It was a butchery, without precedent; a gathering of victims that was so ghastly as to be beyond the power of any man to picture.
As the party went on the members met others who made reports of things that had come under their notice. There were fifty killed or drowned in one section of town; one hundred in another; five hundred in another. The list grew larger with each report.
It was a matter of wonder, and increasing wonder too, that a single soul escaped to tell the tale.
No one seemed entirely sane, for there was madness in the very air.
All moved in an atmosphere of gloom; it was difficult to move and breathe with so much death on all sides.
Yet no one could keep his eyes off of those horrible, fascinating corpses. They riveted the gaze.
Life and death were often so closely intermingled they could not be told apart.
It was the apotheosis of the frightful.
Those who had escaped the hurricane and flood were searching for missing dear ones in such a listless way as to irresistibly convey the idea that they did not care whether they found them or not.
It was the languor of hopelessness and despair.