frenzied occupants leaping into the water to find
a quicker, happier death ... a woman with a babe in her arms on a
housetop across the lagoon--the infant already dead; the crazed mother
flinging it down into the water, herself following with a long, gasping
scream...

At last Georg pulled at me--no longer could we speak--pulled at me, and
with Maida between us, we fled. The air outside was worse. In the
dimness, our landing stage seemed _belans_ away. The flagged area
between us and the stage--a space of square-cut metal flagging,
bordering the lagoon--was littered with bodies. Dead--or dying. People
even now staggering from landed boats--staggering blindly, stumbling
over bodies, falling and lying always where they had fallen.

With our own senses fading, we groped our way forward. Soon we were
separated. I saw Maida fall and Georg pick her up, but I was powerless
to reach them.

The landing stage seemed so far away. The dead and dying beneath my feet
obstructed me as I staggered over them. A woman, reeling toward me,
flung her arms about my neck with an iron grip of despair. I stared into
her face, purple almost with its congested blood, her mouth gaping, her
blood-shot eyes bulging; and even with the terror distorting them, I saw
beneath it their look of despairing appeal...

Her arms clinging to me desperately; but with a curse I flung her to the
ground and reeled onward.

Without knowing it, I had come to the brink of the water's edge. The
flagging seemed to drop away. I fell. Dimly I heard the splash as I
struck the water; and felt a grateful cooling sense as it closed over
me.

I am a strong, instinctive swimmer. I did not breathe, and when I rose
to the surface, the single swift breath I took was purer than any I had
had for half an hour past. My head cleared a little; swimming
instinctively, and with cautious breaths, I found that I was able to go
on.

I know now that by some vagary of chance--of fate if you will--I had
struck a surface area where breathable air still remained. I swam,
striving to plan, to think where I might be swimming. Yet it was all a
phantasmagoria, with only the strength of my muscles and the instinct to
preserve my life remaining to direct me. Swimming endlessly ... swimming
... taking a half-gasp of breath ... swimming ... trying to think ... or
dreaming ... was it all a dream?...

When I came to myself I was lying upon a bank of ferns in the outskirts
of the city. It was st