Obviously the first thing to be done was to make certain that I was indeed on an island, so I proceeded to take stock of my surroundings. I noticed that, except for the rough patches on the water which caught the wind, the surface was comparatively smooth, and there was no sign of a current. Walking a few yards to the right, I saw that the line of the old river and this strip of unknown water converged, leaving little hope in that direction. I therefore turned about, and started off to my left front. Evidence that the cereal crop had been carted quite recently was plentiful, for there was short, fresh stubble, cart tracks, and the impression of horses' hoofs. This pointed to the encouraging fact that I was not on an island, horses and carts not usually being transported by barge or aeroplane. I had not followed the tracks for more than fifty yards when they turned straight towards the water. The next minute I barely stifled a yell of delight, for there, staring me in the face, was a sort of pontoon bridge, stretching away into the darkness. On closer inspection, I found it to be composed of bundles of brushwood which were held together in some mysterious manner, and appeared to lie on the water. The surface of the bridge was in very bad repair and, as some of the top bundles of sticks were missing or pointing upwards at an angle, progress was very slow; but, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling, I got along at quite a good pace. Once it seemed that I should have to swim a short distance, but I found it to be unnecessary, as only the top layer of the bundles was missing. Nearing the other side, I made out a factory building of some sort, with a high chimney, a little way from the end of the bridge, and heard the occasional bark of a watch-dog. Try as I would, I could not move an inch without causing a number of sticks to crackle loudly--it was almost as bad as crawling under the heap of sticks the morning before. Fortunately the wind must have drowned any noise made, or carried the sound away, for, though the dog continued to bark intermittently, it cannot have been aware of my presence.
Skirting the factory, I went across country, avoiding roads and houses like poison. The land was very low and flat and the dykes very numerous, sometimes whole fields being practically inundated. The only things that tended to relieve the monotony were the solitary gaunt willow trees, most of them mere shells of their former selves, which stood out from the misty darkness, black and threatening, like grim sentinels.