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.It was pressure that was the source ofanxiety.From the north end of Waterloo Bridge where we were stationed this time, onewas able to look along the top of the wall, with the water running high on oneside of it, and, to the other, the roadway of the Embankment, with the streetlamps still burning there, but not a vehicle or a human figure to be seen uponit.Away to the west the hands on the Parliament clock tower crawled round theilluminated dial.The water rose as the big hand moved with insufferable slothup to eleven o clock.Over the quiet crowds the note of Big Ben striking thehour came clearly down wind.The sound caused people to murmur to one another; then they fell silent again.The hand began to crawl down, ten-past, a quarter, twenty, twenty-five, then,Page 80 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmljust before the half-hour there was a rumble somewhere upstream; a composite,crowd-voice sound came to us on the wind.The people about us craned theirnecks, and murmured again.A moment later we saw the water coming.It pouredalong the Embankment towards us in a wide, muddy flood, sweeping rubbish andbushes with it, rushing pastbeneath us.A groan went up from the crowd.Suddenly there was a loud crackand a rumble of falling masonry behind us as a section of the wall, close bywhere theDiscovery had formerly been moored, collapsed.The water poured through thegap, wrenching away concrete blocks so that the wall crumbled before our eyesand the water poured in a great muddy cascade on to the roadway.Before the next tide came the government had removed the velvet glove.Following the announcement of a State Of Emergency came a Standstill Order,and the proclamation of an orderly scheme of evacuation.There s no need forme to write here of the delays and muddles in which the scheme broke down.Itis difficult to believe that it can have been taken seriously even by thosewho launched it.An unconvincing air seemed to hang over the whole affair fromthe beginning.The task was impossible.Something, perhaps, might have beendone had only a single city been concerned, but with more than two-thirds ofthe country s population anxious to move on to higher ground, only the crudestmethods had any success in checking the pressure, and then not for long.But, though it was bad here, it was still worse elsewhere.The Dutch hadwithdrawn in time from the danger areas, realizing that they had lost theircenturies-long battle with the sea.The Rhine and the Maas had backed up inflood over square miles of country.A whole population was trekking southward into Belgium or southeast intoGermany.The North German Plain itself was little better off.The Ems and the Weser hadwidened out, too, driving people southward from their towns and farms in anincreasing horde.In Denmark every kind of boat was in use ferrying familiestoSweden and the higher ground there.For a little time we managed to follow in a general way what was happening,but when the inhabitants of the Ardennes and Westphalia turned in dismay tosave themselves by fighting off the hungry, desperate invaders from the north,hard news disappeared in a morass of rumor and chaos.All over the world thesame kind of thing must have been going on, differing only in its scale.Athome, the flooding of the Eastern Counties had already driven people back onthe Midlands.Loss of life was small, for there had been plenty of warning.Real trouble started on the ChilternHills where those already in possession organized themselves to prevent beingswamped by the two converging streams of refugees from the east and fromLondon.Over the untouched parts of Central London a mood of Sundaylike indecisionhung for several days.Many people, not knowing what else to do, still triedto carry-on as nearly as usual.The police continued to patrol.Though theunderground was flooded plenty of people continued to turn up at their placesof work, and some kinds of work did continue, seemingly through habit ormomentum, then gradually lawlessness seeped inwards from the suburbs and thesense of breakdown became inescapable.Failure of the emergency electric supply one afternoon, followed by a night ofdarkness gave a kind of coup de grace to order.The looting of shops,particularly foodshops, began, and spread on a scale which defeated both thepolice and military.We decided it was time to leave the flat and take up our residence in the newE.B.C.fortress.From what the short waves were telling us there was little to distinguish thePage 81 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlcourse of events in the low-lying cities anywhere - except that in some thelaw died morequickly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.It was pressure that was the source ofanxiety.From the north end of Waterloo Bridge where we were stationed this time, onewas able to look along the top of the wall, with the water running high on oneside of it, and, to the other, the roadway of the Embankment, with the streetlamps still burning there, but not a vehicle or a human figure to be seen uponit.Away to the west the hands on the Parliament clock tower crawled round theilluminated dial.The water rose as the big hand moved with insufferable slothup to eleven o clock.Over the quiet crowds the note of Big Ben striking thehour came clearly down wind.The sound caused people to murmur to one another; then they fell silent again.The hand began to crawl down, ten-past, a quarter, twenty, twenty-five, then,Page 80 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmljust before the half-hour there was a rumble somewhere upstream; a composite,crowd-voice sound came to us on the wind.The people about us craned theirnecks, and murmured again.A moment later we saw the water coming.It pouredalong the Embankment towards us in a wide, muddy flood, sweeping rubbish andbushes with it, rushing pastbeneath us.A groan went up from the crowd.Suddenly there was a loud crackand a rumble of falling masonry behind us as a section of the wall, close bywhere theDiscovery had formerly been moored, collapsed.The water poured through thegap, wrenching away concrete blocks so that the wall crumbled before our eyesand the water poured in a great muddy cascade on to the roadway.Before the next tide came the government had removed the velvet glove.Following the announcement of a State Of Emergency came a Standstill Order,and the proclamation of an orderly scheme of evacuation.There s no need forme to write here of the delays and muddles in which the scheme broke down.Itis difficult to believe that it can have been taken seriously even by thosewho launched it.An unconvincing air seemed to hang over the whole affair fromthe beginning.The task was impossible.Something, perhaps, might have beendone had only a single city been concerned, but with more than two-thirds ofthe country s population anxious to move on to higher ground, only the crudestmethods had any success in checking the pressure, and then not for long.But, though it was bad here, it was still worse elsewhere.The Dutch hadwithdrawn in time from the danger areas, realizing that they had lost theircenturies-long battle with the sea.The Rhine and the Maas had backed up inflood over square miles of country.A whole population was trekking southward into Belgium or southeast intoGermany.The North German Plain itself was little better off.The Ems and the Weser hadwidened out, too, driving people southward from their towns and farms in anincreasing horde.In Denmark every kind of boat was in use ferrying familiestoSweden and the higher ground there.For a little time we managed to follow in a general way what was happening,but when the inhabitants of the Ardennes and Westphalia turned in dismay tosave themselves by fighting off the hungry, desperate invaders from the north,hard news disappeared in a morass of rumor and chaos.All over the world thesame kind of thing must have been going on, differing only in its scale.Athome, the flooding of the Eastern Counties had already driven people back onthe Midlands.Loss of life was small, for there had been plenty of warning.Real trouble started on the ChilternHills where those already in possession organized themselves to prevent beingswamped by the two converging streams of refugees from the east and fromLondon.Over the untouched parts of Central London a mood of Sundaylike indecisionhung for several days.Many people, not knowing what else to do, still triedto carry-on as nearly as usual.The police continued to patrol.Though theunderground was flooded plenty of people continued to turn up at their placesof work, and some kinds of work did continue, seemingly through habit ormomentum, then gradually lawlessness seeped inwards from the suburbs and thesense of breakdown became inescapable.Failure of the emergency electric supply one afternoon, followed by a night ofdarkness gave a kind of coup de grace to order.The looting of shops,particularly foodshops, began, and spread on a scale which defeated both thepolice and military.We decided it was time to leave the flat and take up our residence in the newE.B.C.fortress.From what the short waves were telling us there was little to distinguish thePage 81 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlcourse of events in the low-lying cities anywhere - except that in some thelaw died morequickly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]