The unfinished account

An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.

The box from the old town office contained only three pages of the harbourmaster's account. The first described the morning the flood reached the lower street; the second ended halfway through a sentence. Between them lay a blank sheet, its edges blackened as if it had been taken from a fire. Mr Bell, who was preparing a history of the town, placed the pages beside his notebook.

At the foot of the first page, the harbourmaster had written that the warning bell rang at noon. In the margin, another hand had added, "well before noon", then scratched out the word "before". Mr Bell read the alteration twice. His daughter Clara pointed to a later line, where the harbourmaster blamed the miller for leaving the sluice gate open. The miller's name had been underlined, but the ink was so pale that Clara could not tell whether the line had been written at the time or added years afterwards.

Mr Bell wanted a clear account for the printer. He could have copied the pages as though they formed one complete report, but he stopped when he reached the broken sentence. Clara suggested that he set the surviving words beside the uncertainty, recording the different readings in the margin. "Then the account will not tell us exactly what happened," he said. "No," she answered, "but it will show what people tried to say about it."

That evening, Mr Bell left the unfinished pages open on his desk. He crossed out his first confident summary and wrote instead that the flood remained disputed. The printed history would carry the same warning. The three pages could not settle the town's argument, yet their gaps and alterations showed why the argument had lasted.

"The passage successfully presents uncertainty as an important part of a historical record."

Evaluate how successfully the writer presents this idea. Support your judgement with detailed references to the passage.