As sunset of that day gleamed blood-red in the west the anxious watchers saw that even the parapets of hastily filled sandbags which they had placed upon their dikes were giving beneath the thunderous tides, and shifting and dissolving. Valiantly they labored, as men will do for their life and land, but before midnight of that night through a score of great breaches the long-repressed seas were rushing in upon the little land in ravening, titanic fury, and church bells were ringing wildly across the countryside and beacon fires blazing red, while roads and canals were choked with hordes of panic-driven fugitives fleeing blindly through the darkness from the terror that leaped upon them from behind. And when at last sunrise gleamed golden over the body-choked waters and over the flooded meadows and spires of cities, word had been flashed to the world that more than half of Holland was under water, its cities buried and populations drowned by the vast, inrushing floods. With that word the strained anxiety of the world dissolved suddenly into stark fear. It was only the most emphatic messages of reassurance on the part of the newspapers and agencies of public information that prevented a great panic on that morning. They admitted that the disaster had occurred, but pointed out that it had been caused by the breaking of the dikes, as similar disasters had been caused before. No such thing could occur elsewhere, they stated, and assured the public that the rise in the sea's level was only temporary, caused by the subterranean upheaval which had been mentioned by the scientists. Not only would the rise not continue, they predicted, but it would be seen when the measurements were made public that evening that a positive lowering of the waters had taken place. * * * * * With such assertions the rising panic of the earth's people was calmed a little on that morning, but the foreboding of dread to come increased as the extra editions poured from the presses that day hour-by-hour chronicles of further disaster. Parts of Lancaster and Norfolk were already flooded, they learned, their inhabitants fleeing by every road to higher ground. Louisiana and the lower valley of the Mississippi were under water, and the basin of the Amazon was a maze of flooded jungles. Fishing villages on the Chinese and Japanese coasts had been swept away with great loss of life by the vast tides of the Pacific, the plantations of lower Malaya had become salt swamps, and along the coastlines of India and Africa the waves were battering the shore with terrific fury. Scores of ships at sea were known to have foundered, sending out despairing calls for help until the last, while others making for the nearest harbor had been caught by the great tides and flung against cliffs and shoals to be pounded into unrecognizable wreckage.