g Aina under
his arm, led the way. The roar of the maddened torrent behind deafened us.

As we ran through the passage, the water followed us, with a wicked
swishing sound, and within five seconds it was above our knees; in ten
seconds up to our waists.

The great danger now was that we should be swept from our feet, and once
down in that torrent there would have been little chance of our ever
getting our heads above its level. Supporting ourselves as best we could
with the aid of the walls, we partly ran, and were partly swept along,
until, when we reached the outer end of the passage and emerged into
the open air, the flood was swirling about our shoulders.

Escaping the Water.

Here there was an opportunity to clutch some of the ornamental work
surrounding the doorway, and thus we managed to stay our mad progress,
and gradually to work out of the current until we found that the water,
having now an abundance of room to spread, had fallen again as low as
our knees.

But suddenly we heard the thunder of the banks tumbling behind us, and
to the right and left, and the savage growl of the released water as it
sprang through the breaches.

To my dying day, I think, I shall not forget the sight of a great fluid
column that burst through the dyke at the edge of the grove of trees, and,
by the tremendous impetus of its rush, seemed turned into a solid thing.

Like an enormous ram, it plowed the soil to a depth of twenty feet,
uprooting acres of the immense trees like stubble turned over by the
plowshare.

The uproar was so awful that for an instant the coolest of us lost our
self-control. Yet we knew that we had not the fraction of a second to
waste. The breaking of the banks had caused the water again rapidly to
rise about us. In a little while it was once more as high as our waists.

In the excitement and confusion, deafened by the noise and blinded by
the flying foam, we were in danger of becoming separated in the flood. We
no longer knew certainly in what direction was the tree by whose aid we
had ascended from the electrical ship. We pushed first one way and then
another, staggering through the rushing waters in search of it. Finally
we succeeded in locating it, and with all our strength hurried toward it.

Then there came a noise as if the globe of Mars had been split asunder,
and another great head of water hurled itself down upon the soil before
us, and, without taking time to spread, bored a vast cavity