Gasping, and looking up the hill, they could see, rising from Lansdown, dense volumes of sulphurous smoke, through which shot vivid gleams of forking flame. Elsewhere a greyish veil began to spread across the land. A steaming, suffocating atmosphere choked their lungs.
"There may be another shock! We must escape for our very lives," Linton whispered hoarsely.
Zenobia, white to the lips, made a faint gesture of assent. "Hold my hand! We must find a way across the river," he said quickly.
Again she made an obedient sign; and Linton, guiding her, they moved cautiously forward in the strange grey twilight which began to enfold them.
Awe-inspiring sounds had been succeeded by a silence which was scarcely less terrible. A sense of horror half paralysed their faculties as they cautiously moved forward down the slope. Almost at their feet had opened a chasm which revealed many solid blocks of masonry, such as had been used of old in the construction of the Roman Baths. The rending of the earth had exposed to view a section of what looked like the foundations of an ancient and imposing temple. Between the massive walls, at the bottom of some steps, they observed a narrow cell or chamber, and as they stepped past the shadowy opening, Zenobia's foot came into contact with an ancient Roman lamp.
Of these things neither of them was fully conscious at the moment. They were mental photographs, vivid experiences unconsciously stored in memory and fraught with a strange confirmatory significance not yet to be appreciated.
Hand in hand, picking their steps apprehensively, they made their way between the fallen trees down to the broad avenue leading to the lower gate of the Park. Here, at the gate, for the first time they encountered evidence of death and disaster in the town itself. Houses had collapsed on every side; distracting moans and piteous cries from unseen sufferers assailed their ears. For a moment they paused before a monumental heap of stone and timber, impelled to render help in answer to these vague but terrible appeals.
"We can do nothing," groaned Linton, in answer to Zenobia's questioning pause. "Come," and he led her quickly round the wreckage of the houses.
Stumbling, half running, they made their way by a devious route down towards the heart of the town. In Queen Square there was a frightened crowd. Women and children, weeping and sobbing, were kneeling on the roadway with hands upraised in prayer. Men came running towards them shouting unintelligible warnings ... questions. Terrified faces appeared at many upper windows. They saw a frenzied girl leap from the parapet of a tottering house and disappear behind a heap of ruins.
In the lower streets the destruction wrought was less noticeable, but a new terror was revealed. The sound of rushing waters reached their ears, and every moment white-faced men and women tore past them, crying in shrill tones: "The Spring! the Spring!" Then they saw eddying streams of steaming, orange-tinted water creep round street corners, overflow the gutters, and spread into the road. The water rose so rapidly that they had to turn aside and once more take to higher ground. They found themselves crossing Milsom Street, and as they did so a loud explosion sounded at the upper end, accompanied with an over-powering smell of gas. Screams rent the air, and another crowd of men and women, some of them carrying children in their arms, came rushing helter-skelter down the street.