'Yes, that's just where one goes wrong, it's an old cut that's silted
up. That boom's a fraud; there's no time to go farther, the flood's
making fast. I'll just take bearings of what we can see.'

The false lagoon was the first of several that began to be visible in
the west, swelling and joining hands over the ribs of sand that
divided them. All the time the distant hissing grew nearer and
louder, and a deep, thunderous note began to sound beneath it. We
turned our backs to the wind and hastened back towards the
Dulcibella, the stream in our channel hurrying and rising alongside
of us.

'There's just time to do the other side,' said Davies, when we
reached her, and I was congratulating myself on having regained our
base without finding our communications cut. And away we scurried in
the direction we had come that morning, splashing through pools and
jumping the infant runnels that were stealing out through rifts from
the mother-channel as the tide rose. Our observations completed, back
we travelled, making a wide circuit over higher ground to avoid the
encroaching flood, and wading shin-deep in the final approach to the
yacht.

As I scrambled thankfully aboard, I seemed to hear a far-off voice
saying, in languid depreciation of yachting, that it did not give one
enough exercise. It was mine, centuries ago, in another life. From
east and west two sheets of water had overspread the desert, each
pushing out tongues of surf that met and fused.

I waited on deck and watched the death-throes of the suffocating