“Earthquakes! Hurry—hurry!” screamed Polly, almost too frightened to find the buttons on her dress.
Dodo and Nancy tumbled headlong into the room now, both crying and wishing they had “left this old Rome before this happened.”
The girls managed to get into their shoes in short order and when Mrs. Fabian rushed in to drag them forth, they were all dressed. Polly and Eleanor remembered to catch up their bags, and then ran after the Fabians who had roused the Alexanders and told them to run for the open street.
But the street presented such a scene that Mr. Fabian instantly decided to leave whatever they had forgotten in the hotel rooms and get away in the automobiles.
“Oh, see that chimney topple over!” cried Nancy, as the brick structure of a distant building was seen to fall in.
Screams and cries, pushing and huddling of the mobs in the streets, created a panic with the excitable Latin people, and Mr. Alexander quickly turned and said to his party: “I’m going to get out the cars. Dodo can go with me to handle Ma’s roadster. You-all follow Mr. Fabian through the safest streets and go out along the Appian Way. I’ll meet you there and pick you up. We’ll get out of Rome at once!”
He had not been gone a minute before another severe quake shook the city so that it seemed as if the earth rose and fell in billows. Collapsing buildings were heard crashing down upon the streets, dogs howled, other animals added their fearful noises to the panic-stricken cries of the populace, and a pandemonium was the result.
Mr. Fabian and his wife kept their presence of mind in all this distraction, but Mrs. Alexander wept loudly and dragged at her blonde hair in despair when she realized that this was her end. “Oh why did I ever want to come to Europe to be killed in Rome, when I could have lived a long life peacefully in Denver!” wailed she, hysterically.
It took all of Polly’s and Eleanor’s time and temper to soothe the fear-paralyzed woman. But she was able to follow the Fabians when they started for the Appian Way—in fact she wanted to run ahead and get out of the city.
It took a long time of trial and tortuous going before they reached the quieter sections of Rome; and finally they began to glimpse the Appian Way through the haze of fire and smoke that now spread a pall over the city.