The only news of the morning was a despairing telegram from Eresi that the barrier of ice there was immovable. This meant, as I have said before, that there was no release for the pent-up waters in the ordinary course. The accumulated flood must swamp the capital, and that soon. The river had ceased to flow past; it was no longer the "blue Danube" running merrily its five miles an hour, but a dead sea, an inexorable volume of water, slowly, silently creeping up to engulf us. Pest is a city which literally has its foundations made on the sand; a portion of it is built on the old bed of the Danube. Assuming a certain point as zero, the official measurements were made from this, and notices were published that if a maximum of twenty-five feet were attained by the rising waters, then Pest must inevitably be flooded.
As evening came on, with the cloudy forecast of more rain, the gravest anxiety was visible on the face of every soul of that vast multitude. This anxiety was intensified when it was announced that the latest measurement was twenty-four feet nine inches; and what was simply appalling, that the register marked six inches rise in less than an hour. It was clear to every one that the critical moment had arrived. There was little to hope, and much to fear. Darkness fell upon as dismal a scene as imagination could well conceive. If the water once overlapped the embankment at the fruit-market, it must very soon pour in in vast volume; for the streets there are considerably lower than the level of the Corso—as it was, several large blocks of ice had floated or slid over on the quay. At this spot a serious catastrophe was apprehended.
I think it must have been ten o'clock (my friends and I had just taken a hasty supper) when the fortress on the Blocksberg again belched forth its terrible sound of warning. This time there were six shots fired; this was the signal of "Pest in danger." A profound impression of alarm fell on the assembled multitude. Some went about wringing their hands; others left the Corso hastily, going home, I imagine, to tell their women to prepare for the worst. I was unconscious at the time of taking note of things passing round me, and it seems strange, considering the acute tension of my nerves, that I saw, and can now recall with persistent accuracy, a lot of trivial and utterly unimportant incidents that happened in the crowd. I remember the size and colour of a dog that manifested his share in the common excitement by running perpetually between everybody's legs, and I could draw the face of a frightened child whom I saw clinging to its mother's skirts.
We never quitted the Corso. Though this was the third night we had not taken off our clothes, it was impossible to think of rest now. I felt no fatigue, and I hardly know how the last hour or two passed, but I heard distinctly above the murmur of voices the town clocks strike twelve. Just afterwards, a man running at full speed broke through the crowd, shouting as he went, "The water is falling! the water is falling!" He spoke in German, so I understood the words directly. There was great excitement to ascertain if the report was correct. Thank God! he spoke words of truth. The gauge actually marked a decrease of no less than two inches in the height of the river, and this decrease had taken place in the space of half an hour. The river had attained the highest point when the danger-signal was fired. It had never risen beyond, though the level had been stationary for some time.
Every one was surprised at the rapid fall of the Danube; it was difficult to account for. It soon came to be remarked that the vast volume of water was visibly moved onward. If the river was flowing on its way, that meant the salvation of the city—the fact was most important. I myself saw a dark mass—a piece of wreckage, probably, or the carcass of an animal—pass with some rapidity across a track of light reflected on the water. It was difficult to make out anything clearly in the darkness, but I felt sure the object, whatever it was, was borne onward by the stream.
It was a generally-expressed opinion that something must have happened farther down the river to relieve the pent-up waters. Very shortly official news arrived, and spread like wildfire, that the Danube had made a way for itself right across the island of Csepel into the Soroksár arm of the river.
Csepel is an island some thirty miles long, situated a short distance below Pest. The engineering works for the regulation of the Danube had, as I said before, closed this Soroksár branch, and the river, in reasserting its right of way to the sea, caused a terrible calamity to the villages on the Csepel Island, but thereby Hungary's capital was saved.