Chapter Nine.
An Earthquake on four Legs.
“Say, Mas’r Harry, you won’t stop in this blessed place, will you?” said Tom, as, in the full light of day, we were, some hours after, busily helping in the town, extricating the dead and wounded, and assisting to bear them to the temporary hospital prepared for their reception.
The house where we had slept was, like hundreds more of the lightly-built tenements, prostrate; and on visiting the scene our escape seemed wonderful; while everywhere the mischief done was appalling—houses toppled down, streets choked with ruins, towers split from top to bottom, and stones hurled from the unroofed buildings into the gaping cracks and fissures running down the streets.
But now that the first fright was over, people seemed to take the matter very coolly, flocking back into the town, to sit and smoke and eat fruit amidst the ruins of their homes, while others quietly set to work to restore and repair damages.
“Has there ever been an earthquake here before?” I said to a merchant who spoke English.
“Earthquakes, my dear señor? Yes, they are common things here.”
“But will the inhabitants rebuild the town?”