All the while the detonations, like continuous thunder and lightning, increased the panic. Women were on their knees in mental agony, each supplicating the particular saint of the part of the country from which she came to save her from death. I pushed and shoved them by the shoulders. I took them by the legs and arms and clothes, and urged them, in Italian, to get up, to put on lifebelts, to get off the ship. I told them that, at least, they would find no security from shells under chairs and tables. I found a poor old woman at the foot of the stairs, huddled in prayer. Her thin, gray hair straggled loose over her shoulder. I recognized her as a woman I had got acquainted with in my search for a fellow-citizen to join me in the first cabin. She was 65 years old, she had told me. She had seen two sons off to the war, and was now going to a third who had emigrated to America and lived in Pennsylvania. It was the first time she had ever crossed the ocean. She was sick of the thought of war. In the New World she would find peace and comfort for her old age, with her "Bambino," as she still called the grown-up man who was her son. So when I saw her lying there I was possessed of but one idea--to get her off alive. I told her to come with me, that I would protect her. She acquiesced, but her fright was so great that she hung limp as if she had no spine while I half dragged her to the first cabin deck. A boat was being lowered. It had been swung out on the davits. It already seethed full of people. And more men and women and children were fighting, in a promiscuous, shrieking mass, to get into it as it swung out and down. The men, with their superior strength, were, of course, getting the best of the struggle. Age or sex had no weight. It was brute strength that prevailed. At the sight before her the old woman grew frantic with unexpected strength. She suddenly jerked loose from me, and before I could prevent her, ran with all the agility of fear and jumped overboard. Others flung their bodies pell-mell on the heads of those already in it. Some, in their frenzy, missed the mark at which they aimed themselves and fell into the sea. To make the horror complete, the boat now stuck at one end, tilted downward, and spilled all its occupants into the sea, ninety or a hundred at once. They seized each other. Some swam. Others floundered and sank almost immediately, dragging each other down. Some drowned themselves even with lifebelts on, not knowing how to hold their heads out of the water. I tried to speak with the passengers still on deck. It was useless. Everybody was talking in his own particular dialect. Then I realized the predicament I myself was in--an utter foreigner, whom they would sacrifice in an instant for one of their own nationality. Perhaps if only I had some of my jewelry I might be able to bribe my way to safety in some such crisis. III--"THE DEAD WERE LYING ON DECK"