Maria shouted—hardly able to shout any more. There was in her voice the sharp cry of the mother-bird which sees winged Death above its brood. She waded about among the child-bodies, ten at her hands, at her dress, the others following closely, pushed along, torn along, with the stream. Soon the street was a wave of children’s heads above which the pale, raised-up hands flitted like seagulls. And Maria’s cry was drowned by the wailing of the children and by the laughter of the pursuing water. The light in the Neon-lamps became reddish, flickering rhythmically and throwing ghostly shadows. The street sloped. There was the mustering-ground. But the huge elevators hung dead on their cables. Ropes, twisted from ropes—metal ropes, thick as a man’s thigh, hung in the air, torn asunder. Blackish oil was welling in a leisurely channel from an exploded pipe. And over everything lay a dry vapour as if from heated iron and glowing stones. Deep in the darkness of distant alleys the gloom took on a brownish hue. A fire was smouldering there.... “Go up—!” whispered Maria’s dry lips. But she was not able to say the words. Winding stairs led upwards. The staircase was narrow—nobody used the staircase which ran by the certain, infallible elevators. Maria crowded the children up the steps. But, up there, there reigned a darkness of impenetrable gloom and density. None of the children ventured to ascend alone. Maria scrambled up. She counted the steps. Like the rushing of a thousand wings came the sound of the children’s feet behind her, in the narrow spiral. She did not know how long she had been climbing up. Innumerable hands were clutching her damp dress. She dragged her burdens upward, praying, moaning the while—praying only for strength for another hour. “Don’t cry, little brothers!” she stammered. “My little sisters, please don’t cry.” Children were screaming, down in the depths—and the hundred windings of the stairway gave echo’s trumpet to each cry: “Mother—! Mother—!” And once more: “The water’s coming—!” Stop and lie down, halfway up the stairs—? No! “Little sisters! Little brothers—do come along!” Higher—winding ever and always higher upward; then, at last, a wide landing. Greyish light from above. A walled-in room; not yet the upper world, but its fore-court. A short, straight flight of stairs upon which lay a shaft of light. The opening, a trap-door, which seemed to be pressed inwards. Between the door and the square of the wall, a cleft, as narrow as a cat’s body. Maria saw that. She did not know what it meant. She had the uncertain feeling of something not being as it ought to be. But she did not want to think about it. With an almost violent movement she tore her hands, her gown, free from the children’s tugging fingers, and dashed, hurled forward far more by her desperate will than by her benumbed feet, through the empty room and up the steep stairway.