During the last few minutes the late morning seemed to have forced its way through the clouds.

They had a dim, phantasmagoric view of the stricken country: a watery plain, with here and there great patches of fields, submerged to the hedges, and houses standing out amidst the waste of waters like toy dwellings.

There were whole plantations of uprooted trees.

Close to the road, on their left, was a roofless house, and a family of children crying underneath a tarpaulin shelter.

As they crept on, the wind came to them with a brackish flavour, salt with the sea.