Soon startled exclamations broke forth, as they learned that for a distance of twelve miles windows were broken and chimneys demolished, tall steel-framed office buildings shaken to their foundations, and thousands of people had been in panic from fear of earthquake. In amazement they heard that great pieces of steel weighing fifty pounds had been found three or four miles from the harbor, and that the shock was felt a hundred miles away.
“Well,” said Drake, as he folded up his paper at last, “the wonder is that there was a single ship left in the harbor, and that we did not all go to the bottom of the river. I don’t see what saved us, anyway.”
It was not to be wondered at that they could talk of nothing else during the greater part of the journey, but as the train neared their goal, the much-talked-and-thought-of city of Berlin, there was a sudden reaction from seriousness to gaiety. It is not in boy nature to look long on the dark side of things, and it was a hilarious party of young Americans that descended from the train, and wended their way along the streets of the German city, that till now had only existed for them between the covers of a geography.
German talk, German faces, German costumes were all about them, and ears and eyes were kept very busy with the new sights and sounds.
“Now, Tom,” chaffed Bert, as at the hotel they prepared for dinner, “trot out your German.”
“Ach ja,” responded Tom, obligingly. “Was wilst du? Du bist ferricht, mein kind? Ich habe kein geld? Oder wilst du die Lorelei haben? Ach, wohl, hier es ist,
“‘Ich weiss nicht was soll ist bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin,
Ein mahrchen aus alten zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem sinn.
Die luft ist——’”
At this point in the quaint German legend Tom’s breath left him as he felt himself lifted bodily from his feet and laid upon the bed, with his mouth bound about with a towel snatched from the washstand. Not until he had, by repeated inclinations of his bandaged head, promised “to make no attempt to finish the Lorelei,” and to give them his so-called German in “as small doses and at as large intervals as possible,” was he released.
“Ah, well,” said he, when he was free, “such is the gratitude and appreciation of so-called friends.”
Peace restored, the three friends went down to dinner, softly humming, each in a different key,