Donny had now joined the stricken group. They huddled together until another shock threw them one upon another. Delicate women became nauseated as if in mid-ocean. Sturdy men who had faced bullets in the Civil War without wincing, lost self-control. They surged; they fought; they comforted each other; they cried aloud.
At this moment a frightful tremor shook the earth. The station building gave sickening creaks; then it toppled with a crash.
Yell now followed yell. The crowd, that but now waited the joyous greetings of friends, was battered by the bruises of the earth and hurried by fright into a contagious state of mania. The bodies and faces of the people changed almost beyond recognition. Maddened with fear, stunned by the last concussion, they stampeded.
The cry rang from mouth to mouth: "To the woods! To the hill! Home! Home!! Home!!!" They swayed; they rushed; they parted; they ran. Struck as by an invisible enemy, they fell prostrate in the powdery dust. They picked themselves up again and panted in their flight. A voice close to Donny's side rang above the uproar: "Good Lord! It is an earthquake!" |
"THE PAUPER DOG."
Like birds before a tornado, the people scattered to the right, to the left,—this way, that, and were gone. Donny found himself, dazed and alone, upon the cross-ties, groping toward the oncoming train. He thrust out his hands and stood a moment piteously crying, "Papä! Papä!" the most bewildered little fellow in all that frightened town.
To crawl up the track, to meet the train, to board her, to shriek at her, to get to his father, to cling to the cow-catcher, perhaps, till the engineer stopped for sheer mercy,—this was the nearest approach to a purpose that the child had, as he beat along the track, stumbling, falling, up again, down again, shaken by the rolling earth, and blinded by darkness more awful than he had ever seen or thought of.
A strange, thin dog, without a collar, whined at his feet as he pushed on, and licked his hand and followed him like his own. Huge, dim forms rushed alongside the embankment, making unearthly sounds. Dragons could not have seemed more dreadful; but they were only cows. Huge pine-trees bent to the earth with rapid, vibratory motion as if a giant's hand clutched and shook them by the roots.
