Earthquakes, it is well known, proceed by action and re-action. The second shock, I was aware, must be imminent. I had just touched the threshold, and stood under the porch, when that curious spasmodic sensation once more stiffened every muscle in my limbs. Presently I felt myself lifted up from the ground. I was now under the portico, and was hurled against the pillar on my right; the rebound again drove me to the post on the opposite side; and after being thus repeatedly tossed and buffeted from right to left like a shuttlecock, I was thrust down, outward, on the ground on my head, with all that bundle of rags, having tumbled head-long the whole range of the four marble steps of entrance. The harm, however, was not so great as the fright; and, thanks to my gallant devotion, the whole party were wrapped and blanketed, till they looked like a party of wild Indians; we stood now on comparatively firm ground, and had leisure to look about us. Don Marzio's garden was open and spacious, being bounded on three sides by the half-crumbling wall of the town. On the fourth side was the house—a good, substantial fabric, but now miserably shaky and rickety. Close by the house was the chapel of the Ursuline convent, and above that its slender spire rose chaste and stainless, "pointing the way to heaven." Any rational being might have deemed himself sufficiently removed from brick and mortar, and, in so far, out of harm's way. Not so Don Marzio. He pointed to the shadow of that spire, which, in the pale wintry sunset, stretched all the way across his garden, and by a strange perversion of judgment, he contended that so far as the shadow extended, there might also the body that cast it reach in its fall, for fall it obviously must; and as the danger was pressing, he deemed it unwise to discuss which of the four cardinal points the tower might feel a leaning toward, whenever, under the impulse of the subterranean scourge, it would "look around and choose its ground." Don Marzio was gifted with animal courage, and even nerve, proportionate to the might of his stalwart frame. But then his was merely a combative spirit. Thews and sinews were of no avail in the case. The garden was no breathing ground for him, and he resolved upon prompt emigration.
The people of Aquila, as indeed you may well know, of most towns in Southern Italy, have the habit of—consequently a peculiar talent for—earthquakes. They know how to deal with them, and are seldom caught unprepared. Two hundred yards outside the town gate, there is half a square mile of table-land on the summit of a hill—a market-place in days of ease, a harbor of refuge in the urgency of peril. From the first dropping of the earth-ball from the hand of their guardian saint, the most far-sighted among the inhabitants had been busy pitching their tents. The whole population—those, that is, who had escaped unscathed by flying tiles and chimney-pots—were now swarming there, pulling, pushing, hauling, and hammering away for very life: with women fainting, children screeching, Capuchins preaching. It was like a little rehearsal of doomsday. Don Marzio, a prudent housekeeper, had the latch-key of a private door at the back of the garden. He threw it open—not without a misgiving at the moss-grown wall overhead. That night the very stars did not seem to him sufficiently firm-nailed to the firmament! His family and dependents trooped after him, eager to follow. Rosalbina looked back—at one who was left behind. Don Marzio felt he owed me at least one word of leave-taking. He hemmed twice, came back two steps, and gave me a feverish shake of the hand.
"I am heartily sorry for you, my boy," he cried. "A fuoruscito, as I may say, a bird-in-the-bush—you dare not show your nose outside the door. You would not compromise yourself alone, you know, but all of us and our friends; we must leave you—safe enough here, I dare say," with a stolen glance at the Ursuline spire, "but—you see—imperative duties—head of a family—take care of the females—and so, God bless you!"
With this he left me there, under the deadly shade of the steeple—deadlier to him than the upas-tree; ordered his little household band out, and away they filed, one by one, the head of the family manfully closing the rear....
I was alone—alone with the earthquake.... There was a wood-cellar in one of the out-houses, access to which was easy and safe. One of my host's domestics had slipped flint and steel into my hands. In less than half-an-hour's time, a cheerful fire was crackling before me. I drew forth an old lumbering arm-chair from the wood-cellar, together with my provision of fuel. I shrouded myself in the ample folds of one of Don Marzio's riding-cloaks; I sat with folded arms, my eyes riveted on the rising blaze, summoning all my spirits round my heart, and bidding it to bear up. The sun had long set, and the last gleam of a sickly twilight rapidly faded. A keen, damp, north-east wind swept over the earth; thin, black, ragged clouds flitted before it, like uneasy ghosts. A stray star twinkled here and there in the firmament, and the sickle-shaped moon hung in the west. But the light of those pale luminaries was wan and fitful. They seemed to be aware of the hopelessness of their struggle, and to mourn in anticipation of the moment when they should faint in fight, and unrelieved darkness should lord it over the fields of the heavens.
The town of Aquila, or the Eagle, as the natives name it, is perched, eagle-like, on the brow of an abrupt cliff in the bosom of the loftiest Apennines. Monte Reale, Monte Velino, and the giant of the whole chain, the "Gran Sasso d'Italia," look down upon it from their exalted thrones. Within the shelter of that massive armor, the town might well seem invulnerable to time and man. But now, as I gazed despondingly round, the very hills everlasting seemed rocking from their foundation, and their crests nodding to destruction. Which of those mighty peaks was to open the fire of hell's artillery upon us? Was not Etna once as still and dark as yonder great rock? and yet it now glares by night with its ominous beacon, and cities and kingdoms have been swept away at its base.
Two hours passed away in gloomy meditation. The whole town was a desert. The camp meeting of the unhoused Aquilani was held somewhere in the distance: its confused murmur reached me not. Only my neighbors, the Ursuline nuns, were up and awake. With shrinking delicacy, dreading the look and touch of the profane even more than the walls of their prison-house, they had stood their ground with the heroism of true faith, and reared their temporary asylum under their vine-canopied bowers, within the shade of the cloisters. A high garden-wall alone separated me from the holy virgins. They were watching and kneeling. Every note from their silver voices sank deep in my heart, and impressed me with something of that pious confidence, of that imploring fervor, with which they addressed their guardian angels and saints. Two hours had passed. The awfulness of prevailing tranquillity, the genial warmth of my fire, and the sweet monotony of that low, mournful chanting, were by degrees gliding into my troubled senses, and lulling them into a treacherous security. "Just so," I reasoned, "shock and countershock. The terrible scourge has by this time exhausted its strength. It was only a farce, after all. Much ado about nothing. The people of this town have become so familiar with the earthquake that they make a carnival of it. By this time they are perhaps feasting and rioting under their booths. Ho! am I the only craven here? And had I not my desire? Am I not now on speaking terms with an earthquake?"
Again my words conjured up the waking enemy. A low, hollow, rumbling noise, as if from many hundred miles' distance, was heard coming rapidly onward along the whole line of the Apennines. It reached us, it seemed to stop underneath our feet, and suddenly changing its horizontal for a vertical direction, it burst upward. The whole earth heaved with a sudden pang; it then gave a backward bound, even as a vessel shipping a sea. The motion then became undulatory, and spread far and wide as the report of a cannon, awakening every echo in the mountain. There was a rattle and clatter in the town, as if of a thousand wagons shooting down paving stones. The Ursuline steeple waved in the air like a reed vexed by the blast. The chair I stood on was all but capsized, and the fire at my feet was overthrown. The very vault of heaven swung to and fro, ebbing and heaving with the general convulsion. The doleful psalmody in the neighboring ground broke abruptly. The chorus of many feminine voices sent forth but one rending shriek. The clamor of thousands of the town-folk from their encampment gave its wakeful response. Then the dead silence of consternation ensued. I picked up every stick and brand that had been scattered about, steadied myself in my chair, and hung down my head. "These black hounds," I mused, "hunt in couples. Now for the repercussion."
I had not many minutes to wait. Again the iron-hoofed steeds and heavy wheels of the state chariot of the prince of darkness were heard tramping and rattling in their course. Once more the subterranean avalanche gathered and burst. Once more the ground beneath throbbed and heaved as if with rending travail. Once more heaven and earth seemed to yearn to each other; and the embers of my watch-fire were cast upward and strewn asunder. It was an awful long winter night. The same sable clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through the chinks and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the chillness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame. Stupor and lethargy soon followed these brief moments of speechless excitement. Bewildered imagination peopled the air with vague, unutterable terrors. Legions of phantoms sported on those misshapen clouds. The clash of a thousand swords was borne on the wind. Tongues of living flame danced and quivered in every direction. The firmament seemed all burning with them. I saw myself alone, helpless, hopeless, the miserable butt of all the rage of warring elements. It was an uncomfortable night. Ten and twelve times was the dreadful visitation reproduced between sunset and sunrise, and every shock found me more utterly unnerved; and the sullen, silent resignation with which I recomposed and trimmed my fire had something in it consummately abject, by the side of the doleful accents with which the poor half-hoarse nuns, my neighbors, called on their blessed Virgin for protection.
The breaking morn found me utterly prostrated; and when Don Marzio's servants had so far recovered from their panic as to intrude upon my solitude, and offer their services for the erection of my tent in the garden, I had hardly breath enough left to welcome them. Under that tent I passed days and nights during all the remainder of February. The shocks, though diminished in strength, almost nightly roused us from our rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by two, by three they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with faithful guides, by whose aid I reached the sea-coast. Here a Maltese vessel was waiting to waft me to a land of freedom and security. I can tell you, my friends, that from that time I was cured forever of all curiosity about earthquakes.