Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — A COSTLY EARTHQUAKE [ARTICLE]

A COSTLY EARTHQUAKE

It was at Havre, during the height of the season; the low tide signal was flying and the usual crowd of men that one always sees there at the bathing hour had ranged themselves along the edge of the little wooden walk from the cluster of bath houses to the water's edge to see the fair bathers trip in. I had seen it all a hundred times at least and knew the scene by heart. The fat woman satiated me, the thin ones repelled me, the sands of this pebbly beach were never intended to be sat on comfortably, and I was about to retreat to the shaded corridors of Frascati’s wellknown hostelry, when M. le Qual, a tall, robust, well-preserved compatriot, whom I had first met at the table d’hote a week ago, approached and took a seat beside me. He was alone and naturally I remarked, -scanning the crowd of heads bobbing about on the waves before us: “Madame, I presume, is in the bath, monsieur?” “Yes,” replied he, pointing her out to me; “behold her!” She was standing erect now; the waves leaving to view a charming head. A beautiful head, I should have said—rich black hair, soft dark eyes, red lips and transparent -skin—in short, an ideal and piquant brunette, so pretty that I could not help telling the husband of my admiration. “But,’’said I, “she surely cannot be French, monsieur; she looks too much dike a Spanish woman.” “No,”.he answered, “she is neither the one nor the other,” and then, without further preamble or hesitation, .he began, and told me the following -story; 4 ilt was a Summer evening in the year 187 —,” said he, “and I was sitting on :the veranda of a charming dwelling in the outskirts of the city of Caracas. Before me stretched a perspective of beautifully kept lawn and shaded walks, while farther along, among the shady trees, shone the silvery gleam of a tiny lake, and far off in the distance the dazzling white of the Caracas houses against a background of sun and sombre mountains.

“But it was not at Nature's painting ithat J was gazing at that moment. I did mot need to search the landscape for ibeauties ,-to charm the eye when at my side was seated what seemed to me then and still—for -she is now my wife, sir—tfhe .loveliest woman that I had ever set 'eyes’on. “To describe ito you the ardor with Which I regarded the lustre of the dark hair, the gentle depths of the black eyes, the scarlet curves of the smiling lips and sylph-like figure is simply impossible. Suffice it that I appreciated them so thoroughly. that I had just proposed to her- - though it took the courage of a Napoleon to do it—and was waiting breathlessly to receive my answer, •‘•‘She liked me, I knew, her father also, and I had been a great deal at their house; but liking is not love, and whether Nina 4e Latore loved me or not, the cool friendliness of her manner, so tantalizing to a lover who his doom ahead, had hitherto prevented my finding out. “Yon know of course, sir,” pursued M. le QuaL, diverging a moment from the line of his story, “how frequent earthquakes are in that part of South Africa, especially in summer, when they oecur almost daily. At the day I speak of, every since early morning, the ground had been shivering inwardly, while from time to time a low, deep rumble could be heard, like the mutter of distant thunder. “Like every one else, however, who lived in Caracas, I had grown accustomed to and in a measure indifferent tq these constant seismic disturbances, but now, even in the absorbing interest of the subject that filled my thoughts, I could not help noticing how greatly of late these quaking tremors had increased. “In fact, I had hardlyfinished my lover’s plea, when a huge porcelain va6e at the fodt of the steps was jostled from its pedestal and shivered to atoms and at the same instant I was thrown violently to the floor of the balcony. With a haste that ■ great peril only inspires, I was on my feet again and turning to seek Nina to seize her in my arms and if possible to bear her to a place of safety. She was no longer beside me, and looking about me, dazed though I was, I could no longer see her. “It was useless as well as madness to wait longer, and with difficulty keeping my footing on the rocking floor I fled down the staggering, steps and from the dangerous neighborhood of the groaning house. To go far, however, on the tossing ground was impossible; sick and dizzy, I was forced to my knees. The house behind me swayed and swun<* from side to side; the chimneys cracked and toppled down on the roof; whole planks.

wrenched fev the tmrtft from their fastenings, 'leaving great holes m the walls; the stairs writhed and fell apart , the beams slid from their supports an crashed fco the earth in a debris of wrecked wood, glass, bricks and plaster. “In less than a moment, it seems to me, the beautiful villa of an hour ago was reduced to a heap) of dust and broken rubbish. All this happened in less time than it takes to tell it, but a still more terrible scene remained to be ■enacted, for all of a sudden, with a report like musketry, the earth cracked open and the ruins were swnllowed up in its depths. ‘ ‘At the same instant there was a scream behind me in Nina’s voice. I turned, but alas! only in time to see the earth open again where she lay and engulf my beloved as the ruins had been. “ ‘God have mercy upon us!’ I cried, and sought on hands and knees to fight my way towards the crevice that I believed had swallowed her, but now on every side great rents were coming and going, nearer and nearer each time to where I crouched, reckless and paralyzed with despair, and then, before I had time to realize the horror of it, and with only a momentary vision of dense blackness before my eyes, I too was engulfed in the earth!” M. le Qnai paused to wipe his damp brow, beaded with sweat at the mere recollection of that hideous moment. “Monsieur,” resumed he, presently, when he had somewhat conquered his emotion, “if ever you have dreamed that you were buried alive, then you have had a foretaste of the feeling with which I once recovered consciousness. No hell could have been blacker than the place where, on regaining my senses, I found myself, prone on my back. No crack or cranny permitted entrance to a single ray of God’s blessed light, and to know the full torture of eternal darkness you have only once to experience it. The deadly silence, too, of the place was awful ;my breathing sounded to me like the hissing of a furnace. I could plainly see my heart beat, and even, it seemed to me, the blood surge through my veins. “When I tried to move, sharp pains shot through my whole body, but I soon found, to my joy, that I was only bruised and no bones broken. God knows why I was not killed, for the floor of my prison was of solid rock. “How far had I fallen? With an effort, I dragged myself to my feet, and taking a trinket hung to my watch-chain, I hurled it with all my strength up into the darkness. It struck, but not before its force was nearly spent. The last hope left me. I was buried alive in a pit—a pit more than a hundred feet deep! “Overcome by the anguish of my thoughts and the oppression of the pitchy darkness, I sank again to the ground and gave myself up to utter despair. “After a while, an eternity in length, I determined to explore the extent of the cavern into which fate had plunged me and which was destined to be my grave. Perhaps, too, a sound that for a little while past had been gradually becoming audible to me had something to -do with rousing me to action. “This noise came from a distance, and to my heated fancy and sensitive ears, sounded like the wheezing of a subterranean bellows. I cautiously moved forward and found the ground seemed to slope towards the point whence the noise came. “Walking on slowly, with outstretched hand, groping, you may say, it was not very long before I struck against a wall of rock. Retracing my way, I came against another, equally solid. “ ‘I am swallowed in a cleft? thought I, shudderingly, ‘high, narrow., burrowing deeper and deeper with with every inch and leading—God knows where. — to the bowels of the earth, perhaps? “Crushed by this discovery, for awhile I was powerless to advance a step, but then, as I had nothing to lose, I determined to make an effort to press on and leave no stone unturned that might set me at liberty. Creeping little by little down the stony gorge, I was at last close to the point whence those panting puffs came. My heart beat like a hammer.

“‘lt is a precipice,’l thought, iand the wheezing sound the wind in its depths. Better be killed outright than die a slow death of starvation!’ “And I put out my foot expecting to encounter only spaee. Instead I stumbled over something soft and fell forward. Blindly I felt about me and my hand touched something warm a human face ! “I felt again, running my hand along the body as the blind explore, and made out a dress! Like a flash it dawned upcn me. ‘Nina, Nina” I cried aloud, my voice rolling and reverberating like the voice of a thousand. “She was not dead, either, for it was the sound of her breathing that I had taken for a wind in the subterranean depths or the smothered rushing of a volcanic stream. I eaught her hands— I chafed them in mine—but it is useless, monsieur, to go over again those dragging moments of agony when I worked over the half-dead body of my love, or those moments of mingled joy aad torture when her returning consciousness had to struggle with the fearful reality. ‘‘l told her as well as I could where we were and how we had come there. To her piteous pleas for comfort I could only respond with a sorrowful silence or an equally piteous entreaty to her to be hopeful. “At that moment, sir—how strangely does the aspect of things change as the wheel of life goes!—we would both of us have given ten years of our lives to have escaped from our living tomb. Now I, at least, would not have escaped that experience. I should then never have known those bitter-sweet hours when my love and I, buried together and with death staring us in the face, were drawn together bv the strongest tie humanity knows—the bond of a common adversity. “When at last, on my persuasion, Nina sought to move, she fell back helpless with a loud cry of pain; she had sprained her ankle and could not stir without agony. Nothing could be done but to lie there where she had fallen.

“How long we remained thus I do not know. Hunger and thirst came in time, two new troubles added to the rest. Though we could not lose ourselves in sleep, still our minds were tortured with waking dreams, horrible to think of now. The strain, in truth, was so hideously cruel, that Nina, at times, grew delirious, tossed and writhed regardless of the pain she gave herself and filled the darkness with her heartrending cries. “Then again peace would return and she would cling to my hand for human companionship simply to feel that some one was near. As I say, how long this lasted, I do not know, but, suddenly, after an eternal torture, a shiver struck brusquely through walls and floor, followed by another and still another, accompanied at first by a faint rumble that :i"-ay in the echoing bowels of the ... it soon the rumble grew to a roar, the roar to thunder. The noise was deafening. The rocky ground heaved like the ocean. It was my turn now to lose my reason. I knew not what I did, but

Nina tells me that I seized her in my arms, that in & frenzy of despairing love I covered her face, her hands with kisses, crying aloud wildly; “ ‘lf die we must, Nina, wo can at least die together! You are mine, mine forever now! Not even death itself can part us!’ “Proportionately as I lost my senses Nina became calm, besought me to regain my composure and pleaded with me to think only of the next world—so near. “But heaven ordered otherwise. In the midst of the tumultuous tossing of the earth the roof of our cavern suddenly split in twain, letting in so blinding a glare of light that even with our eyes closed our eyeballs felt as if pierced with red-hot knives. Either this was tho signal for quiet again or the dying throe of the giant chained in those rock-ribbed vitals; the rumbling died away, the sickening quaking ceased. “When we at last dared to open our eyes and look at each other we found ourselves in a rift of comparatively shallow depth. The second earthquake had been our savior and forced up the bed of the subterranean gorge that imprisoned us perhaps eighty feet.” “But how did you get out then?” cried I, shivering with interest, as if I myself had been the victim of this terrible catastrophe. “With no trouble at all, monsieur,” Mme. le Qual responded, who had long since come from the water and now advanced from the shelter of her bathhouse, “ the Caracas people drew us out with ropes, you know. They had run, as usual, to the earthquake ground to give what help they could, and the rest was easy.” “My poor little girl!” murmured her husband tenderly, as he drew her to his side, “you speak of it lightly, but that earthquake cost you dearly—home and father at a blow, with only a husband to balance the loss.” “Exactly,” she answered, laughing lightly and pulling him to his feet with the roguish abandon of a happy child, “a husband too infatuated to mind the fact that owing to that self-same earthquake his goddess—limps I—[From the French.