Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 24)( Page 7 ) The Last Trek

Crouching under the waggon I watched it and saw the little streamlets, dirty and debris laden, steal slowly on like sluggard snakes down to my feet, and winding round me, meet beyond and hasten on.  Soon the grass-tufts and higher spots were wet; and as the water rose on my boots and the splash beat up to my knees, it seemed worth while making for the tent of the waggon.  But in there the roar was deafening; the rain beat down with such force that it drove through the canvas-covered waggon-tent and greased buck-sail in fine mist.  In there it was black dark, the tarpaulin covering all, and I slipped out again back to my place under the waggon to watch the storm. We were on high ground which fell gently away on three sides--a long spur running down to the river between two of the numberless small watercourses scoring the flanks of the hills.  Mere gutters they were, easy corrugations in the slope from the range to the river, insignificant drains in which no water ever ran except during the heavy rains.  One would walk through scores of them with easy swinging stride and never notice their existence.  Yet, when the half-hour's storm was over and it was possible to get out and look round, they were rushing boiling torrents, twenty to thirty feet across and six to ten feet deep, foaming and plunging towards the river, red with the soil of the stripped earth, and laden with leaves, grass, sticks, and branches-- water-furies, wild and ungovernable, against which neither man nor beast could stand for a moment. When the rain ceased the air was full of the roar of waters, growing louder and nearer all the time.  I walked down the long low spur to look at the river, expecting much, and was grievously disappointed.  It was no fuller and not much changed.  On either side of me the once dry dongas emptied their soil-stained and debris-laden contents in foaming cataracts, each deepening the yellowy red of the river at its banks; but out in mid-stream the river was undisturbed, and its normal colour--the clear yellow of some ambers--was unchanged.  How small the great storm seemed then!  How puny the flooded creeks and dongas--yet each master of man and his work!  How many of them are needed to make a real flood! There are few things more deceptive than the tropical storm.  To one caught in it, all the world seems deluged and overwhelmed; yet a mile away it may be all peace and sunshine.  I looked at the river and laughed at myself!  The revelation seemed complete; it was humiliating; one felt so small.  Still, the drought was broken; the rains had come; and in spite of disappointment I stayed to watch, drawn by the scores of little things caught up and carried by--the first harvest garnered by the rains. A quarter of an hour or more may have been spent thus, when amid all the chorus of the rushing waters there stole in a duller murmur.  Murmur it was at first, but it grew steadily into a low-toned, monotoned, distant roar; and it caught and held one like the roar of coming hail or hurricane.  It was the river coming down.