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Whenremember that had not the effects of the earth-shock on the water been limited by the shores of South America, a wave of disturbance equal in extent to that which travelled westward would have swept toward the east, we see that the force of the shock was sufficient to have disturbed the waters of an ocean covering the whole surface of the earth.

When an earth-shock makes the soil under your feet quiver, and gape, and mutter, you feel that unnatural forces are being hurled against you, you feel that you are the mere sport and jest of an unjust deity. This was what they felt now. "Nay," said Clelia Alba, "if the earth opened, and took us, it would be kinder; it would bury us at least under our own rooftree."

Those conditions would at first instance inevitably produce a monstrous burst of static and an implosion to cause an earth-shock and a concussion wave audible at eighty miles distance. Once communication between time-frames had been established, however ...

Six hours after the occurrence of the earth-shock the double oscillations seemed for a while to have worked themselves into unison, for at this time three considerable waves rolled in upon the town. But clearly these waves must not be compared with those which in other instances had made their appearance within half an hour of the earth-throes.

Although the shocks had lasted but a few minutes, the whole town was destroyed. Not one building remained uninjured, and there were few which did not lie in shapeless heaps of ruins. At Tacna and Arica the earth-shock was less severe, but strange and terrible phenomena followed it. At the former place a circumstance occurred the cause and nature of which yet remain a mystery.

"Are you saying," Soames asked after a moment, "that ordinary earth-tremors record like explosion-waves, but that you'd have to have an implosion to make a record like this?" "Sure!" said the geophysics man. "But how can you have an implosion that will make an earth-shock? I'm going to have to take this whole damned wabble-bucket apart to find out what's the matter with it!

All the living things that heard That deadly earth-shock disappeared; The wild birds flew; the wild dogs fled, And howling left the unburied dead; The camels from their keepers broke, The distant steer forsook the yoke The nearer steed plunged o'er the plain, And burst his girth, and tore his rein; The bull-frog's note, from out the marsh, Deep-mouthed arose, and doubly harsh The wolves yelled on the caverned hill, Where echo rolled in thunder still; The jackal's troop, in gathered cry, Bayed from afar complainingly, With a mixed and mournful sound, Like crying babe, and beaten hound: With sudden wing and ruffled breast The eagle left his rocky nest, And mounted nearer to the sun, The clouds beneath him seemed so dun; Their smoke assailed his startled beak, And made him higher soar and shriek.

He intended to call for help in handling the matter of the children as soon as it would seem plausible that he needed help to get off the ground again. But he felt shaky, inside. The radar-report and the static and earth-shock and concussion-wave of the night before had been improbable enough. But this was more incredible still.

"They are good workers, but as superstitious as you can imagine. They are particularly shaky just now, for a number of queer things have happened lately in these parts. There is a volcano somewhere in action we had a storm of ashes a week ago. And night before last there was a positive earth-shock." "You seem like a pretty intelligent man," grunted Andy Sudds, in his blunt way.

The radar had said the thing which appeared in mid-air did so eighty miles away. The static-burst was simultaneous. There was a twenty-second interval between the static and the arrival of the earth-tremor waves. The static and the appearance of something from nowhere and the point of origin of the earth-shock matched up. They were one event.