Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/29

8 release, from the compressing rubbish, which the second shock of an hour after the first, had so shaken and closed in round him, that he could scarce breathe, he heard but a few feet off, her agonizing cries and groans, grow fainter, and fainter, and end in death. The lady, to whose faithful devotion his own life was owing, had escaped without a scratch. This one episode, from the innumerable relations given me, of personal peril and sad adventure, will scarce be deemed out of place, as affording a vivid picture of the terrors of an earthquake night.

This palazzo is the only building here, that has not been prostrated, or gutted of floors and roof, &c; the only lofty fragments standing anywhere, are fragments of the towers of the churches at c, d, and b.

At b (Fig. 264) was the great monastery of St. Dominica (Photog. No. 268, Coll. Roy. Soc), the great tower of which was shorn off, and an acutely-pointed aiguille alone left standing, as already alluded to (Part I.), sketched by me from the balcony of Palazzo Fino. This is not seen in any of the photographs. I am by no means certain that the acuteness of fracture in this instance, may be relied upon as indicating any shock having come up at an extremely sharp emergence at Montemurro; for although the fracture of the tower offered every characteristic of such, I could not corroborate it, by appeal to any other similar case here. There were very few buildings standing at all, and these indicated emergences, at angles that might be anything