses, and ship his men again before the inundation reached them.

He is reasonably proud of this piece of coolness.  His idea was to take the wave head-on and with his engines full speed ahead.  And all the while 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.