You see we were in the low fields west of those mountains. I can't tell you just where, but somewhere. There were hollows in the fields so sometimes we were walking and sometimes we were swimming. It was the outside of the mountains that we saw, as you might say; I mean the side away from the valley, so the water coming out through a cleft proved that the water must be pretty high inside—I mean in Nick's Valley. I guess you'll see what I mean if you'll look at the map.
But, believe me, it wasn't easy to get to those mountains. Seeing them was one thing and getting to them was another. We just plodded around, stumbling off little hills that were under water and we didn't seem to get anywhere. After a while we came out on higher land where there wasn't much water except puddles.
"Some cruise, hey?" I said.
"Shh, listen!" Bert said. "You can hear it plainer now. Look over there."
Now as near as I can tell you we must have been standing near the north side of the old creek bottom and we must have been pretty close to the old silo, or whatever you call it, but we didn't know that then. Believe me, we didn't know anything, except that we were wet. We were standing on a little sort of a hill and the water was washing up almost to our feet. Besides it was getting dark.
But anyway, this is what we saw, and if you just make believe that you're standing on a little hill near that old pit and looking south toward Black Lake, you'll see just what we saw—as you might say. We saw the water just pouring through Nick's Valley and coming toward us and going pell-mell into the old creek bed. Now that's the best way I can tell it to you. I guess the little hill we were on acted kind of like a back stop maybe (anyway, that's what Bert said) because the water only beat against it and then went tumbling back into the creek bed and down toward the Hudson. It was down that way that it overflowed mostly and flooded the fields we had been plodding through.
"One thing, we had a grandstand view," I said.
And believe me, that was true. The water just came pouring and rushing between those mountains, and sometimes we could see trees, and things we thought might be parts of houses coming along. One big white thing we saw, and we knew it was a tent. Black Lake was coming out to meet us through Nick's Valley.