Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

OUR EASTERN EXODUS 323
scenery, but now precious life-belts tov the whole
community.
Mr. Thompson and I climbed up on the roof of our
grass house after rushing about in the water, making
more or less futile attempts at salvage work—human
life, of course, ranking first—and you are hereby permitted
to think of this midnight perch of ours in wet garments
as indicating the most miserable night we ever passed.
We stick on to the high-pitched roof with pious pertinacity,
constantly pinching ourselves into wakefulness, for the
tendency to doze is very tempting, but in that event so
also is the other tendency to go clear over the edge of the
thatch into the flood. A crescent moon rose about one
o'clock, lighting up a scene as bleak-looking as it was
cold and miserable : our little Mission settlement wholly
under water, only the tops of banana trees appearing to
mark the paths. And not only our special spot, so flood-
proof as we thought it, but the whole country, as far as
the eye can reach, one vast pale stretch of water reflecting
the moonlight and looking all the more ghastly on that
account when we thought of the hamlets submerged and
tragedies enacted in the darkness. The longest night I
ever spent in my life was on that roof-top watching for
the day, and never was sound so welcome as the first
shrill clarion of a surviving cock on a tree branch. Then
when the Eastern sky grew red, and finally the sun rose
to answer all our questionings begotten in the darkness,
we were speechless, for here was a great lake—Mweru, some
called it who were born there. Look !
glistening red in