That was a terrible night.  The general excitement was intense, and there were few people, I imagine, in all Pest who slept quietly in their beds.  Every hour news came of the spread of the inundation.  The waters were pouring in behind Pest from the upper bend of the river.  Matters looked very serious indeed.  All communication with the suburb of New Pest was cut off by the inroads of the flood.  The night, with its pall of darkness, seemed interminable; but at length the morning came, and—­God help us!—­what a sea of trouble the light revealed!  Whole districts under water; churches and palaces knee-deep in the flood; and above Pest—­a widespread lake creeping on over the vast plain.

The only news of the morning was a despairing telegram from Eresi that the barrier of ice there was immovable.  This meant, as I have said before, that there was no release for the pent-up waters in the ordinary course.  The accumulated flood must swamp the capital, and that soon.  The river had ceased to flow past; it was no longer the “blue Danube” running merrily its five miles an hour, but a dead sea, an inexorable volume of water, slowly, silently creeping up to engulf us.  Pest is a city which literally has its foundations made on the sand; a portion of it is built on the old bed of the Danube.  Assuming a certain point as zero, the official measurements were made from this, and notices were published that if a maximum of twenty-five feet were attained by the rising waters, then Pest must inevitably be flooded.

As evening came on, with the cloudy forecast of more rain, the gravest anxiety was visible on the face of every soul of that vast multitude.  This anxiety was intensified when it was announced that the latest measurement was twenty-four feet nine inches; and what was simply appalling, that the register marked six inches rise in less than an hour.  It was clear to every one that the critical moment had arrived.  There was little to hope, and much to fear.  Darkness fell upon as dismal a scene as imagination could well conceive.  If the water once overlapped the embankment at the fruit-market, it must very soon pour in in vast volume; for the streets there are considerably lower than the level of the Corso—­as it was, several large blocks of ice had floated or slid over on the quay.  At this spot a serious catastrophe was apprehended.

I think it must have been ten o’clock (my friends and I had just taken a hasty supper) when the fortress on the Blocksberg again belched forth its terrible sound of warning.  This time there were six shots fired; this was the signal of “Pest in danger.”  A profound impression of alarm fell on the assembled multitude.  Some went about wringing their hands; others left the Corso hastily, going home, I imagine, to tell their women to prepare for the worst.  I was unconscious at the time of taking note of things passing round me, and it seems strange, considering the acute tension of my nerves, that I saw, and can now recall with persistent accuracy, a lot of trivial and utterly unimportant incidents that happened in the crowd.  I remember the size and colour of a dog that manifested his share in the common excitement by running perpetually between everybody’s legs, and I could draw the face of a frightened child whom I saw clinging to its mother’s skirts.