A second shock leveled every house, and brought trees and rocks crashing down the mountain sides, dealing death and destruction everywhere. The whole artillery of the heavens was in action, drowning the feeble cries of man, dying terror-stricken in the heaps of ruins.
Lizards, snakes, rats, mice, and moles raced madly in every direction, while timid owls and other birds flew close to the ground and screeched in their fright and bewilderment. The larger animals huddled close together, while the dogs howled dismally.
A little handful of men and women, surviving the first terrific shocks, attempted to escape over the lower range of hills, but, to their horror, a yawning gulf opened at their feet.
Moving in sinister majesty and strangeness, was a bottomless abyss, impassable in width and several miles long. Before their very eyes, it swallowed up human beings, houses and forests, grinding and crushing them between its gigantic jaws. With another terrific wrench, it belched them up again, followed by a deluge of steam, mud and hot water.
The river lying below Anokia had deserted its natural bed, driven before the avalanche of lava, and the sea of mud, vapor, gas, black smoke and effluvia showed where it had forever disappeared through a crevice.
A thick shower of ashes filled the air. The earth undulated and quivered for a few seconds, and then a tempest of lightning and hail cleared the suffocating atmosphere.
In the lurid flashes could be seen the oscillation forth and back as if the very heart of Mount Lassen were being torn out. Its black vomit, streaked with red, trailed like a snake over the floor of the valley, setting fire to the combustible wreckage, and stealing up the base of the peak as well.
Kerœcia led her little band of devoted followers up the high mountain walling in the western side of the valley. The subterranean rumblings sounded in her ears like the drum-beating on stumps of trees or logs done by the wings of male pheasants when they are calling to their females.
“I hear not the call of a mate. It is death—and thou art welcome!” she said, turning a pale but composed face to the burning heights.
“Thou hast heard my prayer!” she continued, stretching out her arms in supplication. “Thou hast granted me the purification by fire! Thy spirit laughs and licks out long tongues of flame straight from thy fiery throat! Thy countenance is wreathed with smiles, for me, O Death! But if consistent with thy will, spare these children of the forest. They share not my humiliation, degradation and despair.”