And no wonder, for every blade and leaf was covered with a fine impalpable powder, while, as the perspiration dried upon the exposed parts of the travellers, their skins seemed to be stiff and caked with the dust.
“I think the earthquake is over, excellencies,” said Yussuf calmly. “I could not be sure, but the look of the sky this evening was strange.”
“I had read of earthquakes out here,” said the professor, who was gaining confidence now; “but you do not often have such shocks as these?”
“Oh, yes, effendi; it is not an unusual thing. Much more terrible than this; whole towns are sometimes swallowed up. Hundreds of lives are lost, and hundreds left homeless.”
“Then you call this a slight earthquake?” said Mr Burne.
“Certainly, excellency, here,” was the reply. “It may have been very terrible elsewhere. Terrible to us if we had been standing beside those stones which fell. It would have been awful enough if all these ruins had been, as they once were, grandly built houses and temples.”
“And I was grumbling about poor dear old sooty, foggy England,” said Mr Burne. “Dear, dear, dear, what foolish things one says!”
“Is not the dust settling down?” said the professor just then.
“A little, your excellency; but it is so fine that unless we have a breeze it may be hours before it is gone.”
“Then what do you propose to do?” asked Mr Burne.