As the cars drew near Florence, Mr. Fabian described the natural
protection afforded that city by the mountains surrounding it. This
figured mightily in past ages, he said, when enemies of the Florentines
tried to overcome the city and break the power of their trading.
“You’ll find everything about Florence savoring of antiquity,” announced
Mr. Fabian, as they entered the city. “The winding narrow streets, the
irregular roofs that break the sky-line, the ancient churches with bits
of old carving in the least expected places, and last but not least, the
folk of Florence with their quaint costumes of bright colors.”
The first day in Florence was spent in visiting the Pitti Palace, the
basilica of San Miniato, which was of architectural value to the
students, and then the Museo Nazionale.
The second day was given to visiting at the Piazzale Michelangelo, and
to see the Cathedral Santo Maria del Fiore, with its beautiful façade.
Mr. Fabian conducted the girls to Pisa, the third day, but the elders in
the party preferred to remain in the cars when the ardent admirers of
antiquity visited the places of past glories.
Then they drove on from Florence and stopped over night at Arretzo; and
in the morning they went to Perugia, a mediaeval town with ancient
buildings and still more ancient churches.
From Perugia the route lay due south to Rome. It proved to be a
delightful trip through the wonderful country-lanes and spreading fields
which were cultivated to the last inch.
As they came nearer Rome, they began to feel the oppressive heat which
had been gradually growing more intense all that day. Mr. Fabian had
planned to spend a full week, or more, in Rome in order to give the
girls ample time to see everything there, worth while.
The first day they visited the Coliseum, the Forum and other famous
places. Then he escorted them to the Cloaca Maxima to study Etruscan
Art. Next they visited the Museum in the Villa of Pope Julius; then the
Etruscan Museum of the Vatican; also the Mamertine Prison, and many
places famed for their collections of antiquities and art.
One day they went to see the famous façade and bits of architecture
still to be found in Rome, such as the “Spanish Steps” of the Piazza di
Spagna, and the Triumphal Arch of Septimus Severus. Mr. Fabian had
unwillingly to end the day’s visits, however, because of the terrific
heat.
The sun had been shining through a red haze for several days, and the
reflection from the Mediterranean was so oppressive that the tourists
decided to cut their stay in Rome short and drive on across Italy to
Naples, which always boasted a fine breeze from the Bay.
So the hotel bill was paid that night, and the baggage made ready for an
early start. The travelling trunk was locked on the rack of the
automobile, and everything else was prepared that no time would be lost
in the morning.
The heat that evening was even worse than at any time during their stay
in Rome, and rumors were heard that the seismograph had registered
tremors and slight earthquakes, all day. This was not encouraging to the
Americans, and they retired at night with all apparel on excepting shoes
and their coats.
Fatigue and the drowsiness produced by the heat overcame everyone after
a time, and they slept until about one o’clock. A strange shaking of
Polly’s bed woke her suddenly. She sat up and felt the room swaying. She
reached out and called to Eleanor.
“Get up, Nolla! Get up—it’s the earthquake!” cried she, springing from
the bed.
“Uh! Wh-a-d you s-ay?” mumbled Eleanor drowsily.
“Quick! We’ve got to get out. The earthquake’s here!” shouted Polly,
trying in vain to catch hold of the bed-post while everything rocked as
if on a vessel at sea.
A falling picture upon Eleanor’s feet startled her so that she jumped up
and gazed in affright at Polly. “What is it?” asked she, seeing the
toilet dishes on the stand roll upon the floor.
“Earthquakes! Hurry—hurry!” screamed Polly, almost too frightened to
find the buttons on her dress.
Dodo and Nancy tumbled headlong into the room now, both crying and
wishing they had “left this old Rome before this happened.”
The girls managed to get into their shoes in short order and when Mrs.
Fabian rushed in to drag them forth, they were all dressed. Polly and
Eleanor remembered to catch up their bags, and then ran after the
Fabians who had roused the Alexanders and told them to run for the open
street.
But the street presented such a scene that Mr. Fabian instantly decided
to leave whatever they had forgotten in the hotel rooms and get away in
the automobiles.
“Oh, see that chimney topple over!” cried Nancy, as the brick structure
of a distant building was seen to fall in.
Screams and cries, pushing and huddling of the mobs in the streets,
created a panic with the excitable Latin people, and Mr. Alexander
quickly turned and said to his party: “I’m going to get out the cars.
Dodo can go with me to handle Ma’s roadster. You-all follow Mr. Fabian
through the safest streets and go out along the Appian Way. I’ll meet
you there and pick you up. We’ll get out of Rome at once!”
He had not been gone a minute before another severe quake shook the city
so that it seemed as if the earth rose and fell in billows. Collapsing
buildings were heard crashing down upon the streets, dogs howled, other
animals added their fearful noises to the panic-stricken cries of the
populace, and a pandemonium was the result.
Mr. Fabian and his wife kept their presence of mind in all this
distraction, but Mrs. Alexander wept loudly and dragged at her blonde
hair in despair when she realized that this was her end. “Oh why did I
ever want to come to Europe to be killed in Rome, when I could have
lived a long life peacefully in Denver!” wailed she, hysterically.
It took all of Polly’s and Eleanor’s time and temper to soothe the
fear-paralyzed woman. But she was able to follow the Fabians when they
started for the Appian Way—in fact she wanted to run ahead and get out
of the city.
It took a long time of trial and tortuous going before they reached the
quieter sections of Rome; and finally they began to glimpse the Appian
Way through the haze of fire and smoke that now spread a pall over the
city.
They had just heard the welcome sounds of Mr. Alexander’s voice, when
another tremor shook the city so that the girls clung to each other in
support. Instantly a man’s genial voice called: “Well, I’ll be
gol-durned if I had to come all the way to Rome to get an earthquake! We
can get these sort nearer Denver, without charge.”
In spite of their fear everyone smiled at the little man who could joke
in the face of such disasters. But he created the effect of releasing
the tension, and thus destroying much of the fear.
Mr. Alexander directed the Fabian party to their cars, and when they had
climbed in and wished the tourists who crowded around, a safe escape
from the city, the two drivers started away.
They had not gone more than a mile, when another very severe shock
seemed to move the ground from under the cars. The screams from the
crowded city streets could be heard at this distance from the scene, and
Polly said: “It makes me feel like a criminal to run away and leave all
those people to their doom.”
“It’s better for as many to get out of the city as can go, unless they
are trained to help in this emergency,” said Mrs. Fabian.
Mrs. Alexander had calmed down considerably when she was seated in the
car, and now she began to question her husband.
“Ebeneezer, did you bring my travelling bag?”
“I dun’no. I grabbed up everything in sight, from my old razor strop to
my scarf-pin,” returned her spouse, jovially.
“My bag held that new evening coat,” cried Mrs. Alexander.
“Never mind a little thing like that!” advised her lord.
“That’s all _you_ care for a two-hundred dollar wrap, but I know you
didn’t forget that horrid pipe!” retorted she.
“I _know_ I diden’, too, ’cause it’s goin’ in my mouth this minute!”
chuckled Mr. Alexander, making his companions laugh.
“Call Dodo—stop her, this minute,” commanded Mrs. Alexander. “I must
ask her if she took my bag. If she didn’t I’m going back for it!”
To pacify her, the cars stopped and Dodo was asked if she saw the bag
that had held her mother’s evening wrap.
“No, but I thought I caught up one of Ma’s belongings,” Dodo called
back. “When I got to the garage and turned the light on to see what I
had saved I found it was a bed-pillow!”
A laugh greeted this reply, and Nancy then admitted: “I didn’t know what
I was doing when I first jumped out of bed, but I intended getting my
hair-brush and comb in case of need. When we got out on the street I
found I had the cake of soap and the telephone pad that was kept on the
stand beside the bed.”
“Well, Ma,” asked Mr. Alexander, as Dodo started her car again, “are you
going to get out and go back for them things?”
“You are a bad cruel man, Ebeneezer Alexander, and I wonder that I could
live with you as long as I have,” snapped his wife.
“I wonder at it myself,” chuckled the cheerful “cruel” man.
But they drove on and no more was said about the elaborate evening wrap
that was lost in the earthquake that night.
As they sped away, determined to get as far from the scene of disaster
as possible, that night, Eleanor spoke.
“I wonder if there is anything else I have to live through before I can
settle down quietly.”
“Now what’s the matter?” demanded Polly.
“Oh nothing, but I was just thinking—I went through a snow-slide on
Grizzly Peak; a land-slide on the Flat Top; a great mountain blizzard,
on the Rockies; a hold-up in New York, one night; an avalanche on the
Alps, and now an earthquake in Rome. What next, I wonder?”
“You ought to be grateful that you never experienced a sinking at sea
caused by a German submarine,” said Polly, earnestly.
The very seriousness of her remark made her friends laugh, so that
spirits rose accordingly, and just as they felt that the worst was over,
another severe quake shook the ground they were speeding over.
Dodo’s car was ahead, with its headlights streaming in advance upon the
roadway. Immediately after the last shake, a deep rumbling and crackling
was heard as if something ahead of them had parted and fallen down. Dodo
leaned forward anxiously and gasped.
Mrs. Fabian was with her in the roadster, and the girl quickly put on
the brakes and reversed the wheel. “Just look out, Mrs. Fabian, and see
if you can see a gap across the road.”
Even as she spoke, Mr. Alexander passed the little car and shouted to
Dodo: “What’d you stop for—right in the middle of the road?”
The next moment he was biting his tongue when the front wheels on his
car caved into the newly made crevice across the road. Everyone was
jounced up and down frightfully as the wheels settled into the soft
earth, and Dodo jumped out to see if anyone was injured.
“Oh, oh! I know Pa’s broken my neck!” cried Mrs. Alexander, as she
caught her plump neck between two fat hands.
“Blame it all on the pesky earthquake!” shouted Mr. Alexander, thickly,
while the end of his tongue began swelling where his teeth had cut into
it.
Everyone was ordered out, while Mr. Alexander tried to back the touring
car out of the cleft across the roadway. But it was a deep trench and
the front of the car had settled into the earth.
“The only way to get her up is to plank down several rails and run her
out on them,” said Mr. Alexander, lispingly, as he studied the
situation.
“It’s too dark to hunt for rails or boards, and there isn’t a house in
sight,” Dodo replied.
“What can we do, then?” asked the perplexed little man, scratching his
head for an idea to start from his brain.
It was nearly dawn when the peasants started from their homes for the
city, to sell their market-goods, so the tourists had not long to sit
and wait, before a cart drawn by two sturdy oxen rumbled along.
“Hey, there! If you hook them beasts to my car and pull it out of this
hole fer me, I’ll pay fer the animals!” called Mr. Alexander, hoping the
man understood his English.
Mr. Fabian then interpreted what had been said, and the man examined the
condition of the ditch before he replied. Then he gave Mr. Fabian to
understand that he could remove two heavy side-boards from the cart and
try in that way to help run the wheels out.
After strenuous labor and many pulls and tugs on the part of the oxen,
the car was backed to the road again. But the ditch was still there, and
it was too deep to cross without a bridge, or by filling it in.
By the time the peasant had been paid his price, a number of other carts
had driven up and the men sat pondering how to get over. It was Mr.
Alexander who waved his arms like a wind-mill in Holland, and shouted to
make them understand.
“Let’s all get busy and scoop the earth into the ditch. Some of us can
dig it from that field and others can carry it in their hats to fill
in.”
Mr. Fabian tried to explain, but the peasants shook their heads. One man
jumped out and ran back in haste along the road.
“What’s the matter? Is he afraid we’ll make him work?” demanded Mr.
Alexander, impatiently.
“No,” explained Mr. Fabian, “he said he knew where he could get a shovel
and other implements. There’s a farm a bit farther on.”
Shortly after that, the man returned and with him came two young men,
all carrying shovels, and one pushed a cart. With these tools for work,
every man went at the job, and in half an hour the crevice caused by the
quake was temporarily filled up.
While they worked the men asked Mr. Fabian about the earthquake in the
city, and he told them what havoc it had made. The sun had risen by the
time the two cars were able to cross the bridged crevice, and then
waited to allow the ox-carts to get past.
“Say, there! Are you going to take that stuff to Rome, to sell?” called
Mr. Alexander, eagerly.
The men comprehended and nodded their heads.
“Well, here! We’re starved now and will buy the fruit and ready-to-eat
stuff. Got anything cooked?” called he.
One farmer had fowl, another had fruit and still another had a load of
vegetables, so the tourists bought all the fruit they wanted, and the
peasants went their way, rejoicing at the good luck the quake had
brought them in the form of rich Americans who paid so well for filling
the ditch, and then selling them fruit.
As soon as the tourists reached a quiet spot beside the road, they
halted the cars and enjoyed the fruit, for that was all the breakfast
they would have until they reached Naples.
Late in the afternoon they stopped at a good hotel and sighed in relief
to think they could have a good, long, night’s rest. The daily papers
were filled with the account of the damage done in Rome by the recent
earthquake, but the list of those dead or lost was not yet complete, as
so many were buried under the débris of fallen buildings.
Suddenly Mr. Alexander threw back his head and roared.
“What’s the matter, Pa?” asked Dodo, frowning at his shout.
“Ho, I just read how we’re all dead. Did you know we were lost in the
’quake last night?”
They all stared at him. Mr. Fabian ran over to see the article for
himself. Then he read it aloud: “Among those stopping at the Hotel ——
in Rome, which collapsed at the third severe shock, were a party of
American tourists who were with Mr. Fabian, the well-known authority on
Antiques. Mrs. Fabian and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander and daughter,
and two young misses, were members in this party. A few other guests of
the hotel are also unaccounted for.”
“If that isn’t the strangest thing,” exclaimed Mr. Fabian, “to sit here
and read our own death-notice. Now I’ll have to wire Ashby that we’re
all right, and we’ll have to cable to the States that this report is
false.”
The girls wanted to read the notice, too, and Nancy said they ought to
keep the notice as a joke on journalism in Italy.
“No joke about it, say I. Now I have to wear crêpe fer myself, because
everyone out West will celebrate when they believe me done for,” said
Mr. Alexander.