THERE IS A TIDE
by Brian W. Aldiss

How SOOTHING to the heart it was to be home. I began that
evening with nothing but peace in me: and the evening itself
jellied down over Africa with a mild mother's touch: so that
even now I must refuse myself the luxury of claiming any pre-
monition of the disaster for which the scene was already set.
My half-brother, K-Jubal (we had the same father), was
in a talkative mood. As we sat at the table on the veranda
of his house, his was the major part of the conversation: and
this was unusual, for I am a poet, and poets are generally
articulate enough.
"... because the new dam is now complete," he was say-
ing, "and I shall take my days more easily. I am going to
write my life story, Rog. G-Williams on the World Weekly
has been pressing me for it for some time; it'll be serialized,
and then turned into audibook form. I should make a lot of
money, eh?"
He smiled as he asked this; in my company he always
enjoyed playing the heavy materialist. Generally I encouraged
him; this time I said: "Jubal, no man in Congo States, no
man in the world possibly, has done more for people than
you. I am the idle singer of an idle day, but youwhy, your
good works lie about you."
I swept my hand out over the still bright land.
Mokulgu is a rising town on the western fringes of Lake
Tanganyika's nothem end. Before Jubal and his engineers
came here, it was a sleepy market town, and its natives lived
in the indolent fashion of their countless forefathers. In ten
years, that ancient pattern was awry; in fifteen, shattered
completely. If you lived in Mokulgu now, you slept in a bed
in a towering nest of flats, you ate food unfouled by flies,
and you moved to the sound of whistles and machinery. You
had at your black fingertips, in fact, the benefits of what
we persist in calling "Western civilization". If you were more
hygienic and healthyso ran the theoryyou were happier.
But I begin to sound sceptical. That is my error. I happen
to have little love for my fellow men; the thought of the
Massacre is always with me, even after all this time. I could
not deny that the trend of things at Mokulgu and elsewhere,
the constant urbanization, was almost unavoidable. But as
a man of sensibility, I regretted that human advance should
always be over the corpse of Nature.
From where we sat over our southern wines, both lake
and town were partially visible, the forests in the immediate
area having been demolished long ago. The town was already
blazing with light, the lake looked already dark, a thing
preparing for night. And to our left, standing out with a
clarity which suggested yet more rain to come, stretched the
rolling jungles of the Congo tributaries.
For at least three hundred miles in that direction, man had
not invaded: there lived the pygmies, flourishing without
despoiling. That area, the Congo Source land, would be the
next to go; Jubal, indeed, was the spearhead of the attack.
But for my generation at least that vast tract of primitive
beauty would stand, and I was selfishly glad of it. I always
gained more pleasure from trees than population increase
statistics.
Jubal caught something of the expression on my face.
"The power we are releasing here will last for ever," he
said. "It's already changingimprovingthe entire economy
of the area. At last, at long last, Africa is realizing her
potentialities."
His voice held almost a tremor, and I thought that this
passion for Progress was the secret of his strength.
"You cling too much to the past, Rog," he added.
"Why all this digging and tunnelling and wrenching up of
riverbeds?" I asked. "Would not atomics haye been a cheaper
and easier answer?"
"No," he said decisively. "This system puts to use idle
water; once in operation, everything is entirely self-servicing.
Besides, uranium is none too plentiful, water is. Venus has
no radioactive materials, I believe?"
This sounded to me like an invitation to change the sub-
ject. I accepted it.
"They've found none yet," I assented. "But I can speak
with no authority. I went purely as a touristand a glorious
trip it was."
"It must be wonderful to be so many million miles nearer
the sun," he said. It was the sort of plain remark I had
often heard him make. On others' lips it might have sounded
platitudinous; in his quiet tones I caught a note of sublimity.
"I shall never get to Venus," he said. "There's too much
work to be done here. You must have seen some marvels
there, Rog!"
"Yes . . . Yet nothing so strange as an elephant."
"And they'll have a breathable atmosphere in a decade,
I hear?"
"So they say. They are certainly doing wonders . . . You
know, Jubal, I shall have to go back then. You see, there's
a feeling, ersomething, a sort of expectancy. No, not quite
that; it's hard to explain" I don't converse well. I ramble
and mumble when I have something real to say. I could
say it to a woman, or I could write it on paper; but
Jubal is a man of action, and when I did say it, I deliber-
ately omitted emotional overtones and lost interest in what
I said. "It's like courting a woman in armour with the visor
closed, on Venus now. You can see it, but you can't touch
or smell or breathe it. Always an airtight dome er a space
suit between you and actuality. But in ten years' time, you'll
be able to run your bare fingers through the sand, feel the
breezes on your cheek... Well, you know what I mean, er
sort of feel her undressed."
He was thinking1 saw it in his eyes"Rog's going to go
all poetic  on me."  He  said:  "And  you  approve  of that-
the change-over of atmospheres?"
"Yes."
"Yet you don't approve of what we're doing here, which
is just the same sort of thing?"
He had a point. "You're upsetting a delicate balance here,"
I said gingerly. "A thousand ecological factors are swept by
the board just so that you can grind these waters through your
turbines. And the same thing's happened at Owen Falls
over on Lake Victoria... But on Venus there's no such
balance. It's just a clean page waiting for man to write what
he will on it. Under that CO blanket, there's been no spark
of life: the mountains are bare of moss, the valleys lie in-
nocent of grass; in the geological strata, no fossils sleep;
no arncebae move in the sea. But what you're doing here. . ."
"People!" he exclaimed. "I've got people to consider. Babies
need to be born, mouths must be fed. A man must live.
Your sort of feelings are all very wellthey make good
poemsbut I consider the people. I love the people. For
them I work. . ."
He waved his hands, overcome by his own grandiose visions.
If the passion for Progress was his strength, the fallacy in-
herent in the idea was his secret weakness. I began to grow
warm.
"You get good conditions for these people, they procreate
forthwith. Next generation, another benefactor will have to
step forward and get good conditions for the children. That's
Progress, eh?" I asked maliciously.
"I see you so rarely, Rog; don't let's quarrel," he said
meekly. "I just do what I can. I'm only an engineer."
That was how he always won an altercation. Before meek-
ness I have no defence. But hostility ran like a sewer below
the level of our conversation.
The sun had finished another day. With the sudden dark-
ness came chill. Jubal pressed a button, and glass slid round
the veranda, enclosing us. Like Venus, I thought; but here
you could still smell that spicy, bosomy scent which is the
breath of dear Africa herself. On Venus, the smells are
imported.
We poured some more wine and talked of family matters.
In a short while his wife, Sloe, joined us. I began to feel
at home. The feeling was only partly psychological; my glands
were now beginning to readjust fully to normal conditions
after their long days in space travel.
J-Casta also appeared. Him I was less pleased to see.
He was the boss type, the strong-arm man: as Jubal's under-
ling, he pandered wretchedly to him and bullied everyone else
on the project. He (and there were many others like him,
unfortunately)  thought of the Massacre as man's greatest
achievement. This evening, in the presence of his superiors,
after a preliminary burst of showing off, he was quiet enough.
When they pressed me to, I talked of Venus. As I spoke,
back rushed that humblingbut intoxicatingsense of awe
to think I had actually lived to stand in full possession of my
many faculties on that startling planet. The same feeling had
often possessed me on Mars. And (as justifiably) on Earth.
The vision chimed, and an amber light biinked drowsily
off and on in Jubal's tank. Even then, no premonition of ca-
tastrophe; since then, I can never see that amber heartbeat
without anxiety.
Jubal answered it, and a man's face swam up in the tank
to greet him. They talked; I could catch no words, but the
sudden tension was apparent. Sloe went over and put her
arm round Jubal's shoulder.
"Something up," J-Casta commented.
"Yes," I said.
"That's Chief M-Shawn on the visionfrom Owenstown,
over on Lake Victoria."
Then Jubal flashed off and came slowly back to where we
were sitting.
"That was M-Shawn," he said. "The level of Lake Victoria
has just dropped three inches." He lit a cheroot with clumsy
fingers, his eyes staring in mystification far beyond the flame.
"Dam okay, boss?" J-Casta asked.
"Perfectly. They're going to phone us if they find any-
thing ..."
"Has this happened before?" I asked, not quite able to
understand their worried looks.
"Of course not," my half-brother said scornfully. "Surely
you must see the implications of it? Something highly un-
precedented has occurred."
"But surely a mere three inches of water. . ."
At that he laughed briefly. Even J-Casta permitted himself a
snort.
"Lake Victoria is an inland sea," Jubal said grimly. "It's
as big as Tasmania. Three inches all over that area means
many thousands of tons of water. Casta, I think we'll get
down to Mokulgu; it won't do any harm to alert the first aid
services, just in case they're needed. Got your tracer?"
"Yes, boss. I'm coming."
Jubal patted Sloe's arm, nodded to me and left without
relaxing his worried look. He and J-Casta shortly appeared
outside. They bundled into a float, soared .dangerously close
to a giant walnut tree and vanished into the night.
Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume
it. She fingered a dial and the windows  opaqued.
"There's an ominous waiting quality out there I don't
like," she said, to explain our sudden privacy.
"Should I be feeling alarmed?" I asked.
She flashed me a smile. "Quite honestly, yes. You don't
live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what was
happening at Lake Victoria. They've just finished raising the
level again; for a long time they've been on about more pres-
sure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance to
build it up. It seems to have been the last straw."
"And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a
breach in the dam somewhere?"
"No. They'd have found that. I'm afraid it means the bed
of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water's pouring into
subterranean reservoirs."
The extreme seriousness of the matter was now obvious
even to me. Lake Victoria is the source of the White Nile; if
it  ceased  to  feed  the  river,  millions  of  people  in  Uganda
and the Sudan would die of drought. And not only people:
birds, beasts, fish, insects, plants.
We both grew restless. We took a turn outside in the cool
night air, and then decided we too would go down to the
town.
All the way there a picture filled my head; the image of
that great dark lake emptying like a wash-basin. Did it drain
in sinister silence, or did it gargle as it went? Men of action
forget to tell you vital details like that.
That night was an anticlimax, apart from the sight of the
full  moon  sailing  over  Mount  Kangosi.  We  joined  Jubal
and his henchman and hung about uneasily until midnight.
As if an unknown god had been propitiated by the sacrifice
of an hour's sleep, we then felt easier and retired to bed.
The news was bad the next morning. By the time
I was dressed Jubal was already back in town; Sloe and I
breakfasted alone together. She told me they had been in-
formed that Victoria had now dropped thirteen and a half
inches; the rate of fall seemed to be increasing.
I flew into Mokulgu and found Jubal without difficulty. He
was just embarking on one of the Dam Authority's survey
floats with J-Casta.
"You'd better come, too, Rog," he shouted. "You'll probably
enjoy the flight more than we shall."
I did enjoy the flight, despite the circumstances. A disturb-
ance on Lake Tanganyika's eastern fringes had been observed
on an earlier survey and we were going to investigate it.
"You're not afraid the bed will collapse here, too, are
you?" I asked.
"It's not that," Jubal said. "The two hundred miles between
us and Victoria is a faulty region, geologically speaking. I'll
show you a map of the strata when we get back. It's more than
likely that all that runaway subterranean water may be head-
ing in our direction; that's what I'm afraid of. The possibility
has been known for a long while."
"And no precautions taken?"
"What could we do but cross our fingers? The possibility
exists that the Moon will spiral to Earth, but we don't all live
in shelters because of it."
"Justifying yourself, Jubal?"
"Possibly," he replied, looking away. Again that stupid an-
tagonism.
We flew through a heavy rain shower, which dappled the
grey surface of the lake. Then we were over the reported dis-
turbance. A dull brown stain, a blot on a bright new garment,
spread over the water, from the steep eastern shore to about
half a mile out.
"Put us down, pilot," Jubal ordered.
We sank, and kissed the lake. Several hundred yards away
rose the base of Mount Kangosi. I looked with admiration up
the slope; great slabs of rock stood out from the verdure;
crouching at the bottom of this colossus was a village, part of
it forced by the steepness of the incline to stand out on piles
into the lake.
"Leave everything to me, boss," J-Casta said, grabbing a
hand asdic from the port locker and climbing out on to the
float. We followed. It seemed likely that the disturbance was
due to a slight subsidence in the side of the lake basin. Such
subsidences, Jubal said, were not uncommon, but in this case
it might provide a link with Lake Victoria. If they could pin-
point the position of the new fault, frogmen would be sent
down to investigate.
"We're going to have company," Jubal remarked to me,
waving a hand over the water.
A dozen or so dugouts lay between us and the shore. Each
bore two er three shining-skinned fishermen. The two canoes
nearest us had swung round and were now being paddled
towards our float.
I watched them with more interest than I gave to the asdic
sweep. Men like these sturdy fishermen had existed here for
countless generations, unchanged:  before white men had
known of them, before Rome's legions had destroyed the vine-
yards of Carthage, beforewho knows if not before the heady
uprush of civilization elsewhere?such men had fished quietly
in this great lake. They seemed not to have advanced at all,
so rapidly does the world move; but perhaps when all other
races have fallen away, burnt out and exhausted, these steady
villagers will come into a kingdom of their own. I would elect
to live in that realm.
A man in the leading canoe stood up, raising his hand in
greeting. I replied, glancing over his shoulder at the curtain of
green behind him. Something caught my eye.
Above some yards of bare rock, a hundred feet up the
slope of the mountain, two magnificent MvulesAfrican
teak treesgrew. A china-blue bird dipped suddenly from
one of the trees and sped far and fast away over the water,
fighting to outpace its reflection. And the tree itself began
to cant slowly from the vertical into a horizontal position.
Jubal had binoculars round his neck. My curiosity aroused,
I reached to borrow them. Even as I did so, I saw a spring of
water start from the base of the Mvules. A rock was dis-
lodged. I saw it hurtle down into the bush below, starting in
turn a trail of earth and stones which fell down almost on to
the thatched roofs of the village. The spring began to spurt
more freely now. It gleamed in the sun: it looked beautiful
but I was alarmed.
"Look!" I pointed.
Both Jubal and the fisherman followed the line of my out-
stretched arm. J-Casta continued to bend over his metal box.
Even as I pointed, the cliff shuddered. The other Mvule went
down. Like an envelope being torn, the rock split horizon-
tally and a tongue of water burst from it. The split widened,
the water became a wall, pouring out and down.
The sound of the splitting came clear and hard to our startled
ears. Then came the roar of the water, bursting down the hill-
side. It washed everything before it. I saw trees, bushes and
boulders hurried down in it. I saw the original fissure lengthen
and lengthen like a cruel smile, cutting through the ground as
fast as fire. Other cracks started, running uphill and across:
every one of them began to spout water.
The fishermen stood up, shouting as their homes were swept
away by the first fury of the flood.
And then the entire lower mountainside began to slip. With
a cumulative roar, mud, water and rock rolled down into the
lake. Where they had been, a solid torrent cascaded out, one
mighty wall of angry water. The escaping 'flow from Lake
Victoria had found its outlet!
Next moment, our calm surface was a furious sea. Jubal
slipped and fell on to one knee. I grabbed him, and almost
went overboard myself. A series of giant waves plunged out-
wards from the shore. "The first one rocked us, the second one
overturned our flimsy craft completely.
I came to the surface coughing and snorting. J-Casta rose at
my side. We were just in time to see the float slip completely
under; it sank in no time, carrying the pilot with it. I had
not even seen his face, poor fellow.
Jubal came up by the fisherman, who had also overturned.
But dugouts do not sink. We owed our lives to those hollowed
tree trunks. They were righted, and Jubal and his henchman
climbed into one, while I climbed into the other. The waves
were still fierce, but had attained a sort of regularity which
allowed us to cope with them.
The breakthrough was now a quarter of a mile long. Water
poured from it with unabated force, a mighty waterfall where
land had been before. We skirted it painfully, making a land-
ing as near to it as we dared.
The rest of that day, under its blinding arch of sky, passed
in various stages of confusion and fear.
It was two and a half hours before we were taken off the
strip of shore. We were not idle in that time, although every
few minutes Jubal paused to curse the fact that he was strand-
ed and powerless. Miraculous as it seems, there were some
survivors from the obliterated village, women mostly; we
helped to get them ashore and built fires for them.
Meanwhile, Dam Authority planes began to circle the
area. We managed to attract the attention of one, which
landed by our party. Jubal's manner changed at once; now
that he had a machine and men who, unlike the villagers, were
in his command, he worked with a silent purpose allowing of
no question.
Over the vision, he ordered the rest of the floats to attend
to the villagers' needs. We sped back to Mokulgu.
On the way, Jubal spoke to Owenstown. They took his
news almost without comment. They reported that Victoria
was still sinking, although the rate had now steadied. A
twenty-four-hour a day airlift was about to go into operation,
dropping solid blocks of marble on to the lake bed. "There,
a fault about three miles square had been located; four frog-
men had been lost, drowned.
"It's like tossing pennies  into the  ocean,"  Jubal said.
I was thinking of the frogmen, sucked irresistibly down the
fault. They would be swept through underground waterways,
battered and pulped, to be spat out eventually into our lake.
Vision from Mokulgu, coming on just before we landed
there, reported a breach in the lake banks, some twenty
miles north of the town. At a word from Jubal, we switched
plans and veered north at once to see just how extensive the
damage was.
The break was at a tiny cluster of huts, dignified by the
name of Ulatuama, growing like a wart on the edge of Lake
Tanganyika. Several men, the crew of a Dam Authority patrol
boat, were working furiously at a widening gap. The damage
had been caused by the very waves which had swamped
us, and I learnt that a small, disused lock had stood here,
relic of an earlier irrigation scheme; so the weakness had been
of man's making. Beyond the lock had been a dried-up chan-
nel some twenty yards wide; this was now a swollen, plung-
ing river.
"Is this serious?" I asked Jubal. "Isn't there a good way
of getting rid of surplus water?"
He gave me a withering look. "Where are we if we lose
control?" he demanded. "If this thing here runs away with us,
the combined waters of Victoria and Tanganyika will flood
down into the Congo."
Even as he spoke, the bank to the south of the escaping
waters crumbled; several yards were swept away, their places
instantly taken by the current.
We flew back to Mokulgu. Jubal visioned the mayor and
got permission to broadcast to the city. I did not hear him
speak; reaction had set in, and I had to go and sit quietly at
home with Sloe fussing daintily round me. Although you
"know" from a child that Earth is a planet, it is only when
you drift towards it from space, seeing it hang round and finite
ahead, that you can realize the fact. And so, although I had
always "known" man was puny, it was the sight of that vast
collapsing slab of mountain which had driven the fact into my
marrow.
To guess the sort of sentiments Jubal broadcast to the city
was easy. He would talk of "rallying round in this our time
of crisis". He would speak of the need for "all hands uniting
against our ancient enemy, Nature". He would come over big
on the tanks; he would be big, his fists clenched, his eyes
ablaze. He was in touch with the people. And they would do
what he said, for Jubal carried conviction. Perhaps I envied
my half-brother.
Labour and supplies began to pour north to mend the
damaged bank. Jubal, meanwhile, thought up a typically
flamboyant scheme. Tilly, one of the lake steamers, was
pressed into service and loaded full of rock and clay by steam
shovel. With Jubal standing on the bridge, it was mance-
vered into the centre of the danger area and scuttled. Half in
and half out of the rushing water, it now former a base from
which a new dam could be built to stem the flood. Watched
by a cheering crowd, Jubal and crew skimmed to safety in a
motor boat.
"We shall conquer if we have to dam the water with our
bodies," he cried. A thousand cheering throats told him how
much they liked this idea.
The pitch of crisis which had then been engendered was
maintained all through the next two days. For most of that
time it rained, and men fought to erect their barrier on
clinging mud. Jubal's popularityand consequently his in-
fluenceunderwent a rapid diminution. The reason for this
was two-fold. He quarrelled with J-Casta, whose suggestion to
throw open the new dam to relieve pressure elsewhere was
refused,  and  he  ran  into stiff  opposition from Mokulgu
Town Council.
This august body, composed of the avariciously successful
and the successfully avaricious, was annoyed about Tilly. Tilly
belonged to the local government, and Jubal had, in effect,
stolen it. The men from the factories who had downed tools
to fight the water were summoned back to work; the Dam
Authority must tend its own affairs.
Jubal merely sneered at this dangerous pique and visioned
LeopoldviUe. In the briefest possible time, be had the army
helping him.
It was at dawn on the morning of the third day that he
visioned me to go down and see him. I said adieu to Sloe
and took a float over to Ulatuama.
Jubal stood alone by the water's edge. The sun was still
swathed in mist, and he looked cold and pinched. Behind
him, dimly outlined figures moved to and fro, like allegorical
figures on a frieze. He surveyed me curiously before speaking.
"The work's nearly done, Rog," he said. He looked as if he
needed sleep, but he added energetically, pointing across the
lake: "Then we tackle the main job of plugging that waterfall."
I looked across the silent lake. The far shore was invisible,
but out of the layers of mist rose Mount Kangosi. Even at
this distance, in the early morning hush, came the faint roar
of the new waterfall. And there was another sound, intermit-
tent but persistent: beyond the mountain, they were bombing
fault lines. That way they hoped to cause a collapse which
would plug Victoria's escape routes. So far, they had had no
success, but the bombing went on, making abattfefield of
what had once been glorious country.
"Sorry I haven't seen anything of you and Sloe," Jubal said.
suppose?"
"You've been busy. Sloe called vou on the vision."
"Oh that. Come on into my hut, Rog."
We walked over to a temporary structure; the grass was
overloaded with dew. In Jubal's hut, J-Casta was dressing,
smoking a cheroot as he dexterously pulled on a shirt. He gave
me a surly greeting, whose antagonism I sensed was directed
through me at Jubal.
As soon as the latter closed the door, he said: "Rog, prom-
ise me something."
"Tell me what."
"If anything happens to me, I want you to marry Sloe. She's
your sort."
Concealing my irritation, I said: "That's hardly a reason-
able request."
"You and she get on well together, don't you?"
"Certainly. But you see my outlook on life is. . . well, for
one thing I like to stay detached. An observer, you know,
observing. I just want to sample the landscapes and the food
and the women of the solar system. I don't want to marry,
just move on at the right time. Sloe's very nice but"
My ghastly inability to express the pressure of inner feeling
was upon me. In women I like flamboyance, wit, and a high
spirit, but I tire quickly of them and then have to seek their
manifestation elsewhere. Besides, Sloe frankly had had her
sensibilities blunted from living with Jubal. He now chose to
misunderstand my hesitations.
"Are you standing there trying to tell me that you've al-
ready tired of whatever you've been doing behind my back?"
he demanded. "Youyou" He called me a dirty name;
I forgot to make allowances for the strain he had been
undergoing, and lost my temper.
"Oh, calm down," I snapped. "You're overtired and over-
wrought, and probably over-sexed too. I've not touched your
little woman1 like to drink from pure streams. So you can
put the entire notion out of your head."
Trouble came to us as suddenly as it had done to the
lake, although nobody afterwards could have said there had
been no warning.
He rushed at me with his shoulders hunched and fists swing-
ing. It was an embarrassing moment. I am against violence,
and believe in the power of words, but I did the only possible
thing: spring to one side and catch him a heavy blow over
the heart.
Poor Jubal! No doubt, in his frustration against the forces of
nature, he was using me only as a safety valve. But with
shame, I will now confess what savage pleasure that blow
gave me; I was filled with lust to strike him again. I can per-
ceive dimly how atrocities such as the Massacre came about.
As Jubal turned on me, I flung myself at him, breaking down
his defences, piling blows into his chest. It was, I suppose, a
form of self-expression.
J-Casta stopped it, breaking in between us and thrusting
his ugly face into mine, his hand like a clamp round my wrist.
"Pack it up," he said. "I'd gladly do the job myself, but
this is not the time."
As he spoke, the hut trembled. We were hard pressed to
keep our feet, staggering together like drunken men.
"Now what" Jubal said, and flung ppen the door. I
caught a rectangular view of trees and mist, men running, and
the emergency dam sailing away on a smooth black slide of
escaping water. The banks were collapsing!
Glimpsing the scene, Jubal instantly attempted to slam the
door shut again. The wave struck us, battering the cabin
off its flimsy foundations. Jubal cried sharply as he was tossed
against a wall. Next moment we were floundering in a hell of
flying furniture and water.
Swept along on a giant sluice, the cabin turned over and
over like a dice. That I was preserved was the merest acci-
dent. Through a maze of foam, I saw a heavy bunk crashing
towards me, and managed to flounder aside in time. It missed
me by a finger's width and broke through the boarding wall. I
was swept helplessly after it.
When I surfaced, the cabin was out of sight and I was be-
ing borne along at a great rate; and the ugly scene in the
cabin was something fruitless that happened a million years
ago. Nearly wrenching my arm off in the process, I seized a
tree which was still standing, and clung on. Once I had re-
covered my breath, I was able to climb out of the water entire-
ly, wedge myself between two branches and regain my breath.
The scene was one of awesome desolation. I had what in
less calamitous circumstances might have been called "a good
view" of it all.
A lake spread all round me, its surface moving smartly
and with apparent purpose. Its forward line, already far
away, was marked by a high yellow cascade. In its wake
stretched a miscellany of objects, of which only the trees
stood out clearly. Most of the trees were eucalyptus: this area
had probably been reclaimed marsh.
To the north, the old shore-line of the lake still stood. The
ground was higher there and solid rock jutted stolidly into
the flood. To the south, the shore-line was being joyously
chewed away. Mokulgu had about half an hour left before it
was swamped and obliterated. I wondered how the Mokulgu
Town Council were coping with the situation.
Overhead, the sun now was shining clear, bars of pink,
wispy cloud flecked the blue sky. The pink and the blue
were of the exact vulgar tints found in two-colour prints of
the early twentieth century A.D.that is, a hundred years
before the Massacre. I was almost happy to see this lack of
taste in the sky matching the lack of stability elsewhere. I
was almost happy: but I was weeping.
"They visioned me that one of the floats had picked you
upand not Jubal. Is there any hope for him, Rog, or is
that a foolish question?"
"I can't give you a sensible answer. He was a strong swim-
mer, don't forget. They may find him yet."
I spoke to Sloe over the heads of a crowd of people. Mokul-
gu, surely enough, had been washed away. The survivors,
homeless and bereaved, crowded on to high ground. Sloe
had generously thrown open most of her house as a sort
of rest-camp-cum-soup-kitchen. She superintended everything
with a cool authority which suitably concealed her personal
feelings. For that I was grateful:  Sloe's feelings must be
no affair of mine.
She smiled at me before turning to address someone behind
her. Already the light was taking on the intensity of early
evening. Above the babble of voices round me came the
deep song of speeding water. It would continue for months
yet: Africa was ruptured at her very heart, beyond man's
mending.
Instead of flowing northward, fertilizing its old valley, Vic-
toria crashed into our lake, adding its burden to the weight of
water rolling west. While twenty-one million people perished
of drought in Egypt, as many perished of flood and typhoid
in the Congo.
I seemed to know what was coming as I stood in the crowd-
ed room, knowing Jubal dead, knowing the nation of Africa to
be bleeding to death. We were dying of our own wounds.
The ten years to follow would be as terrible as the ten years
of the Massacre, when every member of the white race had
been slain.
Now we Negroes, in our turn, stood at the bar of history.