ot believe my ears. Sent early abroad for my education, I was not
familiar with the most dreaded natural phenomenon of my native land.
I saw, with inexpressible astonishment, a look of terror in my chief's
eyes. Suddenly I felt giddy. The General staggered against me heavily;
the girl seemed to reel in the middle of the room, the taper fell out
of her hand and the light went out; a shrill cry of 'Misericordia!'
from the old woman pierced my ears. In the pitchy darkness I heard the
plaster off the walls falling on the floor. It is a mercy there was no
ceiling. Holding on to the latch of the door, I heard the grinding of
the roof-tiles cease above my head. The shock was over.

"'Out of the house! The door! Fly, Santierra, fly!' howled the General.
You know, senores, in our country the bravest are not ashamed of the
fear an earthquake strikes into all the senses of man. One never gets
used to it. Repeated experience only augments the mastery of that
nameless terror.

"It was my first earthquake, and I was the calmest of them all. I
understood that the crash outside was caused by the porch, with its
wooden pillars and tiled roof projection, falling down. The next
shock would destroy the house, maybe. That rumble as of thunder was
approaching again. The General was rushing round the room, to find the
door perhaps. He made a noise as though he were trying to climb the
walls, and I heard him distinctly invoke the names of several saints.
'Out, out, Santierra!' he yelled.

"The girl's voice was the only one I did not hear.

"'General,' I cried, I cannot move the door. We must be locked in.'

"I did not recognize his voice in the shout of malediction and despair
he let out. Senores, I know many men in my country, especially in the
provinces most subject to earthquakes, who will neither eat, sleep,
pray, nor even sit down to cards with closed doors. The danger is not
in the loss of time, but in this--that the movement of the walls may
prevent a door being opened at all. This was what had happened to us. We
were trapped, and we had no help to expect from anybody. There is no man
in my country who will go into a house when the earth trembles. There
never was--except one: Gaspar Ruiz.

"He had come out of whatever hole he had been hiding in outside, and
had clambered over the timbers of the destroyed porch. Above the awful
subterranean groan of coming destruction I heard a mighty voice shouting
the word 'Erminia!' with the lun