At the time of “the great earthquake of ’68,” said Mr. Swiddler—William Swiddler; of Calaveras—I was at Arica, Peru. I have not a map by me, and am not certain that Arica is not in Chili, but it can’t make much difference; there was earthquake all along there.
Sam Baxter was with us; I think he had gone from San Francisco to make a railway, or something. On the morning of the ’quake, Sam and I had gone down to the beach to bathe. We had shed our boots, and begun to moult, when there was a slight tremor of the earth, as if the elephant who supports it was pushing upward, or lying down and getting up again. Next, the surges, which were flattening themselves upon the sand and dragging away such small trifles as they could lay hold of, began racing out seaward, as if they had received a dispatch that somebody was not expected to live. This was needless, for we did not expect to live.
When the sea had receded entirely out of sight, we started after it; for, it will be remembered, we had come to bathe; and bathing without some kind of water is not refreshing in a hot climate.
For the first four or five miles the walking was very difficult, although the grade was tolerably steep. The ground was soft, there were tangled forests of sea-weed, old rotten ships, rusty anchors, human skeletons, and a multitude of things to impede the pedestrian. The floundering sharks bit our legs as we toiled past them, and we were constantly slipping down upon the flat fish strewn about like orange peel on a sidewalk. Sam, too, had stuffed his shirt front with such a weight of doubloons from the wreck of an old galleon, that I had to help him across all the worst places. It was very dispiriting.
Presently, away on the western horizon, I saw the sea coming back. It occurred to me then that I did not wish it to come back. A tidal wave is nearly always wet, and I was now a good way from home, with no means of making a fire.
The same was true of Sam, but he did not appear to think of it in that way. He stood quite still a moment with his eyes fixed on the advancing line of water; then turned to me, saying, very earnestly:
“Tell you what, William; I never wanted a ship so bad from the cradle to the grave! I would give m-o-r-e for a ship!—More than for all the railways and turnpikes you could scare up! I’d give more than a hundred, thousand, million dollars! I would—I’d give all I’m worth, for—just—one—little—ship!”
To show how lightly he could part with his wealth, he lifted his shirt out of his trousers, unbosoming himself of his doubloons, which tumbled about his feet, a golden storm.
By this time the tidal wave was close upon us. Call that a wave! It was one solid green wall of water, higher than Niagara Falls, stretching as far as we could see to right and left, without a break in its towering front! It was by no means clear what we ought to do. The moving wall showed no projections by means of which the most daring climber could hope to reach the top. There was no ivy; there were no window-ledges. Stay!—there was the lightning rod! No, there wasn’t any lightning rod. Of course, not!
Looking despairingly upward, I made a tolerably good beginning at thinking of all the mean actions I had wrought in the flesh, when I saw projecting beyond the crest of the wave a ship’s bowsprit, with a man sitting on it reading a newspaper! Thank fortune, we were saved!