"No use! Georg—Maida—let us go!"
The mirrors all about us in the instrument room were going dark; the horrible scenes of death throughout the city which they pictured were vanishing. The public lights were going out; the broadcast voices were ceasing.
The city now was out of control. But still the lagoon outside was packed with boats—overloaded boats.... Screams of terror, choked into silence ... boats with 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?...