The torrent on the unceiled roof
prevented Ito from hearing what I said, the bed was soaked, and the
water, having got into my box, had dissolved the remains of the
condensed milk, and had reduced clothes, books, and paper into a
condition of universal stickiness.
My kimono was less wet than
anything else, and, borrowing a sheet of oiled paper, I lay down in
it, till roused up in half an hour by Ito shrieking above the din
on the roof that the people thought that the bridge by which we had
just entered would give way; and, running to the river bank, we
joined a large crowd, far too intensely occupied by the coming
disaster to take any notice of the first foreign lady they had ever
seen.
The Hirakawa, which an hour before was merely a clear, rapid
mountain stream, about four feet deep, was then ten feet deep, they
said, and tearing along, thick and muddy, and with a fearful roar,
"And each wave was crested with tawny foam,
Like the mane of a chestnut steed."
Immense logs of hewn timber, trees, roots, branches, and faggots,
were coming down in numbers. The abutment on this side was much
undermined, but, except that the central pier trembled whenever a
log struck it, the bridge itself stood firm - so firm, indeed, that
two men, anxious to save some property on the other side, crossed
it after I arrived. Then logs of planed timber of large size, and
joints, and much wreckage, came down - fully forty fine timbers,
thirty feet long, for the fine bridge above had given way.
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