[
The following is excerpted from Tramping Through Wales in Search of the Red Dragon
, John C. Moore (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1931), pp. 91-95]
Long before I reached Dolgelley the mist cleared and the sun came out; but ominous rumblings of thunder rolled across the valley and back all the time, making me think of the first two lines of Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur ["So all day long the noise of battle roll'd / Among the mountains by the winter sea"]. The atmosphere was electric, expectant. One felt that at any minute the storm would break; but it rolled round the hills continually, and no climax came.
I pitched my tent in a field beside the river, and turned in early. The clouds seemed thicker, the thunder closer at hand; but still no rain fell. A strange, eerie hush of expectancy lay over the meadows. Only the stream murmured. It was one of those sweet gentle rivers that never roar nor splash loudly but
"all night long / Singeth a quiet song."
It was pleasant to lie in my tent and listen to its hiss and sigh and soft laughter. It sang Wohin to me, like Schubert's little Bächlein; soon, I thought, it would sing me to sleep. ...
But somehow sleep eluded me. I knew that the storm would burst soon, and I lay listening for the first loud clap of thunder. The suspense was eerie and uncomfortable. The thunder crept gradually closer.
I think I was beginning to doze when, just before midnight, the first huge drops of rain pattered down, thud, thud, thud, on to my tent. The soft hiss of the river was lost in the great surging noise of the rain. It was as if a troop of elfin horsemen were galloping towards me, coming closer and closer till the thunder of their hoofs became a deafening roar.
A minute later Thor went berserker, in the aimless and desultory but extremely thorough manner of a drunken man. A great crash seemed to shake my tent; then, after a long pause, there were three or four dull thuds far away; then another crash right overhead; then a long, tearing, crackling sound, rippling across the sky. ...
Vivid lightning-flashes lit my tent through the thin fabric. Under the flap I could see the trees outlined by them, frozen, petrified, statuesque.
Now that the storm had broken, and the horrible expectancy was dispelled, I felt uncomfortable no longer. In spite of the thunder, I became sleepy. I turned over, and as I dozed the crashes seemed to grow fainter, as if they were rolling away down the valley. But the rhythmical patter of rain continued, and beat its way into my subconsciousness as I slept.
It was two o'clock when I awoke again, aware of a new sound; aware, perhaps by some old inherited instinct, of impending danger. I sat up quickly and listened. There was a dull hissing roar all round me. It took me a few seconds to collect my wits, and then I knew that it was the river, no longer kindly and innocent, but thundering down in flood.
I had pitched my tent in a small hollow, a few feet below the level of the river and some thirty yards away from it. Nevertheless the flood must have been extraordinarily rapid; or perhaps I woke up at the precise moment when the river overflowed its banks. I had just sufficient time to pick up my groundsheet and my sleeping-bag before a stream of water swept under my tent and swirled round my feet. I carried my belongings to a piece of high ground a hundred yards away, took off my pyjama trousers, and went back for my tent. It was a ghostly white oasis in a brown desert of water nearly knee-deep. I didn't attempt to pull up the pegs individually; I took hold of the guy-rope with one hand and clasped the top of the pole with the other, and heaved. There was a tearing sound as some of the rings ripped out, but the tent came up, more or less whole. I bore it away to safety with my rucksack and sleeping-bag.
Luckily the storm was over. The sky was full of stars, and there was a sweet, clean smell in the cool wind. I stood at the top of the slope and wondered what to do. It would be useless to try to put up my tent again, for it was soaked and torn, and I had no pegs.
However, it wouldn't rain again before morning, and my ground-sheet and sleeping-bag had been saved from the deluge. I chose a dry place for them, rubbed myself down with a towel, and went to bed again, staring up at the stars. The top of the slope was well out of flood's way; but below me brown waters rippled over the fields.
...
A troubled dawn broke through grey clouds and splashed "warm gules" on the flooded river. The flood was steady, neither rising nor falling, and would do no more harm. At one time in the night it had looked as if it would fulfill the mournful prophecy of an old bard: "Dolgellau, dôl a gollir, Daear a'i llwnc, Dwr yn ei lle," "Dolgelley will be lost, the earth will swallow it, the water will roll over the place." [Alternately: "Dolgelley, a dale gone lost, Turf swallowed up, Water instead."] But the storm had spent itself, and there was a high-water mark of flotsam at the edge of the wavering flood. Dolgelley was spared once more.
My Primus [stove] was half-full of water and resolutely refused to cook my breakfast. The only remedy would have been to empty it, but I had no more paraffin [fuel]. So I had to go breakfastless into Dolgelley. Everything I had was wet to a greater or lesser degree; my rucksack weighed several pounds more than it had done yesterday. I felt miserable and hardly-used, and I had a nasty snuffling cold. In a fit of bad temper I rolled my tent and sleeping-bag into a bundle, addressed them to my home, and thumped them down on the post office counter. I was tired of being bullied by the weather. Henceforth I would put up at inns.
