Lightning played over their heads; but the crash of thunder, the explosions of the volcanoes, the mighty heaves and groans tearing the breast of the trembling earth were lost in an angry roar of waters.
A canon-shot would not have sent them forward with greater impetus; and this prevented their boats from swamping, despite their shipping water frightfully.
The shock which leveled the Observatory tower shattered all the windows and cracked every building in Tlamco, letting the accumulated waters through what is now Carquinez Straits, and widened an arm of the sea into an open inlet.
The impounded water inundated the surrounding country, swept over the intervening islands, and spent itself in a series of waves mountain high, whose impact disturbed the ocean’s surface for thousands of miles, after severing Lime Point from the peninsula and plowing out the famous Golden Gate entrance to the bay.[[9]]
One of the most violent tremors caught the little colony of boats, which by a miraculous coincidence, were thrown together in the trough of the sea, and tossed them ashore, high and dry, on the Berkeley hills.
The water receded so rapidly that the boats stuck fast in the débris and mud. All except the strongest one, containing Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta, were crushed like egg-shells.
With broken arms and legs, bruised and battered bodies, scarred almost beyond recognition, the little band huddled together, reviving each other when pain brought unconsciousness, while the elements overhead and below them rioted with unabated fury.
The morrow brought no surcease, except that the waters subsided and took on something of their normal aspect. The earth still trembled and groaned, and the sun was so completely obscured for days after, that it seemed always twilight.
So soon does the mind become accustomed to danger—so familiar does it grow with death, that Ben Hu Barabe was able to direct his men how to reach the back waters of the bay, where the motion was less violent and marked.
They helped each other, with tears and gratitude, to some of the fruit and nuts which had been spared to them. Alcyesta’s left arm was broken, and she could scarcely move without intolerable pain; but she made no complaint to the half-crazed men about her. None of them could ever tell afterward how they contrived to reach Tlamco.