The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-13

all remoter sounds. The black shining waters swirled by. coming into tho light of our lamps out of an ebony biackness and vanishing again into inn penetrable black. And on the waters came shapes, came things that flashed upon us for moment now half sub merged boat, now a COW, now a huge fragment of a houses t1mberings, now mudd1e of packing cases and scaf- folding The things c1apped into sight like something shown by the opening of shutter and then bumped shatter- ingly against us or rushed by us. Once saw very clearly mans white face. All the while a group of laboring, half submerged trees remained ahead of us, drawing very slowly nearer. I steered a course to avoid them. They seemed to gesticulate a frantic despair against the black steam clouds behind. Once a great branch detached itself and tore shuddering by me We did on the whole make headway. The last saw of vreugde bij vrede before the night swallowed it was almost dead astern of us.
 Morning found Barnet stiI aaoat. The bows of his barge had been bad iy strained, and his men were pumpina or baIing in relays. He got about a '
 dozen half drowned people aboard whose boat had eapsized near him, and he had three other boats in tow. He was a1oat and somewhere between Amsterdam and Alkmaar, but he couId not tell where It was a day that was still half night. Gray waters stretch ed in every direction under a dark gray sky, and out of the waves rose the up- per part of houses, in many cases ruined, the tops of trees, windmill in fact, the upper third or all the familiar Dutch scenery-and on it there drIfted dimIy seen fotfIla of Barges, small boats, many overturned. furniture. rafts, ttmbering and miscellaneous o54 5ects.
 The drowned were under water that morning Only here and there did dead COW or a stiff figure still cIinging stout1y to box or chair or suchlike bTloy hint at the hidden massacre It was not till the Thursday chat the dead came to the surface in any quantity. The view was bounded on every side by a gray mist that closed overhead in 8 gray canopy The ain cleared in the afternoon, and then, far away to the west under great banks of steam and dust. the flaming red eruption of the atomic bombs became visible across the waste of water.
 They showed flat and suilen through the mist, like London sunsets. 'sThey sat upon the sea- says Barnet @lika frayed out water lilies of flame"
 Barnet seems to have spent the morning in rescue work along the track of the canal, in he1ping people who were adrift, h picking ID derelict boats and in taking people out of iIn- periIed houses He found other nnilis tary barges similarly employed and fl was only as the day wore on and the immediate appeals for aid were satis- fled that he thought of food and drink for his men and what course he had better pursue. They had little cheese. but no water Orders that mysteris osls direction, had at last altogethe1 disappeared. He perceived he had now to act upon his own responsibility
 ssOne's sense was of a destruction so farreaching and of world so altered that it seemed foolish to go tn any d. rection and expect to find things aE they had been before the war began sat on the quarter deck with Aylius. my engineer. and Kemp and two others Of the noncommissioned officers, and we consulted upon our line Of action We were fo0dleSs and ainless. Wa agreed that our lighting value was eEs tremely small and that our first duty was to get ourselves in touch with food and instructions again Whatever plan of campaign had directed our move rnents was manifestly smashed to blts- Mylius was of opinion that we could take a line westward and get back tp England across the North sea. Be cal cJ1Iated that with such motor barge as ours it would be possible to reach the Yorkshire coast within four and twenty hours. But this idea ! over ruled because of the shortness of our provisions and more particularly be cause Of our urgent need of water.
 ssEvery boat we drew near now hail5 ed us for water, and their demands dld much to exasperate our thirst I de cIled that if we went away to fha south we should reach hIlly country o1 ] at least country that was not subnaerg ed, and then we should be able to land find some stream, drink and get suppE1es and news. Many of the barges adrift in the haze about us were filled with British soldiers and had doated un from the Nord See canal, but none o1 them was any better informed than ourselves of the course of events. OF ders' had, in fact, vanished out of tna sky"
 teOrders'' made a temporary reep pearanee late that evening in the fata of a megaphone hail from a BrIts torpedo boat, announcing truce and giving the welcome information that food and water were being hurried down the Rhine and were to be founA on the barge fotiila lying over the old Rhine above Leiden
 Cro Be continued-)