Entire families were rushing up on deck, frightened out of the calmness usually reigning on the boat, arranging their clothes with precipitation, and struggling to adjust to their bodies the life-preservers which they were trying on for the first time.

The children were howling, terrified by the alarm of their parents.

Some nervous women were shedding tears without any apparent cause.

The boat was going toward the place where the other one had been torpedoed, and that was enough to make the alarmists imagine that the enemy would remain absolutely motionless in the same place, awaiting their arrival in order to repeat their attack.
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on the sea, scrutinizing the surface of the waves, believing every object which they saw,--bits of wood, seaweed or crates floating on the surface of the water,--to be the top of a periscope.
The officials of the battalion of snipers had gone to prow and poop in order to maintain discipline among their men.

But the Asiatics, scornful of death, had not abandoned their serene apathy.