Chapter XVII

The great Catastrophe--Extinction of the Quadrucos--The Death of Zolca and of Azolta--I am left alone.

It was the month of March when the great catastrophe occurred. The wet season had not been a particularly heavy one, and no sign was given us of the impending calamity.

One morning the sun rose red in a haze which reminded me much of the morning Hoogstraaten and I watched the _Selwaert_ dashed helplessly on to the bar of Wreck Bay. The wind from the north-west began to moan dismally about noon-tide. Then the rain-clouds commenced to scud across the sky, and as darkness fell the rain commenced. This was nothing, snug and secure in our well-built houses we heeded not the growing storm, and slept soundly through all its increasing fury. In the morning we found that a great gale was blowing, the river was running strong, and the sea was raging on the outside coast.

All day the turmoil increased, and towards dusk the bay itself began to feel the influence of the wind, and the rollers from the ocean swept in, and broke in surf upon the beach, smashing our boats, and hurling them on the sand.[B]

That night no one slept much, the river was overflowing its banks, and flooding our plantations, and, sheltered though we were in the valley, the tempestuous blasts that swept up from seaward, seemed to make the very earth tremble. Never before did man witness such a war of the elements.

Foot by foot, the river began to rise with great rapidity. The rain never ceased, but fell in continuous sheets. Now and again, a vivid flash of lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a deafening peal of thunder, illuminated the valley, and afforded a view of the terrifying scene. Still the river encroached on the level ground, and began to invade the houses.

Suddenly, a sound broke on my ear, coming from seaward, a roar, such as I had never heard before--a roar that seemed to unite in its voice, sea, storm, and flood! Some instinct told me what it was, and calling to the others, I shouted to them to make for the ridge. Azolta had one child, I had the other and had also to help poor, crippled Zolca. His wife followed us, and in the darkness, we plunged into the muddy flood, and made for the ridge.

I called to the rest of the Quadrucos, but they were watching the upper part of the river, and did not heed the great roar rushing up from the sea. Closer it came, and the water suddenly leapt up about us, and we had to swim amidst eddies and whirlpools. We were torn apart, and the child escaped from my grasp.

When I regained the surface I was swept against someone who was battling helplessly against the furious tide, and felt that it was Zolca. A flash of lightning showed me the ridge, close to us, and with my assistance Zolca reached it, and sank exhausted on the muddy slope, although the water still surged and swept around us.

Suddenly, I heard a cry! Yes! even through that din and confusion I heard it, although now it seems scarcely believable.

“Deedreek! Deedreek! Save me!”

I left Zolca, and splashed through the water in the direction I had heard the cry. Another kindly flash and glare, and cannonade of thunder, showed me Azolta clinging to the stem of a tree. I plunged in, and brought her to the land, and then literally felt my way back to where I had left Zolca, and found him. He managed to get up and scramble to higher ground, and in a short time, we three, the sole survivors of the overwhelming calamity that had befallen us, met together.

As yet, in the darkness, we did not know the worst, but we knew, at least, that the worst had befallen ourselves. Our children and Zolca’s wife must have perished, and of the Quadruco people I dared not think. A gleam of lightning showed me an overhanging rock which I knew, and under its shelter I managed to get my two companions saved somewhat from the pitiless rain and wind.

Zolca and Azolta sank down exhausted, and I could only sit with my back against the rock and think. I knew what had happened. The long-continued gale had backed the tide up in the gorge I have before mentioned as terminating the end of the valley. This blocked the outflow of the flood-waters of the river, and they, of course, commenced to overflow the valley. Then, hurried on by the fierce blast from the north-west, an immense tidal wave had swept into the bay, rushed up the gorge, beating back the flood-waters, hurling them on to the doomed valley, and burying everything under fathoms of salt water and mud-laden flood.

The fitful gleams of vivid lightning showed me the surface of a storm-swept sea where once was our valley.

In abject misery the weary night passed over, and when the lagging dawn at last asserted itself, I could see nothing but an estuary of tossing, yellow water, still pelted by the terrible rainfall.

Zolca was still alive, and when the light was strong he looked imploringly at me. I raised him in my arms, and he saw the water on the slopes of the valley, covering everything belonging to him and his people. He gave one cry when he realized all the disaster, and, sinking back in my arms, his great heart broken, died without a shudder.

Roused by the death-wail of her twin-brother, Azolta rose from her sleep of exhaustion. One glance at Zolca’s face and glazed eyes showed her the truth. She threw herself on his body, and begged and prayed him to return to her. I tried to loosen her arms from the corpse, but could not do so without using force, and I had to stay there and listen to her moans without being able to help her.

The gale had blown itself out by mid-day, and the rain ceased for a while.

Azolta feebly called to me, and when I stooped over her I saw that I should soon be truly alone. She put her arms around my neck, and as I pressed my lips to hers, her soul went out to join Zolca’s in the great Silent Country.

How long I remained stupefied with grief I know not. I was roused by the noise of rushing water, and saw that the flood was now falling rapidly. I looked languidly on; I felt no interest in it. I only wanted to die, and be with my people again. I was weak and exhausted, without enough energy to take my own life; so I sat on in stupid semi-consciousness through the gloomy evening and the gloomier night, until at last the morning broke, bright, sunny, and beautiful--a morning that mocked the desolation it revealed.

Strange to say, Zolca had still the old cutlass in his belt, and taking this I went a little way up the ridge, and commenced the weary task of digging two graves. I need not recount my labour. I dug them side by side, east and west, and when I had placed my dear ones in their last home, I covered them in, and heaped stones above them, forming two mounds. Some of the rocks I carried from a distance, as there were none sufficiently large in the neighbourhood to secure my dead from being disturbed by the Papoos.

When I had finished my grievous labour I went to look at the valley. The river had returned to the confinement of its banks, but the whole of the town had as completely disappeared as if it had never existed. The mud houses, soaked through by being under water so long, had melted away with the backward rush of the flood, and the mighty torrent had carried everything out to sea, save what it had left buried under two feet of mud. Mud covered everything in the valley, and I did not descend into it.

I was faint from hunger, and remembered that at the cannon mounted on the elevation commanding the bay, and at the one on the headland, provisions had been safely stored in case of a surprise. There I turned my steps, and found that the one on the elevation had escaped the fury of the flood, but the great wave had swept over the headland and destroyed our little battery. It mattered not--there was nothing now to defend.

I found an ample supply of provisions of one sort or another--smoked fish, and cocoa-nuts, and other things,--and some of these I conveyed to the overhanging rock where my wife and brother died.

I determined to rest here for a while, until I had recovered from the shock. I used to visit the graves daily, and occupy myself with adding stones to the mounds, and making them square and level.

The idea of suicide had deserted me, and a kind of apathy had set in. Perhaps Hoogstraaten might revisit the coast, and take me away.

I never went into the valley, even when the sun had hardened the mud. I got the little food I wanted from the store at the cannon, and my companions were the two graves, where I used to sit and talk to the dead for many hours during the day.

One day, when sitting thus, it suddenly occurred to me that I was the only European in this great mysterious land of the south, of which even such a bold and experienced navigator as Hoogstraaten knew not the limits. With the thought a great horror of loneliness came upon me, and I shrieked aloud, calling on God to kill me at once and end my sufferings. Then I knelt by Azolta’s grave, and whispered to her to come out and keep me company in this awful solitude; and then--I knew no more!