Held by a numbing sort of fascination, I read these sentences over and over. Across Printing House Square, on another bulletin, in big black letters I saw the line, "It baffles the world. Has annihilation set in!" There was something weird in the use of the pronoun IT. It seemed to be man's last effort in language to express a mystery that was specific and yet incomprehensible, and I found that by the common consent of ignorance men were referring to the phenomenon as IT. I looked at the strained, anxious faces of the mob, and a great fear fell upon me. With it came an awful reproach. I would go instantly and redeem my word to Kate by securing passages to Europe. I had to fight my way by inches out of the stolid and frightened crowd to the steamship office on lower Broadway, and there I found another jam. The street was full of private carriages, and it was impossible to get anywhere near the entrance to the office. I saw a policeman who was on the outside of the press, and who was walking up and down in a restless and unofficial manner. "What is the matter here?" I asked him. He looked me all over, as if he suspected that I had fallen out of the clouds. Then he said: "Tryin' to get tickets for Europe! Where d' you come frum?" and then, after a restless turn or two he added as he passed me, "But it ain't no use, 'cause there ain't steamships enough in the world!" Then it was, I think, that the whole terrible truth first lit my consciousness like the sudden upflaring of a bale fire. The inhabitants were fleeing from the country. They were all affected as had been the Brisbanes. I was the only dolt and idiot and liar who had no instincts of danger, and who had failed to rescue the woman I loved when she had appealed to me.