Through the darkness of that dread night they went, vast, unorganized mobs that fled blindly on, pushing and striking and trampling, and as they fled the last organizations of men were slipping and crushing, knocked down like children's houses of blocks by the giant hand of fear. It was the flood, the ever-feared deluge of all the legends of men, the horror that was springing upon all the earth. Men prayed and fought and sobbed and killed themselves in their raving fear, that night, but ever the remorseless waters rose higher, and higher, and higher. Up and up they came, slowly, steadily, surely, up toward the annihilation of man and the age-old reign of man, up toward the whelming of a world. 3 Young Ernest Stevens, on that fateful night of the 7th which saw the climax of the world's fear, had found himself in the vicinity of Piccadilly when the first rush of the panic began. He had seen for himself the sudden rise of the waters of the Thames which had taken place during the preceding few days, and had also read the newspaper accounts of the extraordinary and unexplainable heightening of the sea's level, but was still so much centered on the strange passing of Clinton and his expedition as to give the subject of general interest but small attention. On this night, however, when the publication of that epochal last message from the Portsmouth station sent the first crowds hastening through the streets, Stevens realized his own position and started off across the city toward his lodgings. Before he had gone far the first great mobs were rushing through the streets, beginning the vast exodus from the city, and disrupting all the ordinary means of transportation. Already, too, salt floods were creeping through the streets, adding to the panic of the crowds, and as Stevens walked on, the lights of the city around him were beginning to fail, fanning the flames of fear higher in the already panic-mad crowds. By the time Stevens finally stumbled up the steps of his lodging-house, the street on which it stood was wholly dark, and covered by a few inches of water through which the fugitives along its length were splashing. He found the house itself deserted, and going to his own rooms quickly gathered the most necessary of his belongings into a small bundle, which he formed into a rough knapsack or pack. This done he turned toward the door, then paused a moment at the window. Before him stretched away the roofs and steeples of the vast city, all their sparkling lights vanished now and darkened. From the west, though, came a flickering red light, and he could see there a mighty uprush of flames. The street outside, the waters in it slowly rising, was alive with hurrying figures, many with great bundles or barrows, all pressing on to escape from the city, and shouting hoarsely to one another.