THE LAST WAR
figure still clinging stoutly to a box or chair or such-like buoy hint at the hidden massacre. It was not till the Thursday that the dead came to the surface in any quantity. The view was bounded on every side by a gray mist that closed overhead in a gray canopy. The air cleared in the afternoon, and then, far away to the west under great banks of steam and dust, the flaming red eruption of the atomic bombs came visible across the waste of water.
They showed flat and sullen through the mist, like London sunsets. "They sat upon the sea," says Barnet, "like frayed-out waterlilies of flame."
Barnet seems to have spent the morning in rescue work along the track of the canal, in helping people who were adrift, in picking up derelict boats, and in taking people out of imperilled houses. He found other military barges similarly employed, and it was only as the day wore on and the immediate appeals for aid were satisfied that he thought of food and drink for his men, and what course he had better pursue. They had a little cheese, but no water. "Orders," that mysterious direction, had at last altogether disappeared. He perceived he had now to act upon his own responsibility.
"One's sense was of a destruction so far-reach-
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