The Whaleboat
I was with a woman companion in an area of sand hills. We were in a depression, the bottom filled with water, in which floated a steel whaleboat that had been decked over. I stepped onto the boat at the cockpit end and pointed out how roomy a whaleboat is inside, but this one was partially flooded with smelly sewage and in a very unstable condition. As I stood well off center, it started to roll over and I jumped off just as the rail went under. The boat filled with water and rolled back upright. Its floatation tanks raised it up and the water drained out leaving some clean water in the bottom. I pointed out the self righting and self bailing characteristics of this type of boat as we moved on.
We came over the crest of a sand hill high above a long beach with many people on it. From this vantage we could see far out over the beach and saw a tidal wave coming in. We ran inland and stopped behind the peak of the highest sand hill we could get to, hoping it would be high enough to protect us. As we lay against the backside of the hill, we could hear screaming from the beach for a while. Then we were splashed with water from the wave as it washed up the side of out hill. Water continued to come down after the wave should have receded, so we looked up and found the shower now came from a broken water pipe torn up on the exposed side of the hill.
I rushed down to the beach to try to help anyone helpable. Once on the beach I ran toward the water, but the sand was like quicksand and i sank to the armpits. Working my way out, I decided to retreat in case more waves came in. Later I returned with others to probe for bodies under the sand. We looked at the damage to buildings undermined by the wave and speculated about changes to the beach it had caused.
End.