So far, I could find nothing tragic or terrible in the situation. Possibly we would be in danger of considerable exposure in open boats, before other ships, summoned by wireless, would pick us up. I did not rush out as the others had done. I stood quite still, in order to calm myself, to give myself time to think what would better be done. The _Ancona_ had come to a stop. Of that I was certain. I also knew that the ship was doomed. But now there came another terrible crash, and another, and another, in different parts of the ship, followed by explosions and the sound of débris falling into the water and on deck. Well, they were merely destroying the wireless. Still there was no fear of death. But now I was aware of a terrible shrieking. Everybody was in a frightened panic. II--"THE HORROR OF WHAT I SAW" Well, as for myself--to get excited wouldn't help. I went to my cabin as calmly as I could, determined to save what I could of my valuables. I put them in my lifebelt. I took a receipt for 20,000 lire, which I had left with the purser. I went toward the bow of the ship. I descended the staircase to the second cabin, on the way to the purser's office. A large part of the staircase had been shot away--and the horror of what I saw at the bottom of it made me instantly forget what I was going for. There lay three or four women, four or five children, and several men. Some of them were already dead, all, at least, badly wounded. I made sure two of the children were dead. The purser sprawled limply across his desk, inert, like a sack of meal that has been flung down and stays where it lies. He had been shot in the head. The blood was running bright like red paint, freshly spilt, down his back, and his hair was matted with it. The first series of shots had wrecked this part of the ship, breaking through and carrying away whole sections of the framework. I tried to get back up the stairs. But in the slight interval of time I had consumed, enough additional shells had been discharged to finish the wreck of the staircase. I saw that this was not what the nations call, ironically enough, "legitimate warfare," but wholesale and indiscriminate massacre. Seeing my exit that way cut off, I started through the second cabin to go up the central stairway. The sight that I ran into there was indescribable. All the passengers from the third cabin had rushed up into the second. They had altogether lost their wits. The only thing that was left them was the animal instinct for self-preservation in its most disastrous and most idiotic form. Men, women, and children were burrowing headforemost under chairs and benches and tables. I saw one man, his face pressed close against the floor sidewise, heaving a chair up in the air with his back, in an effort to efface himself.