Now as near as I can tell you we must have been standing near the north side of the old creek bottom and we must have been pretty close to the old silo, or whatever you call it, but we didn't know that then. Believe _me_, we didn't know anything, except that we were wet. We were standing on a little sort of a hill and the water was washing up almost to our feet. Besides it was getting dark. But anyway, this is what we saw, and if you just make believe that you're standing on a little hill near that old pit and looking south toward Black Lake, you'll see just what we saw--as you might say. We saw the water just pouring through Nick's Valley and coming toward us and going pell-mell into the old creek bed. Now that's the best way I can tell it to you. I guess the little hill we were on acted kind of like a back stop maybe (anyway, that's what Bert said) because the water only beat against it and then went tumbling back into the creek bed and down toward the Hudson. It was down that way that it overflowed mostly and flooded the fields we had been plodding through. "One thing, we had a grandstand view," I said. And believe me, that was true. The water just came pouring and rushing between those mountains, and sometimes we could see trees, and things we thought might be parts of houses coming along. One big white thing we saw, and we knew it was a tent. Black Lake was coming out to meet us through Nick's Valley. CHAPTER XXIX TELLS ABOUT HOW WE LOOKED INTO THE PIT I never saw anything like that before and it--it didn't exactly scare me--but it made me feel sort of funny. It gave me the creeps to see right in front of me like that, how lakes and valleys and all the land could be changed and me standing there watching it. It seemed as if the earth was being made all over again, as you might say. "That's where we came through only a little while ago," I said, "how will it be inside where the lake was--is?" Especially it seemed queer like, because it was getting dark fast and the sound of the water rushing and the sky all black made everything seem awful gloomy. "Is Temple Camp all right, do you suppose?" I asked Bert. "Guess so," he said, "that's over on the south shore. But hanged if I know how we're going to get there or anywhere else. Guess we'll just have to stand here like the Statue of Liberty." I said, "Listen to the water." "It isn't so high in the valley," Bert said; "it must have been worse a couple of hours ago." Then all of a sudden he said. "Shh--listen!" "I hear it," I said. "No, not the water," he said; "listen. Do you hear a sound like groaning?" I listened, and as sure as I was standing there, I heard a low sound, as if someone was groaning far away. "That isn't the water, is it?" Bert asked "Sure it isn't," I told him, "and it isn't from up through Nick's Valley, because, look, the wind is blowing from us that way."