were so thick they kept putting out groups of stars. And I
realised that after all there was to be fighting in the air.
'There was something extraordinarily strange in this swift,
noiseless convergence of nearly invisible combatants above the
sleeping hosts. Every one about me was still unconscious; there
was no sign as yet of any agitation among the shipping on the
main canal, whose whole course, dotted with unsuspicious lights
and fringed with fires, must have been clearly perceptible from
above. Then a long way off towards Alkmaar I heard bugles, and
after that shots, and then a wild clamour of bells. I determined
to let my men sleep on for as long as they could…
'The battle was joined with the swiftness of dreaming. I do not
think it can have been five minutes from the moment when I first
became aware of the Central European air fleet to the contact of
the two forces. I saw it quite plainly in silhouette against the
luminous blue of the northern sky. The allied aeroplanes-they
were mostly French-came pouring down like a fierce shower upon
the middle of the Central European fleet. They looked exactly
like a coarser sort of rain. There was a crackling sound-the
first sound I heard-it reminded one of the Aurora Borealis, and
I supposed it was an interchange of rifle shots. There were
flashes like summer lightning; and then all the sky became a
whirling confusion of battle that was still largely noiseless.
Some of the Central European aeroplanes were certainly charged
and overset; others seemed to collapse and fall and then flare
out with so bright a light that it took the edge off one's vision
and made the rest of the battle disappear as though it had been
snatched back out of sight.
'And then, while I still peered and tried to shade these flames
from my eyes with my hand, and while the men about me were
beginning to stir, the atomic bombs were thrown at the dykes.
They made a mighty thunder in the air, and fell like Lucifer in
the picture, leaving a flaring trail in the sky. The night,
which had been pellucid and detailed and eventful, seemed to
vanish, to be replaced abruptly by a black background to these
tremendous pillars of fire…
'Hard upon the sound of them came a roaring wind, and the sky was
filled with flickering lightnings and rushing clouds…
'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.
'There was a wind about as strong as the flood, and I found we
were pounding against every conceivable buoyant object that had
been between us and the sea. The only light in the world now
came from our lamps, the steam became impenetrable at a score of
yards from the boat, and the roar of the wind and water cut us
off from all remoter sounds. The black, shining waters swirled
by, coming into the light of our lamps out of an ebony blackness
and vanishing again into impenetrable black. And on the waters
came shapes, came things that flashed upon us for a moment, now a
half-submerged boat, now a cow, now a huge fragment of a house's
timberings, now a muddle of packing-cases and scaffolding. The
things clapped into sight like something shown by the opening of