Flood narrative

“ There is a smell of burning in the air, in spite of the rush of deluging rain slanting down like waterspouts on to the earth. Chief, councillors, captive, populace, can hardly see each other as they raise their heads, which they have bent, appalled beneath the crashing thunder-note of heaven. The blinding flood pours down upon them, lashing up the ground into a very torrent of liquid mud, as again that frightful peal shakes the earth, and the gleam of a fiery sea is in their eyes. ”

“ It seems horrible—it is horrible—to think of that yellow flood pouring into pleasant rooms where a few hours before the family sat in peace and fancied security—roaring over the threshold, swirling higher and higher against the walls, setting the cherished household treasures astray, driving the furniture hither and thither, drowning out cheerful rooms in darkness and death. ”

“ Proudly the Flood Comes In Proudly the flood comes in, shouting, foaming, advancing, Long it holds at the high, with bosom broad outswelling, All throbs, dilates—the farms, woods, streets of cities—workmen at work, Mainsails, topsails, jibs, appear in the offing—steamers’ pennants of smoke—and under the forenoon sun, Freighted with human lives, gaily the outward bound, gaily the inward bound, Flaunting from many a spar the flag I love. ”

“ Man and beast must alike seek shelter from the fury of such a tempest, whether its force is felt on the open savanna or amid a forest of trees groaning under the strain of the gigantic wind and the weight of the mighty flood descending from the sky.
In an hour the clouds have scattered, the hail and the rain have ceased. The gusts of wind grow fainter and fainter. The gentle patter of the drops as they fall from leaf to leaf, the rapid streams, and the shattered boughs are but the few footprints that mark the track of the storm. ”

“ The roaring and wailing of the turbid flood now seemed to be repeating in cruel mockery the despairing cries of all the drowning people who were ever the prey of the water-fiends that draw downward in whirlpools to depths where twilight passes into darkness, and take the form of the long waving weeds that look so innocent, but whose grasp is deadly, or guide the current that utters never a sound as it seizes its victim and bears him into an unfathomed gulf under the pitiless rock. ”

“ The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one’s mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. No man could breast the colossal and headlong stream that seemed to break and swirl against the dim stillness in which we were precariously sheltered as if on an island. ”

“ For a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night—a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. ”

“ The planters and all their available forces, it may be, have been busily fighting the rising floods, but have been finally vanquished momentarily by wind and wave. Hoping to hold the levee, few, perhaps, have removed their families, goods, or chattels, or livestock. Then when the break comes, the raging flood rushes in over the fields and woods, demolishing out-houses, shaking cottages, drowning stock, hurling masses of drift against dwellings that might otherwise stand—seeming as though a living genius of destruction. ”

“ If the scene upon the levee is exciting when efforts are made to avoid breaks, still more so is it when a small break is being closed. The scurrying to and fro; the hoarse shouting of orders; the wild cries for aid from threatened points; men plunging up to their necks in the rushing flood, driving stakes, dragging sacks of earth, heaving in boulders and rubble stone; others bringing timbers and planks from hundreds of yards away ”

“ The wind and flood waters, travelling in opposite directions, conflicted with great violence. The roaring, boastful wind, as it lashed the racing, defiant waters into angry waves, and the universe-filling sounds of the seething, surging flood-waters, as they wrestled with and overbore all opposing forces, made storm music, compared with which the artifices of man touch the infinitely puny. Darkness and the blinding rain had driven most of the river watchers indoors. ”

“ It is true that a wall of earth everywhere controls the flood to-day, and that the traveller in his boat does not see, as he would have seen two thousand years ago, the glint of water to the north and south at high tide over tufted grass and drowned banks of mud for miles upon either side of his going. ”

“ We could have saved more, but many were afraid to let go the debris. It was an awful sight. The immense volume of water was roaring along, whirling over huge rocks, dashing against the banks and leaping high in the air, and this seething flood was strewn with timber, trunks of trees, parts of houses, and hundreds of human beings, cattle and almost every animal.
“The fearful peril of the living was not more awful than the horror of hundreds of distorted, bleeding corpses whirling along the avalanche of death. ”

“ Into each other's eyes. The rushing flood
Flings them apart: the youth goes down; the maid
With hands outstretched in vain, and streaming eyes,
Waits for the next high wave to follow him.
An aged man succeeds; his bending form
Sinks slowly. Mingling with the sullen stream
Gleam the white locks, and then are seen no more.
Lo! wider grows the stream—a sea-like flood
Saps earth's walled cities; massive palaces
Crumble before it; fortresses and towers
Dissolve in the swift waters; populous realms
Swept by the torrent see their ancient tribes
Engulfed and lost ”

“ But at new moons, especially when they occur in conjunction with a night tide, the flood sets in with such extraordinary violence that on its beginning to advance, even though the sea be calm, its roar is heard by those living near the river’s mouth, sounding like the tumult of battle heard far off, and soon after the sea with its hissing waves bursts over the bare shoals. ”

“ An Extraordinary Storm And Flood Glorious as are these rocks and waters arrayed in storm robes, or chanting rejoicing in every-day dress, they are still more glorious when rare weather conditions meet to make them sing with floods. Only once during all the years I have lived in the Valley have I seen it in full flood bloom. ”

“ As far inland as the eye can reach there is nothing but flood to be seen, the currents opening out and racing away in every direction. At some distance away may be seen a flooded settlement, the water washing the windows of fifteen or twenty abandoned cottages. On a huge mound some five or six feet out of the outflow, is a group of disconsolate horses and mules who have taken refuge from the rising flood, and other hungry-looking brutes wander over the levee. ”

“ But there is something greater in its tragedy than all this—something greater than a great region where splendid cities, towns and humble villages alike are without resource—something greater than a region of broken dams and embankments and of placid rivers gone mad in flood, bridgeless, uncontrollable, widened into lakes, into seas. It is the hundreds of dead who died a hideous death, and the hundreds of thousands of living who are left helpless and homeless, and all but hopeless. ”

“ The flood, and swallowed up the fallow waves,
The struggling sea—the abyss devoured it all. 1590
Yet not the waves alone it swallowed up;
But fourteen men, worst caitiffs of the throng,
Went headlong to destruction with the flood
Under the yawning earth. Then sore afraid
Was many a heart at that calamity;
They feared the slaughter both of men and wives,
A yet more wretched season of distress,
When once those sin-stained cruel murderers,
Those warriors fierce, plunged headlong down the abyss. ”

“ The enthusiast of Nature, who should conquer its precipitous descent, and stand upon the margin of the flood which creeps in death-like stillness through this guarded defile, might see on his right, the foam, the vapour, the tossing of a tempestuous conflict ”

“ You've heard how when one man has drowned another an invisible stream follows the murderer wherever he goes, and he hears it, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, until suddenly one day it comes on him in a huge flood, and he is found, whether in the road, or in his bed, or at the table, or in the field, drowned, and dead? ”

“ Whatever lies in the path of the flood is swept from the face of the earth. The mountains, assailed in a moment with the ferocity of a hundred storms, are ripped and torn like hills of clay. The frosted scale of the granite, the desperate root of the cedar, the poised nest of the eagle, the clutch of the crannied vine, the split and start of the mountainside, are all as one before the June thaw. ”

“ How long would it be before the last hand's breadth of sand remaining would be blown into the trough, and they would be left without the smallest shelter, even supposing that the flood did not rise above the summit?
And should neither of these things happen--should this point remain unsubmerged--the Count shuddered again and again. How could poor human nature endure it all--the driving storm, the torrents of spray which were unceasingly flung up over the hill, the long long night which now began to close in? ”

“ The panes streamed with rain, and the short street he looked down into lay wet and empty, as if swept clear suddenly by a great flood. It was a very trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by the miserable indignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder, and compassion. ”

“ For two hours the storm rolled on, and kept him prisoner; at last the peals waxed fainter—the lightnings less bright—and the storm wore gradually away, now and then only a faint after-clap grumbled in the distance—the rain still fell heavily, and the torrent came down in high flood, carrying trees and rocks with it. ”

“ Our people were not slow to take advantage of Nature’s kindness and build up once more the happy homes destroyed by the flood. But now we were brought face to face with a most wonderful state of things. Here we were shut in, surrounded by a vast network of streams, and yet taught by our terrible experience so to dread water, that not even to escape from death itself could our people be induced to swim across one of these little rivers or pass over it in any sort of boat. ”

“ But when ye have journeyed with much toil and no little peril over the mountain-necks, for by the gorge of the river, as aforesaid, no man may go, and have come out of the mountains once more, then again ye have the flood before you, cleaving a great waste of rocks mingled with sand, where groweth neither tree nor bush nor grass ”

“ Those who resided where the vast mass of eruptive matter broke forth, filled with consternation and dread, had to flee almost naked from their houses to find shelter and safety on higher ground from the desolating, foul, muddy flood, leaving furniture and cattle behind them — a prey to the black and nauseous stream. ”

“ There we stick fast upon the rough fact for a while, and the flood that was so smooth and pleasant rushes past us, foaming and seething and breaking against the boat's side and threatening to tear her to pieces. And if the tide is ebbing at the river's mouth, we may be left high and dry upon the sharp reality for a long time ”

“ The flood rises still higher, in places it breaks the banks of great rivers, houses, temples, city walls and whole villages are swept away by the swift brown water, and thousands of men, women and children perish. Often, too, fires break out in crowded villages and towns. ”

“ Millions of people were affected by the flood, and the newspapers and magazines of the whole world recorded its incidents and features, though none, nor all of them together were able to give an adequate impression of the spectacle of power, the fearsomeness and the grandeur of that majestic flow of water. ”

“ In ever varying tradition, as in those difficult problems in physical science which have to be wrought out from a multitude of differing observations, it is, if I may so express myself, the mean result of the whole that must be accepted as approximately the true one. And the mean result of those dim and distorted recollections of the various tribes of men which refer to the Flood is a result which bears simply to this effect,—that in some early age of the world a great deluge took place, in which well nigh the whole human family was destroyed. ”

“ Before many days passed the sun dried the fields, meadows, and roads, the wind carried away much of the debris, the grass grew more lush, the damages were repaired, and hardly a trace remained of the destructive flood ”

“ Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. ”

“ The fury of the water, at the termination of its fall, combined with the columned strength of the cataract, and the deafening thunder of the flood, are at once inconceivable and indescribable. No imagination, however creative, can correspond with the grandeur of the reality. ”

“ He can remain quietly there till the flood subsides, knowing that it will not rise high enough to drown or even disturb him. When all the other buildings are gone, his stands. And he that thus dwells on high may look out over the wild flood, washing and weltering to the horizon, and feel that he is safe. ”