The Thames Valley Catastrophe | Page 3

gentle green slopes of
Hedsor and Cliveden. I could never pass that typical English view
without a glance of admiration; this morning, I pulled up my bicycle
for a moment, and cast my eye down stream with more than my usual
enjoyment of the smooth blue water and the tall white poplars whose
leaves showed their gleaming silver in the breeze beside it. I might
have gazed at it too long--and one minute more would have sufficed for
my destruction--had not a cry from the tow-path a little farther up
attracted my attention.
It was a wild, despairing cry, like that of a man being overpowered and
murdered.
I am confident this was my first intimation of danger. Two minutes
before, it is true, I had heard a faint sound like distant rumbling of
thunder; but nothing else. I am one of those who strenuously maintain
that the catastrophe was not heralded by shocks of earthquake.2
I turned my eye up stream. For half a second I was utterly bewildered.
Strange to say, I did not perceive at first the great flood of fire that was
advancing towards me. I saw only the man who had shouted--a
miserable, cowering, terror-stricken wretch, one of the abject creatures
who used to earn a dubious livelihood in those days (when the river
was a boulevard of pleasure) by towing boats up stream. But now, he
was rushing wildly forward, with panic in his face; I could see he
looked as if close pursued by some wild beast behind him. "A mad

dog!" I said to myself at the outset; "or else a bull in the meadow!"
I glanced back to see what his pursuer might be; and then, in one
second, the whole horror and terror of the catastrophe burst upon me.
Its whole horror and terror, I say, but not yet its magnitude. I was aware
at first just of a moving red wall, like dull, red-hot molten metal. Trying
to recall at so safe a distance in time and space the feelings of the
moment and the way in which they surged and succeeded one another, I
think I can recollect that my earliest idea was no more than this: "He
must run, or the moving wall will overtake him!" Next instant, a hot
wave seemed to strike my face. It was just like the blast of heat that
strikes one in a glasshouse when you stand in front of the boiling and
seething glass in the furnace. At about the same point in time, I was
aware, I believe, that the dull red wall was really a wall of fire. But it
was cooled by contact with the air and the water. Even as I looked,
however, a second wave from behind seemed to rush on and break: it
overlaid and outran the first one. This second wave was white, not
red--at white heat, I realized. Then, with a burst of recognition, I knew
what it all meant. What Ward had spoken of last night--a fissure
eruption!
I looked back. Ward was coming towards me on the bridge, mounted
on his Columbia. Too speechless to utter one word, I pointed up stream
with my hand He nodded and shouted back, in a singularly calm voice:
"Yes; just what I told you. A fissure-eruption!"
They were the last words I heard him speak. Not that he appreciated the
danger less than I did, though his manner was cool; but he was wearing
no clips to his trousers, and at that critical moment he caught his leg in
his pedals. The accident disconcerted him; he dismounted hurriedly,
and then, panic-stricken as I judged, abandoned his machine. He tried
to run. The error was fatal. He tripped and fell. What became of him
afterward I will mention later.
But for the moment I saw only the poor wretch on the tow-path. He
was not a hundred yards off, just beyond the little bridge which led
over the opening to a private boat-house. But as he rushed forwards and
shrieked, the wall of fire overtook him. I do not think it quite caught

him. It is hard at such moments to judge what really happens; but I
believe I saw him shrivel like a moth in a flame a few seconds before
the advancing wall of fire swept over the boat-house. I have seen an
insect shrivel just so when flung into the midst of white-hot coals. He
seemed to go off in gas, leaving a shower or powdery ash to represent
his bones behind him. But of this I do not pretend to be positive; I will
allow that my own agitation was far too profound to permit of my
observing anything with accuracy.
How high was the wall at that time? This has been