Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/216

 afraid. A kind of exaltation possessed me that I should be there to see the wonderful, ghastly spectacle.

The Turks say that during an earthquake devils with fiery eyes fly about the sky. And surely we saw them, only they must have been huge stones, hurled into the air, which clashed together, giving forth sparks that, for the fraction of a second, illumined their dark petrine bodies. One of those devils fell with a crash on the stable. It went through the roof, and in a few minutes the entire building was ablaze.

After this the earthquake proper ceased, but the earth still trembled, so that the oldest child fell over on my lap two or three times; and Chrysoula, who was sitting comically tilted back with her feet in the air—her one thought being to keep them from catching again in the earth-cracks—would tip over, and then scramble back into her undignified position.

From the stable, now burning like a bonfire, a horse dashed madly out. He was making directly for us when he fell, and lay where he fell. He had stepped into an earth-crack and broken his leg, and had to be shot afterwards.

Meanwhile the noises gradually lessened; but the air was filling with smoke and the smell of the fires. My cousin's house still stood, apparently unhurt, except for the chimneys; but what a devastation there was of those around