We never quitted the Corso.  Though this was the third night we had not taken off our clothes, it was impossible to think of rest now.  I felt no fatigue, and I hardly know how the last hour or two passed, but I heard distinctly above the murmur of voices the town clocks strike twelve.  Just afterwards, a man running at full speed broke through the crowd, shouting as he went, “The water is falling! the water is falling!” He spoke in German, so I understood the words directly.  There was great excitement to ascertain if the report was correct.  Thank God! he spoke words of truth.  The gauge actually marked a decrease of no less than two inches in the height of the river, and this decrease had taken place in the space of half an hour.  The river had attained the highest point when the danger-signal was fired.  It had never risen beyond, though the level had been stationary for some time.

Every one was surprised at the rapid fall of the Danube; it was difficult to account for.  It soon came to be remarked that the vast volume of water was visibly moved onward.  If the river was flowing on its way, that meant the salvation of the city—­the fact was most important.  I myself saw a dark mass—­a piece of wreckage, probably, or the carcass of an animal—­pass with some rapidity across a track of light reflected on the water.  It was difficult to make out anything clearly in the darkness, but I felt sure the object, whatever it was, was borne onward by the stream.

It was a generally-expressed opinion that something must have happened farther down the river to relieve the pent-up waters.  Very shortly official news arrived, and spread like wildfire, that the Danube had made a way for itself right across the island of Csepel into the Soroksar arm of the river.

Csepel is an island some thirty miles long, situated a short distance below Pest.  The engineering works for the regulation of the Danube had, as I said before, closed this Soroksar branch, and the river, in reasserting its right of way to the sea, caused a terrible calamity to the villages on the Csepel Island, but thereby Hungary’s capital was saved.

[Footnote 22:  The Danube at Buda-Pest.  Report addressed to Count Andrassy by J.J.  Revy, C.E. 1876.]

CHAPTER XXXII.

Results of the Danube inundations—­State of things at Baja—­Terrible condition of New Pest—­Injuries sustained by the island garden of St. Marguerite—­Charity organisation.

Though Buda-Pest had escaped the worst of the threatened calamity, the state of the low-lying suburbs of the town on both sides of the river was very serious, and, as it turned out, weeks elapsed before the waters entirely subsided.  The extent of the Danube inundations in 1876 was far greater than the flood of 1838; the latter was localised to Buda-Pest, where, from the suddenness of the catastrophe, the sacrifice of life was far greater than at present.  But on this