he earthquake. While we
were shaking it, there came another shock. We remembered another
door, which we opened, we went in and found the certificates and
brought away all such other things as we thought likely to be useful
for the moment and gradually carried them down. Our professor's
niece made the things up into bundles and put them on our shoulders
and so, passing the heaps of dead bodies, of rubbish and ruins, we
went to the railway station.

Here they made us get into a second-class carriage, which we supposed
would start for Catania, and we had nothing to eat but oranges, which
were given us by a soldier.

[It must have been while they were in this carriage that Corrado and
Vittorio went to the station and took train for Catania, passing
quite close to them and not seeing them. There were twelve
waggon-loads of oranges which had come from Catania before the
disaster in the course of trade, and orders were given that they were
to be distributed among the survivors. Thus the waggons were emptied
and people could be put into them.]

Opposite us was a waggon full of soldiers and sailors. Our
professor's niece called a soldier and begged him not to forget us.
He immediately brought us three loaves of bread, five flasks of wine,
three tins of preserved meat and some sausage.

Imagine our happiness when we saw that meat after those days of
hunger! We drank the wine at once because we had nowhere else to put
it and the soldiers wanted their flasks back. We were eating oranges
all the time, because they gave us plenty.

After we had been in this waggon two days, one of the railway-men
told us that there had come a German steamer which would take us to
Naples. We took with us some bread, some oranges and a little salame
which we had over, and went to the port, where, fortunately, we found
a boat which took us to the steamer.

At five minutes past eleven on the sixth day as the steamer departed
from Messina, the professor, his wife and his niece began to cry.

The German sailors prepared bread and also basins of soup with pasta
in it, and when the bell sounded at noon they distributed the food
among us all.

When we had eaten it, we went below to see whether the women required
anything.

At half-past four they gave us soup with rice in it and plenty of