s 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