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Dai Davies was sitting on top of the bar, watching his candle-girls rill out their last white tears, their maiden-milk, and topple their black wicks in their waxpools and droen and Lucy were gone and at this moment Gwyneth It was a double loss, for he needed their siht: the sun had set, and a clear but intense darkness was settling on the great gray watery h the diamond-paned s and door He&039;d hoped for a twinkle of lights from far Wales, but it hadn&039;t coo and was now so high he&039;d tucked his feet up Two brooar box, and seven sticks of firewood floated around, circling slowly He&039;d fleetingly thought of leaving at one point, and had tucked two pints in his side pockets against that eventuality, but he&039;d recalled that this was the highest bit of ground for a space around, and the candles had been warm and dear, and now he&039;d taken on htly perambulation for a bit

In any case it was the best sport of all to play King Canute atop a crocodile&039;s coffin Two inches more and the tide would stand and turn, he suddenly decided - and loudly ordered the water to do so

After all, one o&039;clock, or a bit after that, had been low tide, and so now h or near - if thisobeyed any of the old rules at all

He deeply sniffed at the open fifth in his hand - an American import, Kentucky Tavern by Erskine Caldwell - and watched Eliza shiver and fade and unexpectedly flaht

The lead-webbed s pressed in at a new surge of the tide Water gushed through the hole he&039;d kicked in the door Then he distinctly felt the bar under him shift a little - in fact, the whole building hingly: "For once it&039;s the pub that staggers, not Dai!" Then a great seriousness gripped hi and he cried with a wild pride: "Die, Davies! Die! Deserve your naly Die with a whiskey bottle in your hand, wafting your love to coain to Cardiff But" And then, for once wholly conquering his carping jealousy of Dylan Thoood night Rage, rage, against the dying of the light"

And at that very ht seeray Severn plain, there ca at the door, a heavy, slow, authoritative triple knock

Supernatural fear took hold of hiainst the whiskey, to drop down into the icy water and slosh through it thigh-deep and pull the door open There, just outside, pressed against the doorfraht of Mary and Jane and Leonie a long, dark, empty skiff

He sloshed his way back to the bar, the water steadying if iathered three fresh bottles in the crook of his left ar broo He tossed in the brooms, put in the bottles carefully, and then laid his upper body across the boat and grasped the opposite gunwale He almost blacked out then, but the water was cold on his crotch and he juled and pulled until he was in, face down on the ood Then he did black out His last kick caught the doorfra out and away

Richard Hillary trudged through the dying twilight ten yards to the side of a road noisy with cars The cars wereslowly, almost bumper to bumper, in three lanes abreast so that there was no room at all for traffic in the opposite direction No use to try for a lift, the cars were all packed with people - and if an empty place should turn up, it would immediately be taken by someone with more obvious claim to it or si al, rather faster than the majority of the pedestrians

Cars and folk on foot and he were all so northwest It had been a relief when the glaring sun had gone down, though every sign of ti momentarily speeded up the walkers and pushed the vehicles closer together

Never had Richard experienced such a revolutionary disaster, neither in his life nor in the flow of events around hi raids remembered from childhood - and all in six hours First the bus turning north out of the little street flood at Brentfordthe driver ers&039; protests except for a reiterated "Traffic Authority orders!"wireless reports of the larger flood in the heart of London, of the A saucer seen in New Zealand and Australia and called a planetthe wireless choked by static just as soan to recite a list of "civilian directives"people frantically wondering how to get in touch with fa both wounded and relieved that in his own case there was no one whoat West Middlesex Hospital, with the information that it had been commandeered to move patientsmore unsuccessful protestsadvice to move northwest by foot, "away fro briefly around the grounds of a new brick universitycars and white-faced refugees in greater and greater nu paper thriftilya fresh-inked sheet that read only: "WESTERN MIDDLESEX MOVE TO CHILTERN HILLS HIGH WATER EXPECTED TWO HOURS AFTER MIDNIGHT" Finally, joining a northwest trek that grew and grew - becoed he had been walking about two hours He was tired; his chin was tucked against his chest, his gaze fixed on hisin a low stretch just overpassed: turbid pools and grass plastered flat He had no idea of exactly where he was, except that he ell past Uxbridge and had crossed the Colne and the Grand Junction Canal, and that he could see hills far ahead

The twilight was strangely bright He almost walked into a clu back over his head He turned around to see what they were looking at and there, riding low in the eastern sky, he saw at last the agent of their disaster, looking at least as big as the ht look in drea down itspurple arer, D for disaster, D for destruction The thing ht be a planet, but it didn&039;t look beautiful - it looked like a garish insignia of the sort youof how safe the Earth had swung in all its loneliness for er ever comes, and of how precarious its isolation had really always been People get eccentric and selfish and habit-ridden when they&039;re left long alone, it occurred to hirily, when there finally is a murderous intrusion fro but a cheap screa afterthought: D for Dai He ree of forty feet at full

Dai Davies caed to get his elbows on the wood - rocking it as he did, and realizing it was the midthwart of the skiff - and to lift his face up off the wood and prop it on his hands Over the gunwales he saw only the dark plain of the swollen Bristol Channel with a few tiny distant lights that hts of boats, except it was hard to tell the of the diainst his chest He twisted off the cap and got down a mouthful of Scotch It didn&039;t war hiurgled out on the strakes Hisyet All that would coht that a lot of Walesthe Severn Experiht recalled scraps of Dylan Thomas&039; poetry which he mumbled disjointedly: "Only the drowned deep bells of sheep and churchesdark shoals every holy fieldUnder the stars of Wales, Cry, Multitudes of arks! (Skiff-ark Noah solo) Across the water liddled landsAhoy, old sea-legged foxDai Mouse! (Die!)the flood flowers now"

At regular intervals the skiff lurched Dai laboriously worked his ht be the dying undulations of Atlantic coainst the turned tide But as it that was speckling their tiny crests with burgundy and beer, with blood and gold?

Then the lurching swung the skiff around and he saw, risen in the east, the purple bulk of the Wanderer with a golden dragon curling on it Floating before the dragon was a triangular golden shield Swinging into view around this foreign globe was a curved, fat white granular spindle, like the glea up of the crazy Yankee news reports, and perhaps the thought-chain of moth, Luna moth, Luna told him that the spindle was the saht fifteen hours ago

Speechless and still, he soaked in the sight for as long as he could bear Then as the cold set hi away fros becaer, he found the nearly eled hi on the mid-thwart, found the two brooan to row

Sober, or only vigorously drunk after resting, he just h the tide had begun to ebb fast and he was nearer Severn Channel than the Soh with his broo seaward and west, so he could watch the heavenly prodigy And as he watched, he ot yourself a new man, I seea fierce emperor come to burn the world ateryou&039;re raped and broken, Monaa new shape out of your tragedyis it a white ring you would be?I&039;m your poet still, Luna&039;s poet, lonelyI&039; to row to Aht just to watch youwhile the Lutine bell tolls unceasingly at Lloyds for the ships and cities drowned until the tide stills that, too, and there is only a faint clangor going around the world deep under the seas"

The rollers grew higher, foaolden and wine A quarter mile beyond the bow, had he ever turned to look ahead, a nasty cross-chop was developing, the net of jewel-flecked waves spurting high at the knots

Bagong Bung, tiny beside his big Australian engineer, watched the rust-holed, weed-festooned stack rise by visible stages fro water fifty yards beyond the bow of the "Machan Lumpur" as the Wanderer set over Vietnam and the sun rose over Hainan

A lively current strained at the lacy stack and foaed at the "Machan Lumpur," too, so that the tiny stea just to hold her position, as the Gulf of Tonkin went on e into the South China Sea

A low sonorous sound came from the south, like a very distant jet boom The two men on the "Machan Luht news of the explosion of the volcanic islet of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait, two and a half hours ago

And now the colorfully-encrusted bridge of the wreck caan to slacken As the full length of the sunken ship beca knew to a certainty it was the "Sumatra Queen"

Then the little Malay dropped to his knees and boest to the Wanderer, and coincidentally to Mecca, and said, softly: "Teri thanked the yellow and purple er, he rose briskly to his feet and with a playful, lordly wave of his hand cried out gaily: "We will tie up to our treasure ship, oh Cobber-Huood friend, is the "Machan Luer of the Mud!"

Sally Harris leaned in the dusk on the balustrade of the penthouse patio and sighed

To the west the last flaushed fro on the salt water flooding Jersey City To the east the Wanderer was rising in its dinosaur face

"What&039;s thebrandy and chopping away at various cheeses "Don&039;t tell ain"

"Nope, it looks pretty "

"Is that what&039;s bothering you?"

"I don&039;t know, Jake," she called back listlessly "I been watching churches going under I never knew there were so many Saint Pat&039;s and Epiphany and Christ and Saint Bartholomew&039;s and Grace and Actors&039; Tein, and Calvary, where they started AA, and All Souls and Saint Mark&039;s in the Bouwerie and B&039;nai Jeshurun and The Little Church around the Corner and - "

"Hey, you can&039;t see all those from there," Jake protested "You can&039;t see half of theet your mind out of the duot King Kong on hi How&039;s that for a crazy gag? Maybe I can work it into the play"

"I bet you can!" she said, the excite back into her voice "Hey, have you finished ot to relax after the fire"

"You&039;ve relaxed half a fifth Get your mind to work"