“...  It was Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today....  With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall....  Suddenly the wall bulged inward....  There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—­and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell.  Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits....  My ‘prisoner’ moved calmly over to the stately woman, who was holding up the boy, and patted her gently on the head.  ‘It will be all right, darling,’ he said....  Then he kissed all his children and impulsively dashed in the direction of the cataract.

“...  Struggling hard against the flood he worked his way nearer and nearer toward the broken curbing and finally DOVE through the waterspout and clung grimly to the wall....  For a moment his body seemed to tremble....  Then with a supreme effort he pulled his body into the opening and for a moment checked the flood....  It seemed like a gallant sacrifice.... at the same time.... the girl, Maria, waded back toward the opening that was NOW completely SEALED BY THE STICKY CLAY and began to tear frantically at the bank....

“Little by little she seemed to make headway....  But it appeared like an eternity,—­and I felt certain that the man in the wall using his body as a plug must presently give up the ghost and be hurled back into our cell....  I then noticed the water around us DROP quickly, and, turning in the direction of Maria I saw her body being caught up by the current and sucked painfully forward into the opening her delicate hands had made....  It was too horrible to endure!...  Now, while there is no blood of martyrs in my veins, and while I had PROMISED the sombre figure in Berlin TO DO A CERTAIN THING which a martyr impulse might prevent if I tried to be a hero in this instance, I simply could not look at that girl’s struggles without going to her rescue no matter what it cost....”

32.  The following then appears: 

“I have no recollection of what happened after I grasped Maria by the feet....  All I remember is that I felt myself being dragged along after her through a blinding sheet of muddy, gritty substance, head foremost like a drowning man....  I imagined myself in mid-ocean clinging to some broken shaft after my vessel had been torpedoed, and I clung to those slender ankles as the only hope of life!...  When I did recover there was Maria bending over me and vigorously see-sawing my arms back and forth in an effort to resuscitate me....  If ever there were an excuse for the chivalry of the Middle Ages it must have crept out of those dark moments when some puissant knight opened his tired eyelids upon a vision such as I then beheld!...  But there was no time for Don Quixoting in that damp and muddy tunnel....  We noticed that the waters neither rose nor fell....  So we plowed our way back to the other members of our party as speedily as we could....  On arriving at the wall again we found my ‘prisoner’ lying propped up against a large slab of concrete and breathing heavily while he held the Empress’ hand and essayed a feeble smile....”