picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and
the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing
whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and
sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms,
crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to
my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could
see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the
awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I
staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way
down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and
the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of
a thousand bells into the heaving lake.

Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten
minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later
standing among the ruins of her little yali.

* * * * *

Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been
destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew
into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no
trace remains, except a mound of gold stones emerging above the lake to
the south. Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a
practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the
_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily
picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into
a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in
the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail
match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the