TCD MS 10515 folio 56v
[April 28th 1916]
source, cause the waters to swell into a rushing flood, to overflow or burst the banks and cover the desert in its deluge.
The flood had reached the embankment built around our camp to resist the insidious inflow of the water. From the embankment we no longer gazed upon a desert, but rather on a broad rippling ocean casting up its floating debris on the gentlest of sandy shores. Destruction followed in the wake of the deluge. The encampments of the Arabs had been engulfed. Some stood abandoned in the sea, and had not the reality of the water been so apparent, they might still have been the false picture of huts floating in a far mirage. In other places an attempt at rescue was in progress. I saw a little child urging a half-