floods2

Fireman Felton had managed to get back to the Time Office, splashing through the shallows which were rapidly becoming anything but shallow, and the timekeeper and he made their way in knee-deep water over the level crossing and up the slightly rising private road. En route, Felton rescued his already half-submerged motor-cycle, but Patrolman Stagg's car nearby had to be left behind. Soaked in icy cold water, and the wind now at gale strength, Time-keeper Chamber's last thought that night was or the Works he had had to abandon. He was still on duty, and he remem bered the night supplyof electricity came from the grid, with which the Works were still connected. The headquarters of the official concerned were on the main road, so Chambers 'rattled at his door, until he came out, and I told him what had happened, and he immediately cut off our supply'. Who knows what additional damage to plant and installations was saved by that timely thought.

There was nothing further the two men could do now, but wait at the end of the private road for the people to whom the S.O.S. had been 'phoned and for whom there was no more rest that night, or for many more to come. Waiting there, the men watched the swirling waters, which had been lapping at their heels as they had run across the railway and up the private road, and listened to the deafening noise and roar of the hundreds of oil drums being washed in from the Shell-Mex and B.P. site, crashing and tumbling along like a grotesque school of porpoises at play. At first the oil drums ruled the waves alone, but soon they were in competition with five- hundredweight rolls of paper, as the flood waters swept along debris from other sites further upstream. While the water rose and rose, their thoughts were of the third man, to whom they had been talking on the jetty telephone only such a short while ago. What had happened to him?