Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, our Consul and his wife, and to recover the papers of the Consulate, for we knew now that the Consulate had been entirely destroyed. Mr. Bayard Cutting, our Consul from Milan, was of the party, and Mr. Winthrop Chanler, whose mission was to look up missing Americans. From the moment the news of the earthquake was known in America, the Embassy was besieged by telegrams from people at home who had friends in Sicily. The largest American colony in Southern Italy is at Taormina, only two hours distant by train from Messina. It was impossible for our Taorminesi to send word of their safety to their relations at home, who were torn with anxiety about them. It was at this time we first heard that Miss Catharine Bennett Davis of the Bedford Reformatory was traveling in Sicily and it was feared was in Messina, and of Anne Lee, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Paton, Harry Bowdoin, Charles King and Charles Williams, all Americans settled in Taormina by Etna, a town at first believed to have suffered severely.
We went up to the station to see the relief party start. The train was half an hour behind time. It was easy to see the impatience of the Americans to be off.
“You have plenty of provisions?” a friend on the platform asked Chanler.
“I have a sack of Bologna sausages, a whole Parmesan cheese, and a case of Nocera water,” was the answer.
“Where will you sleep?” asked an anxious wife of one of the travelers.
“We have one small tent, the last in Rome,—all the rest have been bought up,—and several umbrellas.”
Food, water, shelter were the three indispensables; they were going to a desert that lacked all these, and the torrential rain that began on the fatal day still continued.
“Try to establish wireless communication between a warship in the harbor and the Marconi station at Monte Mario,” said Athol to a press representative. “If that’s impossible, wire Rome via Malta.”
“Don’t expect news of me till I bring it myself,” one of the travelers called as the tardy train moved out of the station.
It seemed hopeless to expect news. Our first friend to leave was Colonel Delmé Radcliffe of the English Embassy (the famous hunter of lions), who went down on the first train after the disaster. Later several official people we knew and one or two newspaper men followed. After they left Naples we heard no more from them. They disappeared into the blue, and we learned not to look for news of them till they themselves brought it.