When we reached the inundated districts, I of course urged my companions to turn back. But they paid no heed, and pressed gravely on their way, first wading ankle-deep, then halfway to their knees, while strung out in a long line among scattered houses that looked like lake dwellings. Here a marble edifice, there a colonnade, yonder a cluster of statues, projected above the deluge, whose green-gray current went swishing past as though from an inexhaustible source. Amid those fluid wastes, which had obliterated all familiar landmarks and gave to well known things a new and terrible majesty, it was impossible to be sure of our way; and once one of the men slipped into a depression so deep that he had to swim to save himself; and more than once some one tripped over some buried obstacle, and went floundering at full length into the water, thereby provoking a short-lived outburst of mirth. So great were the dangers that we had to move very slowly; but we also moved with grim regularity, and our progress was without sound other than the monotonous splash, splash of our advancing feet. Yet it was not only our own plight that made us moody and sad. As we plodded through the flooded districts, we had continual glimpses of the inhabitants--and in their aspect and manner there was nothing to reassure us. Here, through an open window, we would catch sight of several agile figures straining to bind some huge collection into a bundle; there we would observe a man descending from his doorstep into the enveloping waters, his back bent down with a great pile of household articles, a wan-faced woman clinging nervously to him or turning back with moist eyes to the home they were leaving. And we passed not one or two such refugees but scores, literally scores. One would have a three-year-old perched securely on his shoulder, another would be trying to soothe a crying babe or leading by the hand a frightened lad of five; some would be bearing off great heaps of clothing or huge cans and boxes that looked like food containers, and a few were puffing and panting to save their books, rugs and paintings. Meanwhile the eyes of all the people were baleful with a wild, unnatural light; their features were assuming a furtive, hunted expression; their voices had lost their music, and had grown nervous and shrill. And all were looking bloodless and bedraggled; ominous hollows were forming in their cheeks and beneath their eyes; their clothes were soiled and untended, their beards scraggly and untrimmed; and many had lost their normal restraint, so that we passed a woman who sobbed and sobbed quite regardless of our approach, an old man who growled and gibbered insanely to himself, and more than one that did not even seem to see us, but stared upward intently with imploring face, while mumbling incoherent melancholy phrases.