Part 2 (1/2)

”I had to find a cloak.”

”A cloak!” he cried contemptuously. He himself had tarried to slip on his overcoat, but, no doubt, that was different. Certainly his wife made no rejoinder. ”To be buried under this house for the sake of a cloak,” he cried, his lips so chattering with terror that he could hardly p.r.o.nounce the words.

”Go first,” she said; and he ran out of the doorway. She followed him, leaving the door open behind her, and the candle burning in the room.

They were still in the pa.s.sage when an appalling roar deafened their ears. The lighted candle shot up into the air and was extinguished, and in the darkness the splitting of timber, the overthrow and the wreckage of furniture, rent the air and ceased. Of a sudden the throats of the fugitives were choked with dust. The fear which had so terrified him was justified. The floor had exploded, like artillery, in the room he had this moment quitted. His terror became a panic. He would have killed his wife had she stood in his way. He rushed downstairs, inarticulately crying. He fumbled in the darkness for the bolt of the front door, sobbing and cursing. He found it, flung the door open, and leaped out into the open air. He ran across the road, and as he ran a great stone fell with a crash, from the archway of the door, and the walls of the pa.s.sage clashed together behind him. With a loud clatter of thunder the whole house crumbled down into a smoking heap of bricks. Challoner turned. He was quite alone with the child in his arms. And for a little while he stood very still.

But he was no longer in darkness. About many of the villas on the hillside the flames were creeping, and their inhabitants were racing upward to the open heights, or searching desperately among the ruins for those whom the earthquake had entrapped. While lower down by the water's edge the city was ablaze and over all the bay the sky was red.

The ground still shook beneath Challoner's feet, and the child in his arms began to cry. He laid it down against the low wall of the path and crept cautiously back to the ruins of his house.

”Doris,” he called, and again, ”Doris.”

His voice was low, but there was more of awe than grief audible in the cry. ”Doris,” he called a third time, but in a louder and more urgent tone. A few bricks, hanging to a fragment of wall dislodged themselves and clattered down upon the heap of ruin. But no other answer came. He stooped suddenly where the archway of the entrance door had been. The great stone had fallen with so much force that one end had sunk into the ground; the other, however, rested upon a fragment of the stone pillar of the door; and so the stone lay under a pile of bricks t.i.tled at an angle. Through the s.p.a.ce left by the angle a woman's hand and arm protruded. It was not pinned down by the stone. It pointed with limp fingers toward Challoner, and beside it a trickle of blood ran out. Challoner knelt and touched the hand.

”Doris,” he said.

Her voice had not answered to his, and now there was no response in her fingers to his touch. The arm moved quite easily. The walls of the pa.s.sage had borne her down and crushed her. Challoner remembered with a s.h.i.+ver the crash and clatter of them as they had knocked together just behind his heels. His wife had been killed in that downfall. She could not have survived.

Challoner rose again to his feet.

”She was awake,” he said, and he talked aloud to himself. ”She should have hurried. She could have escaped had she hurried;” and the picture of her leaning upon her elbow in her bed in the dark troubled his soul. There is no terror like the terror which comes from the shaking of the earth and the overthrow of its houses. Yet she, a woman--so ran his thoughts--had endured it. Her hand pointing, from beneath the stones, accused him for all the limpness of its fingers. She had welcomed it.

The child wailed from the other side of the road. Challoner crossed to it. He stood and looked at it doubtfully. Still in doubt, he looked away. From the blazing town rose a babel of cries, a roar of flames, a crash of buildings falling in, and every now and then, quite distinct from the confusion, a shrill, clear scream would leap into the air like a thin fountain of water. But the sea was calm; the great s.h.i.+p, with every cord of its rigging strung black against the glowing sky, lay without a movement. Boats were plying between it and the sh.o.r.e.

Challoner could see the tiny specks of them on the red water.

”There's no tidal wave,” he said in a dull voice. ”That's extraordinary;” and then he picked up his daughter in his arms, and climbed higher up the hill to await the dawn.

CHAPTER III

CHALLONER'S PILGRIMAGE

There were two more shocks that night, the first at five minutes past one, the second half an hour before sunrise. James Challoner sat in the centre of the most open s.p.a.ce he could find, his overcoat drawn close about him and his daughter clasped tightly to his breast. But it was almost unconsciously that he held her so. His brain was dazed, and the only image at all clear in his mind was that of his dead wife's hand protruding beneath the great stone and directing against him its mute accusation. But, even so, it was the limp look of the fingers which chiefly troubled him, and that only troubled him from time to time. For the greater part of the interval before daybreak he sat watching the roofs of the buildings below him burst in tongues of fire and topple down with a clatter of slates in bright showers of sparks, much as a child sits open-mouthed at the fireworks. Now he huddled his coat close about him, now some spire of flame towering skyward more terribly beautiful than the rest, drew a cry from his lips; and now again, looking out over the quiet pond of the bay, he asked dully, ”Why is there no tidal wave?”

Morning came at last over the hill behind him, gray and extraordinarily cold. All about him he saw people, huddled like himself upon the slopes, men, women, and children, s.h.i.+vering in their night-attire and their bare feet b.l.o.o.d.y from the stones. All at once Challoner was aware that he was hungry. His little daughter reached out her arms and wailed. Hunger, too, as the sun rose, mastered the fears of the refugees upon the hill-side. One by one, group by group, they rose stiffly and straggled down to the ruined ways by the water-side. Challoner went with the rest; and half-way down they all began to hurry, beset by the same fear. There would not be food enough for all. The thought seemed to sweep like a wind across the face of the hill, and the hurry became savage.

Along the open esplanade families were squatting side by side. A few of the more fortunate had somehow secured and erected tents; and others were crowded into storage sheds. But the most of them were sitting in the open waiting desolately for they knew not what. And already in that town, though the earthquake was barely six hours old, catastrophe had made its sharp division between the sheep and the goats. For whereas upon the esplanade men and women, and amongst them many unexpected figures, were already organizing succor for the outcasts, amongst the smoking ruins the marauders were already at work, robbing, murdering. There was no longer any law in Valparaiso.

Challoner made his way to the esplanade. A man whom he knew, the agent of a steams.h.i.+p company, hurried past him. Challoner stopped him.

”Where can I get food?” he asked.

Challoner was a strongly built, tall man, and the agent answered roughly.

”You? You will have to wait. You are able to;” and then he caught sight of the child in Challoner's arms, still wrapped about with her bedclothes. His voice changed to friendliness.

”Yours?” he asked.

Challoner nodded.

”Where's its mother?”