... watchedfor the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In athousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fledthither from the floods and the falling houses and ... floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, itschildren. For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scoopingout ... been in the memory of man, and the stormsdrove the waters in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning wholecities. And so great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun...