CHAPTER V.
The Panic Flight of a Homeless Host.
The scene that was visible in the streets of San Francisco on that dread
Wednesday morning was one to make the strongest shudder with horror.
Those three minutes of devastating earth tremors were moments never to
be forgotten. In such a time it is the human instinct to get into the
open air, and the people stumbled from their heaving and quivering
houses to find even the solid earth was swaying and rising and falling,
so that here and there great rents opened in the streets. To the
panic-stricken people the minutes that followed seemed years of terror.
Doubtless some among them died of sheer fright and more went mad with
terror. There was a roar in the air like a burst of thunder, and from
all directions came the crash of falling walls. They would run forward,
then stop, as another shock seemed to take the earth from under their
feet, and many of them flung themselves face downward on the ground in
an agony of fear.
Two or three minutes seemed to pass before the fugitives found their
voices. Then the screams of women and the wild cries of men rent the
air, and with one impulse the terror-stricken host fled toward the
parks, to get themselves as far as possible from the tottering and
falling walls. These speedily became packed with people, most of them
in the night clothes in which they had leaped or been flung from their
beds, screaming and moaning at the little shocks that at intervals
followed the great one.
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