We were in the instrument room of the palace. The air was pale-blue, though I had closed every casement. Ourselves, choking already; then gasping; and with no time or thought to procure a mask. The chemical room, from whence we might have secured apparatus to purify our air, had been abandoned before we thought to seek it out. I dashed into it, my breath held. Its casements were open; its air thick-blue with the fumes; its staff long since fled. I ran back to Georg and Maida, gasping, my lungs on fire, my head roaring. "No use! Abandoned!" The department of weather control where--had we been forewarned--we might have found means to divert the wind by another of our own creation--was deserted by its staff at the first alarm. "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.