SICILY IN SHADOW AND IN SUN

Books on Italy and Spain
By MAUD HOWE

ROMA BEATA. Letters from the Eternal City. With illustrations from drawings by John Elliott and from photographs. 8vo. In box. $2.50 net. Popular Illustrated Edition. Crown 8vo. In box. $1.50 net.

TWO IN ITALY. Popular Illustrated Edition. With six full-page drawings by John Elliott. Crown 8vo. In box. $1.50 net.

SUN AND SHADOW IN SPAIN. With four plates in color and other illustrations. 8vo. In box. $3.00 net.

SICILY IN SHADOW AND IN SUN. With twelve pictures from original drawings and numerous illustrations from photographs taken by John Elliott. 8vo. In box. $3.00 net.

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers
34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON

THE TELL TALE TOWER. Frontispiece.

The clock stopped at the hour of the earthquake.

SICILY IN SHADOW
AND IN SUN

THE EARTHQUAKE AND THE
AMERICAN RELIEF WORK
BY
MAUD HOWE
AUTHOR OF “ROMA BEATA,” “SUN AND SHADOW
IN SPAIN,” “TWO IN ITALY,” ETC.
With numerous illustrations
Including pictures from photographs taken
in Sicily and original drawings by
JOHN ELLIOTT
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1910

Copyright, 1910,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published, November, 1910.
LOUIS E. CROSSCUP
Printer
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.

TO
MRS. LLOYD C. GRISCOM

FOREWORD

Sicily, the “Four Corners” of that little ancient world that was bounded on the west by the Pillars of Hercules, is to southern Europe what Britain is to northern Europe, Chief of Isles, universal Cross-roads. Sicily lies nearer both to Africa and to Europe than any other Mediterranean island, and is the true connecting link between East and West. Battle-ground of contending races and creeds, it has been soaked over and over again in the blood of the strong men who fought each other for its possession. There has never been a Sicilian nation. Perhaps that is the reason the story of the island is so hard to follow, it’s all snarled up with the history of first one, then another nation. The most obvious way of learning something about Sicily is to read what historians have to say about it; a pleasanter way is to listen to what the poets from Homer to Goethe have sung of it, paying special heed to Theocritus—he knew Sicily better than anybody else before his time or since! Then there’s the geologist’s story—you can’t spare that; it’s the key to all the rest. The best way of all is to go to Sicily, and there fit together what little bits of knowledge you have or can lay your hands upon,—scraps of history, poetry, geology. You will be surprised how well the different parts of the picture-puzzle, now knocking about loose in your mind, will fit together, and what a good picture, once put together, they will give you of Sicily.

When a child in the nursery, you learned the story of the earliest time! How Kronos threw down his scythe, and it sank into the earth and made the harbor of Messina. (The geologists hint that the wonderful round, land-locked harbor is the crater of a sunken volcano, but you and I cling to the legend of Kronos.) In that golden age of childhood, you learned the story of the burning mountain, Etna, and went wandering through the purple fields of Sicily with Demeter, seeking her lost daughter, Persephone. You raced with Ulysses and his men from the angry Cyclops down to that lovely shore, put out to sea with them, and felt the boat whirled from its course and twisted like a leaf in the whirlpool current of Charybdis. When you left the nursery for the schoolroom, you learned the names of the succeeding nations that have ruled Sicily, every one of whom has left some enduring trace of their presence. As you cross from the mainland of Italy to this Sicily, you can, if you will use your memory and imagination, see in fancy the hosts who have crossed before you, eager, as you are, to make this jewel of the south their own.

First of all, look for the Sicans; some say they are of the same pre-Aryan race as the Basques. After the Sicans come the Sikels. They are Latins, people we feel quite at home with; their coming marks the time when the age of fable ends and history begins. Next come the Phoenicians, the great traders of the world, bringing the rich gift of commerce. They set up their trading stations near the coasts, as they did in Spain, and bartered with the natives—a peaceful people—as they bartered with the Iberians of the Peninsula. The real fighting began when the Greeks came, bringing their great gift of Art. Sicily now became part of Magna Graecia, and rose to its apogee of power and glory. Syracuse was the chief of the Greek cities of Sicily. The Greek rulers were called Tyrants. They were great rulers indeed; the greatest of them, Dionysius, ruled 406 B.C. Then came the heavy-handed Romans and the first glory of Sicily was at end. The Romans made a granary of Sicily and carried off its treasures to adorn imperial Rome. They stayed a long time, but with the crumbling of the Roman Empire there came a change in Sicily, the first Roman province, and for a time the Goths and the Byzantines ruled her. Then came the Saracens. They destroyed Syracuse and made a new capital, Palermo, that from their time to ours has remained the chief city of the island. After the Saracens came the Normans—the same generation of men that subdued England under William the Conqueror,—and gave to Sicily a second period of greatness; for if the Greeks gave Sicily her Golden Age, the Norman age at least was Silver Gilt. The French came too, but their stay was short, their reign inglorious; it is chiefly remembered on account of the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, when the Sicilians rose, drove out their conquerors, and drenched the land in French blood. In the early part of the fifteenth century, Spain, who was beginning her age of conquest, conquered Sicily and held it subject for more than four hundred years. Finally, in the year 1860, came Garibaldi, and reunited Sicily to Italy.

Geologically, Sicily has been as restless as it has been politically and socially. At least twice it was connected with Italy, and once probably with Africa, so that African animals entered it. The Straits of Messina, only two miles wide, and one hundred and fifty fathoms deep, are Nature’s record of an earthquake rupture between Italy and Sicily. Mount Etna, the most impressive thing in the island, has been there since early tertiary times—before the days of the ice-age, when the mammoth and cave-bear roamed through the woods of Europe. It is probably a younger mountain than Vesuvius, but long before the dawn of history Sicily and Calabria were the prey of the earthquake and the volcano. The Straits of Messina and Mount Etna are both the results of earthquake activity. The Straits are a gigantic crevice in the earth; the volcano is only a tear in the earth’s crust, so deep that the hot steam of the interior of the earth rises from the ever open rupture. Etna, therefore, is not the cause of earthquake, but is itself the child of an earthquake. It sprang, a full-grown mountain, from the breast of earth, as Pallas from the brain of Zeus. Etna was probably far larger once than it is now. The present cone rests on a volcanic plateau, that appears to have been the base of a larger cone, which was blown to atoms. The old mountain is full of cracks which are filled with hard basalt that cements it together. Its explosive tendency causes it to give rise to a great many little cones upon the sides, called parasitic cones, which burst forth suddenly almost anywhere.

Historian, poet, geologist, each tells his story, but the poet tells it best of all. There is no better description of Sicily and its people than the one you will find in the Odyssey.

“They all their products to free Nature owe,
The soil untilled, a ready harvest yields,
With wheat and barley wave the golden fields,
Spontaneous wines from weighty clusters pour,
And Jove descends in each prolific shower.
By these no statutes and no rights are known,
No council held, no monarch fills the throne;
. . . . . . . . . .
Each rules his race, his neighbor not his care,
Heedless of others, to his own severe.”
—Homer’s Odyssey, translated by Pope.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sicily in Shadow and in Sun

I
MESSINA DESTROYED

Monday evening, December 28th, 1908, four friends were dining together in a luxurious Roman villa. The hostess, Vera, sat opposite me at the head of her table with Lombardi, the Milanese mathematician on one side, and Athol, an Englishman, the representative of a great English newspaper, on the other. It was our first meeting that season. Vera, who had passed the summer at home in Russia, had just returned to Rome; I had arrived three days before on Christmas evening. We were all really glad to see one another, eager to hear the other’s news and to give our own. The dinner was a triumph! Attilio, the Neapolitan chef, had outdone himself; the pheasant in aspic was an inspiration, though the dish may have been prepared from a receipt known to the cook of Lucullus. Whatever decline other arts may show, the culinary art of Rome has lost nothing since the days of the famous banquets in the gardens of Sallust. Vera’s table was laid with the robin’s-egg Sevres service, the Copenhagen glass with its gilt borders, and the gold plate that had belonged to Cardinal Antonelli. In the middle stood an exquisitely wrought silver partridge, Vera’s own work, modelled and hammered out of silver by that strong small hand, the speaking hand of the artist, that now sparkled with jewels as she raised her glass of Orvieto and drank to our next meeting. After dinner we drew our chairs round the library fire where the tiny Roman Yule logs blazed cheerily on the hearth. It was extraordinarily cold for Rome; the thick fur of the great white polar bear skin before the fire was comforting to our chilled feet. Outside on the terrace a dog bayed.

“Open the door and let Romulus in,” said Vera. “It’s very wrong of course—a watch-dog ought to sleep in his little cold house—but I haven’t the heart to leave even a dog out on such a night.”

“It’s the coldest season we have ever known in Italy,” Lombardi remarked. We all shivered in the piercing gust that came from the open door as a shambling uncouth white puppy tumbled, capering with joy, into the room. He was a foundling from the campagna, lost, strayed or stolen from his sheep-dog kin, and adopted by Vera. His rough ugliness emphasized the refinement of the violet-scented villa where a crumpled roseleaf would have hurt.

As we drank our coffee, the dog nuzzling Vera’s satin slipper with little sounds of joy, a servant brought in the evening papers and handed them to Lombardi—I can see him now standing before the fire, unfolding the Tribuna and glancing at the headlines; I can smell the damp printer’s ink.

“Any news?” asked Vera.

“There has been an earthquake in Calabria.”

The Englishman nodded; he had heard it, he always heard the news before the rest of us!

“Another earthquake! Not a bad one?” I cried.

“The paper naturally makes the most of it, though it does not seem to have done much damage,” Athol reassured us.

“Poor people, how they have suffered!” Vera sighed comfortably. After a few more comments the subject was dropped and we began again to abuse the powers that be for the shocking breaches that have been made in the ancient walls of Rome. Bits of our talk come back to me now as from an immeasurable distance. It is as if that conversation over the fire in Vera’s library had taken place in another planet during another existence.

“The wall that Belisarius defended fifteen hundred years ago against the Goths without the gates has been demolished by the Goths within the gates!” exclaimed Athol.

“It’s a world’s crime,” I said, “because Rome belongs to the world; it’s just as much ours as the Italians’!”

“Ah! so you like to think!” said the only Italian present, indulgently.

“I have heard you say it yourself, Lombardi, when you wanted something of us outlanders,” Athol came to my rescue.

“Remember, the petition to have the streets put through was got up by an Englishman, who owned property near by that he thought would be improved,” Vera defended.

The talk drifted from one archæological matter to another. Athol told us of Boni’s last discoveries in the Forum, the tombs under Trajan’s column; the “finds” made by Goclaire, the Frenchman, on the Gianiculum; why the excavation at Herculaneum had been given up:—The peasant owners of the land, seeing so much said about it in the papers, believe their land covers priceless treasures, and will not allow a spade to be put into the earth until a vast sum of money is deposited beforehand to indemnify them for the buried treasure that may be found. Though the talk veered lightly from one subject to another, it always came back to Pompeii and Herculaneum, to that old, old disaster, that volcanic horror of nineteen centuries ago, and yet at that very moment, though we did not know it, a worse devastation had again laid waste the beautiful treacherous land of southern Italy.

The party broke up in high spirits. Vera, followed by the ecstatic puppy, came into the hall with us. I see her vivid face, her white and silver dress, as she stood below the enormous Russian bear that eternally climbs a pine tree in her vestibule; I can see the gay graceful gesture of her hand as she waves us a last good night.

The moment’s uneasiness that had fallen upon us when Lombardi spoke of the earthquake in Calabria was forgotten. If they are short of news, the Roman papers publish rumors of the Pope’s illness, an earthquake in Calabria, or war between Germany and France, with strict impartiality. It was the old story of “wolf, wolf.” We were as deaf to the first rumble of the storm, as a few days before we had been deaf to the last war scare.

Nothing but a death in the house has ever made so sharp a difference as I knew between the evening of the 28th of December and the morning of the 29th, for it was only on Tuesday, the day after the earthquake, that we in Rome began to understand—but only began to understand—that the greatest disaster of European history had stricken Italy, our Italy, the world’s beloved. To each of us our own country is really dearest; we hope to die and lay our bones in the land where we were born. But Italy, like a lover, for a time makes us forget home, kin, native land, in an infatuation heady and unreasonable as lover’s love. The spell may be broken, never forgotten. This is the reason the whole civilized world not only shuddered, but suffered with Italy in the dark hour as it could have suffered for no other country.

The first news came from Catanzaro, Menteleone, and the other least damaged districts. Messina and Reggio were silent; their silence was ominous. Tuesday was a day of fear and restlessness. We lived from hour to hour, waiting for the extra editions of the papers, hoping, always hoping, that the rumors that every moment grew more grave might prove exaggerated.

“Calabria and Sicily flagellated by earthquake. Enormous damage. Towns in ruins, many dead and wounded. A tidal wave on the coast of Sicily,” such were the headlines of the first editions. Later came the dreadful news: “Messina and Reggio destroyed!”

In the Corso I met Athol. He had been very ill in bed but had struggled out to do his duty, to weigh the news, sift truth from rumor, flash the dreadful tidings to the earth’s end.

“How much must we believe?” I asked him.

“Such reports are always exaggerated at first,” he answered.

We soon learned the first reports did not begin to tell the story.

“Earthquake? It is the end of the world!” people said to each other. As rumor grew to certainty, fear to dreadful fact, the effect upon our minds was very curious; nothing that concerned our private affairs seemed of any consequence. This was equally true of our friends, most of whom were like ourselves, foreigners in Italy. The day after the dinner party I dropped into Vera’s studio. The Signorina had not come in, Beppino, the model, told me; he had never known such a thing happen before. The clay was dry and greatly in need of being dampened. He was forbidden to lift the sheet that covered the statue and dared not do so. If I were not afraid?—

Afraid? What did it matter? I committed the unpardonable sin, stripped off the sheet, and with the big syringe wetted down the grey clay of that statue of Vera’s we had all been so curious about. Her well-kept secret was before me, but I only know that it was a female figure, whether a Psyche or a Niobe I neither knew or cared, nor whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Vera had only a week to finish the statue that was to compete for the prize she had strained every nerve to win. Three times I wetted down the clay for my friend; after that I forgot it and the statue fell to pieces. Vera had other work to do, and so had I. We ourselves were at rather an important juncture in our lives. J. had just finished his decorative painting, Diana of the Tides, for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; he was on the point of sending out cards for his exhibition. All this was swept into the background of our thoughts. We lived only for tidings of the South. All day long we could only speak, only think of Calabria and Sicily. At night we only slept to dream of them, to wake from the terror of the nightmare to the greater terror of the reality, and then to sleep painfully again. A feverish desire to do something, to be of some use, seemed to drive us and all the Americans and English we saw. Inaction became intolerable; we were scourged by pity and sorrow into some sort of doing, whether it was of any use or not.

Athol alone of all our intimates stood steady at his post, his finger on the pulse of Europe. His work was quadrupled. Instead of being jarred and thrown off the track like the rest of us, he toiled day and night, sometimes without sleep, often without food, in order that his words—words that would sway a nation, influence a world—should be the wisest, the best words that it was possible for him to say.

When I found that I could be of some small use (or I thought I could) by running about picking up little straws of news for Athol, who was sending off despatches day and night, I took heart and felt that I could get through the day. It may not have been of much real use to him or to Sicily and Calabria, but it was of use to me. Besides, the most infinitesimal thing counts, the universe is built of atoms. For these stricken people to have their story well told was surely something. It was a little comfort to me, it gave me all the repose of mind I knew in those first days to gather these tiny straws, whether or no they were woven into the texture of my friend’s “story.” It helped me to bear the strain if it did not help Athol to do his work.

Day and night the cries and groans of those

MESSINA IN FLAMES. [Page 7.]

MESSINA. THE MUNICIPIO IN FLAMES. [Page 7.]

MESSINA. RESCUE PARTY OF RUSSIAN SAILORS. [Page 36.]

MESSINA. THE PALAZZATA. [Page 41.]

sufferers buried alive in the ruins of their houses were in my ears. I felt their pain in my bones, in my brain, in my heart. I breathed pain with every breath till it seemed to me there was nothing but pain in the world. When notes of invitation to dine came—as a few did—it seemed an insult to humanity that tables should be spread with rich food and wine while our brothers agonized and slowly, slowly starved to death. When cards were left with the usual wishes for Buon Anno, one almost laughed at the mockery of people wishing each other Happy New Year. For the most part, though, the conventions and civilities of Rome—the most civilized of cities—were dropped. People threw their social duties or pleasures to the wind, even those whose whole business in life seems to consist of leaving the proper number of cards, making the proper visits, the exchange of banquets, teas and other formal courtesies. Birth and death always strip away these silly rags and trimmings; when there is such a harvest of death, humanity, even the humanity of Rome, perhaps the most sophisticated place in the world, weeps and cowers and stretches out to touch hands with any hand that is warm and living and in which the pulses beat.

Wednesday morning a bugle sounded in the street under our windows. I looked out and saw a group of young men wearing gay fifteenth century plush caps, and on their arms a strip of white cloth with the words “Pro Calabria e Sicilia” in red letters. The bugle sounded again. I knew what the summons meant, caught up the pile of extra clothing I had sorted out, snatched an overcoat and a cloak from the rack in the hall and ran downstairs into the street. I was immediately surrounded by half a dozen lads with fresh shining schoolboy faces. They carried between them, two by two, heavy wooden money boxes with a slit in the top, which they rattled and offered to all who passed.

“Who are these?” I asked the tall boy with a scarlet cap on his mop of brown curls, who relieved me of the coat and cloak.

He made me the bow of a prince as he answered: “We are the students of the University of Rome, Signora, at your service.”

In Italy, an old country where we find that supreme virtue of age, thrift, even spendthrift Americans grow cautious about spending money. I had meant to put a few sous in the box, but the eager eyes, the urgent voices, overcame discretion. I emptied my small purse, heavy with silver for the day’s expenses, into the first money box and so bought the sufferance of the students. I was now immune from other demands and free to follow them on their errand of mercy.

Another trumpet call and the students, laden with gifts, swarmed like honey bees to the hive about the lean obelisk in the Piazza del Popolo, just outside the monastery with the tall cypresses, in whose shade Luther paced, deep in the thoughts that were to change the course of history. In the middle of the piazza stood forage cart number 24 of the 13th Regiment of Artillery. The cart was drawn by two big army mules, one of them ridden by a soldier. At the back of the cart sat the bugler, a hard, merry, Irish-faced man with a snub nose and a missing tooth; he looked a living proof of Boni’s theory that the Celts and the Italians were originally of the same race. In the cart beside the bugler stood a young student with soft brown eyes and the rich coloring of the southern Italian; he wore an orange velvet cap on the back of his head and seemed to be chosen for his beauty, as the third man in the cart (a rather plain shabby fellow with a bandaged throat) had been chosen for his voice. The bugler sounded his trumpet, the driver cracked his whip and the procession started. The cart was closely followed by two artillery men in uniform and surrounded by that host of clustering students, busy as bees with their task of gathering soldi.

The cart passed at a footpace across the Piazza del Popolo under the shadow of the obelisk that Sixtus the Fifth, the great building pope, placed in the middle of that noble square, which lies between the old Flaminian Way and the Corso. The cart jogged and rumbled along just as in the old days the carnival cars jogged and rumbled over the rough stone pavement. The bugler sounded his call again as the cart turned into the Corso; the gallant notes stirred the souls of the people. When the fiery call of the bugle trailed into silence the voice of the tall man with the bandaged throat rang out above the noise of the crowd:

“Pro Calabria e Sicilia! Give much, give little, give something! Every centesimo is wanted down there!”

From every window fell an obolo. A hailstorm of coppers rattled on the pavement, white envelopes with money folded in them came fluttering down like so many white birds. Outside the Palazzo Fiano, where the Italian flag tied with crape hung at half mast, the forage cart halted. At an open window on the top floor two sturdy men servants appeared and threw down a red striped bundle of pillows, another of blankets, a third a great packet of clothes. From every house, rich or poor (there are many poor houses in the Corso), came some offering. Two good beds were carried out from a narrow door. The cart was now filling fast, the money boxes were growing heavy. From a shabby window a pair of black pantaloons came hurtling through the air and the crowd, strung up and nervous with the tension of a night of mourning—for Rome mourned as I had never believed it could mourn for anything—laughed from pure nervousness.

At the shop of A. Pavia, the furrier, on the second floor, two people came to the window, an elderly woman with a face swollen with weeping, and a dark man who looked as if he had not slept. The cart stopped again, and from that modest shop there hailed down no less than twenty warm new fur coats and tippets—and this in Rome, the heart of thrift. If I had not seen it with my eyes I should not have believed it. At Olivieri’s, the grocer’s, a great quantity of canned meats, vegetables and groceries were handed out. From a hosier’s near by came two great packages of men’s shirts, some of cotton, and dozens of brand new flannel shirts. At a tailor’s bale after bale of stout cloth was brought out and thrown into the cart. Another bed with pillows was given by a very poor looking woman; at the sight of this a man of the middle class took the overcoat off his back—it was a cold morning, too, with a good nip in the air—and threw it into the cart. I went into a news vendor’s to buy the last edition of the Messaggero. The woman behind the counter said to me:

“I have not read the papers, I could not—but I know; I am from that country. Never since the beginning of the world has there been such a calamity.”

How did she know? It was only later that most of us began to realize it!

Outside the Palazzo Sciarra I met Vera walking with Donna Hilda.

“Oh, to think that we were warm at your fireside that night when down there they were freezing!” I began.

“I know, I know!” Vera interrupted. “Can you get me some money for my Belgian nuns? I have raised a thousand pounds already, but we shall need more.” I promised I would try; I knew her nuns to be wise as they are good, and that the money would be well spent. It was our first meeting since the dinner. Vera was pale, with disordered hair and hat awry. I think her jacket and skirt did not belong together. It was a shock to see her, with whom dress is a fine art, so unconscious of what she wore, or how she looked. Donna Hilda, a Roman, though white as paper, was perfectly trim and smart in appearance.

“You have no one of yours down there?” I asked Donna Hilda. That was the first, the inevitable question that in those days one asked every Italian one met.

“Not I, thank God! But my grandmother has some cousins. She does not know if they are alive or dead. If they are gone, it would be best if they are all gone together. I am more sorry for those that are saved than for those that are killed.”

I shall always think of the Roman Corso—the gay thoroughfare where in the carnivals of my mother’s time the wild horses used to run their race from the Piazza del Popolo at one end to the Piazza Venezia at the other—as it looked that day. I never saw the barberi, but I have seen many carnival processions when the balconies of the Corso were full of pretty women throwing flowers and confetti, and the street of young men tossing flowers to the belles in the carriages and balconies. To-day the street was filled with these stern-faced students in their gay carnival caps. Every cart, carriage or automobile that passed carried a student on each step, asking, begging, demanding alms! They were no respecters of persons. The Japanese Ambassador, with his inscrutable face, and his wife and doll-like child passed in their unbecoming European dress. They alone looked impassive and indifferent in a crowd where every other face was tense and tragic. The students who stood on each step of the Ambassador’s carriage would not be denied; I could not see in the end if their passion or his passivity won the day.

It was nearly one o’clock when forage wagon number 24 reached the Piazza Venezia. The cart was piled high. The streets were emptying; people were going home to lunch. The students and the tall man with the bandaged throat held a consultation, to decide whether or no there was any use going on with their work. Meanwhile, the bugler, sitting on his stool at the back of the cart, lighted a cigarette and began to read a newspaper. The sight of his sturdy merry face was somehow calming. If the end of the world was coming, had begun, while his world lasted it was for him to blow his bugle!—to call upon the people to give food, clothes, money, everything, pro Calabria e Sicilia.

From the first J. refused to read the papers or hear the details, and from the first he said, “I want to go down and dig if I can get the chance, but I don’t want to hear about it.”

For some days there seemed no chance of his carrying out his wish of “going down to dig.” The red tape, the slowness, the utter incapacity of the railroads, the post, the telegraph to cope with the situation seemed maddening; it may have been inevitable, it probably was. He offered his services here, there, everywhere, but martial law had been proclaimed and it was impossible to reach the earthquake region without great influence.

Thursday, December 31st, the American Ambassador, Mr. Lloyd Griscom, despatched the first American relief party from Rome to Messina. The Ambassador himself had hoped to lead the expedition. In those days of anguish when we knew that thousands of lives might yet be saved if only help came in time, it was torture for such a man to sit with idle hands,—hands that might dig!—no matter how actively he might be working with brain and wits. He soon realized that he could not leave his post; his place was Rome, his work to inspire, organize and plan the American Relief, to dispense the nation’s largess!

Major Landis, the military attaché of the embassy, was put in charge of the party. His special care was to search for the bodies of

MESSINA. RUINS OF THE AMERICAN CONSULATE. [Page 21.]

Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, our Consul and his wife, and to recover the papers of the Consulate, for we knew now that the Consulate had been entirely destroyed. Mr. Bayard Cutting, our Consul from Milan, was of the party, and Mr. Winthrop Chanler, whose mission was to look up missing Americans. From the moment the news of the earthquake was known in America, the Embassy was besieged by telegrams from people at home who had friends in Sicily. The largest American colony in Southern Italy is at Taormina, only two hours distant by train from Messina. It was impossible for our Taorminesi to send word of their safety to their relations at home, who were torn with anxiety about them. It was at this time we first heard that Miss Catharine Bennett Davis of the Bedford Reformatory was traveling in Sicily and it was feared was in Messina, and of Anne Lee, Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Paton, Harry Bowdoin, Charles King and Charles Williams, all Americans settled in Taormina by Etna, a town at first believed to have suffered severely.

We went up to the station to see the relief party start. The train was half an hour behind time. It was easy to see the impatience of the Americans to be off.

“You have plenty of provisions?” a friend on the platform asked Chanler.

“I have a sack of Bologna sausages, a whole Parmesan cheese, and a case of Nocera water,” was the answer.

“Where will you sleep?” asked an anxious wife of one of the travelers.

“We have one small tent, the last in Rome,—all the rest have been bought up,—and several umbrellas.”

Food, water, shelter were the three indispensables; they were going to a desert that lacked all these, and the torrential rain that began on the fatal day still continued.

“Try to establish wireless communication between a warship in the harbor and the Marconi station at Monte Mario,” said Athol to a press representative. “If that’s impossible, wire Rome via Malta.”

“Don’t expect news of me till I bring it myself,” one of the travelers called as the tardy train moved out of the station.

It seemed hopeless to expect news. Our first friend to leave was Colonel Delmé Radcliffe of the English Embassy (the famous hunter of lions), who went down on the first train after the disaster. Later several official people we knew and one or two newspaper men followed. After they left Naples we heard no more from them. They disappeared into the blue, and we learned not to look for news of them till they themselves brought it.

As the train pulled out we heard the tramp, tramp of marching men coming up the street—more soldiers for the south. Nearly all the garrison at Messina had been killed; every day regiments of soldiers went down to that grim battle-field, some to lose their lives, all to suffer agonies of mind and body, for as usual the army bore the brunt of the disaster—and bore it well.

As we left the station we met Princess Nadine, called “the first citizen of Rome” by reason of her splendid work for the poor sick children of the city. Something was said about meeting the profughi (refugees) who were expected on the next train from Naples. She shook her great benevolent head and answered firmly:

“That is for the rest of you. I must keep to my work. My sick babies cannot be neglected. Everybody else will do for Calabria and Sicily; they only have me.”

The Princess was right. She belongs to the regular working army of philanthropists. The reserve volunteer force of the world was already mustering for this world disaster.

A little farther on we met our friend, Lombardi, the great mathematician, carrying a traveling shawl and an umbrella. He stopped to speak to us:

“Just in time to say good-by! I am leaving by the next train.”

“For Messina?”

He laughed—“No, to get out of Messina—that’s more than I can do in Rome! I am off for Morocco, the farthest place from Messina I know. The Moors won’t trouble themselves much about the earthquake. I must have more quiet than can be found in Italy this year, if I am to finish my calculations.”

Just as we were getting into our cab outside the station our friend Nerone came along. He looked pale, red-eyed, completely knocked out.

“What is the matter?” I asked. “Have you been ill?”

“Matter?” he cried, astonished at the question. “This thing has made me ill. I had to take a purge and go to bed.”

I never heard that Nerone did anything else for the sufferers—taking a purge did seem an odd way of showing sympathy.

As we drove from the station, past the Baths of Diocletian, we met the regiment, whose measured tread we had heard, and recognized, marching gallantly at the head of his company, a young captain whom we had often watched drilling his men in the great field across the Tiber. We called him Philippus for that soldier of Crotona the Segesteans found slain among their foes after the battle, and to whose memory on account of his superhuman beauty a temple was erected. Philippus was our neighbor; now that he was leaving it seemed he was almost our friend. The barracks where he and his soldiers lived were near our house. It was their bugle that every night at halfpast ten sounded the call we too obeyed, “Go to bed, go to bed, put out the lights.” The soldiers were most of them mere boys with beardless faces. When we should meet again they would not look so young. Those who went down to the earthquake region aged fast as men do in battle.

I haunted the station in those days, watching the departure of the bands of engineers, firemen, doctors, medical students that went down from Rome by every train that left for Naples. From Milan, from Turin, from Florence, from every city or town of northern Italy, help poured down towards the stricken country. The Knights of Malta sent a field hospital and a corps of doctors and nurses. Food, clothes, medicines, tents, nurses, doctors, the great stream of help flowed steadily towards the south. The railroads were not equal to the tremendous strain put upon them, and the congestion of traffic was one of the hardest of Italy’s trials. Her people were starving, dying of cold and hunger, while the whole railroad system was congested and the good food and the warm clothes, instead of reaching the poor victims, were shunted on side-tracks or delayed in freight houses for weeks, even months. It was inevitable that this should have happened; the same thing would have happened in any country. But everything was against Italy. The unheard-of severity of the winter was not the least element of danger and difficulty. The railroad is managed by the Government, that poor overburdened Government that tries its best to carry the great weight put upon it. The strain of carrying south the vast stream of provisions and supplies and of carrying north the enormous numbers of the refugees flying from Sicily was too much for it. What nation, what railroad system could have handled such a situation? One sinister commodity took precedence of all others—quicklime; already the menace of pestilence was in people’s minds, for now we knew that in Messina, a city of 200,000 souls, more than half the inhabitants had perished.

On Saturday, the second of January, Athol asked me to visit one of the first families of refugees who had arrived in Rome. I found them in a gaunt new barrack of a house in an arid street of one of the ugliest quarters of new Rome.

“You have some superstiti here?” I inquired of the porter’s wife, who came out of the little den where she lived and cooked (chiefly garlic it appeared), for her husband and children.

“Oh yes, poor people! You will find them on the second floor. You are not the first who has asked for them.” She stopped and looked at me curiously. “Excuse me, you too have perhaps come to inquire for news of some relative down there?”

“No, no, thank Heaven! only to ask if I can do anything for them.”

“So much the better! There is enough to do.” The porter’s wife nodded and went back to her cooking. I climbed two long flights of the cheap, stark building and rang a strident bell. The thin varnished pine door was opened a crack, and a handsome slatternly woman looked out. When I asked to see the profughi, she stood aside and let me pass. In the entry I met two people coming out, a shabby man with a hard dry face like an eagle’s and a very beautiful young girl with a waxen complexion. When they heard me ask for the profughi they stopped and looked at me so intently that I paused and looked helplessly back at them.

“You have asked to see the profughi,” said the man in a harsh dry voice; “do you possibly know something of them—or of others—down there—?”

“Nothing. And you?—do you know anything of Messina?”

“I?” laughed the eagle-faced man drearily, “I am of Messina. This one also,” he looked at the girl, “though I never saw her till today. We go here, there, together, asking news—her people are all there and mine.”

“Come,” said the girl, “do not let us waste time.” She spoke with authority as one used to giving orders and having them obeyed. I noticed then how sumptuously she was dressed. They went down the stairs together, a strange pair, the shabby eagle-faced man and the young lovely lady. I never saw the girl again, or knew whether she found those for whom she sought.

“It is the truth that I have not had five minutes to comb myself today,” said the padrona, who had opened the door, a dark woman of the noble Trasteverine type. She smoothed her magnificent black hair that lay in full natural waves over her low forehead, and pulled up the collar of her white jacket to hide her beautiful bronze throat. “Believe me, Signora, that blessed bell has never stopped ringing. Holy Apostles! One would think that the Messinesi were different from other Christians, that they had two heads, everybody must have a look at them.”

“I am sorry to disturb you,” I began.

“No, no,” she said, “I did not mean that. What is it to do? They are relations of relations of my husband’s. They knew our name and address in Rome and, having no other friends, they came to us. They arrived yesterday. We have taken the furniture out of one of our rooms, borrowed a few beds, and done what we could to make them comfortable. Poor souls! Anything that you can do—” she threw open the door of a large apartment, evidently the property room of some theatrical company. The floor space on the left was taken up with bundles of stage costumes neatly folded and tagged. A white toga with an olive wreath and a pair of sandals lay next a costume Othello might have worn, judging by the coffee-colored stockinette tucked into the yellow satin cloak. On the right of the door were four decent beds; in the corner stood a dining table with a loaf of bread, a green wicker basket of ricotta, and a flask of Genzano. The room was half full of people.

“This lady wishes to talk with the Messinesi,” cried the padrona, good-naturedly elbowing the crowd, evidently friends and hangers-on of the house. “You have seen them, yes? They only have two eyes apiece and one mouth? Well, then make room for the stranger lady. She may do something besides stare at the poor abandoned creatures.”

The people readily fell back and I found myself face to face with one of the first families of the survivors who had reached Rome. At sight of them I was overcome with suffocating emotion. It was a full minute before I could speak, before I could see through the sudden mist that blinded me. It was as if their sufferings had set them apart, their sorrows hallowed them.

In the middle of the group stood an old man and woman, holding each other by the hand. Both were bent and wan looking; the woman seemed the less shaken of the two. She had a wonderful shrivelled face with gray-blue eyes and a brown seamed skin, stooping shoulders covered by a small peasant shawl, and an alert wiry little body. It was my business to ask certain questions, but it was more than a minute before I could get out the words.

“What are your names?”

“I am Rosina Calabresi,” the staunch old woman quavered. “This is my husband; he cannot talk much yet. He is better now, but for three days after the earthquake he could not say a word. This is our son Francesco, and this is his wife.” Francesco, a soft-eyed young man, patted his wife’s hand; she hid her face on his shoulder and began to weep. “This is my grandson,” Rosina continued, “he is of Reggio. He was staying with us that he might go to school in Messina. His mother is my eldest daughter. We have not yet heard from his parents. We do not know whether they are alive or dead.”

The boy, a pale, interesting lad of fourteen, looked at me with serious unmoved face.

“My husband was a government employé formerly,” the old woman continued; “he was a postman.” She shook him gently by the arm. “Cannot you speak to the lady?” The old postman moved his lips dumbly. “He is only seventy-eight years old, and I am seventy,” Rosina went on. “Francesco is our youngest son.” I asked the young woman her name.

“Lucia,” she said, and hid her face again. The young man comforted her.

“She will do better soon,” said the old woman, nodding to me.

“When do you expect the baby?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “it will be nine months tomorrow, the first child, we have not been married quite a year.” Her soft eyes overflowed again.

“Do not cry. You have your husband and you will have your child. That is something to be thankful for. Did all your family escape?”

“Yes, all that were in our house, six of us,” said Francesco. “We do not know about the others.” I heard a deep sigh behind me and turned to see a little wan child, bandaged and pillowed up in a great bed. She never stirred or smiled during my whole visit. When I spoke to her, she only gazed at me with great sombre eyes that had lost their childishness, eyes that had seen sights of horror they could never forget.

“That is my grandchild Caterina,” the old woman explained. “She has been lame from birth. When we escaped from the house I carried her in my arms. As we ran the earth beneath us opened and threw stones at us. One of them struck Caterina and broke her lame leg.”

“Tell me how you escaped?”

The young man, Francesco Calabresi, a plumber of Messina, now spoke:

“We slept in two rooms on the ground floor behind the shop. We were all asleep in bed when the earthquake came. There were three long shocks and the earth groaned as it rocked from side to side as if it were in pain. Though the house fell down about us we were not hurt. The door into the street was jammed and would not open. I found a small hole in the wall near it and managed to crawl through it and to help the others out.”

“It was dark, and cold, and it rained—Oh, God, how it rained!” cried the old woman, “and we were all, except Lucia, naked as the day we were born.”

Lucia smiled for the first time and opened her dress to show me her high chemise.

“Yes, I had this on; it was the only thing we saved.” She was evidently proud that she alone of all the family had escaped with a garment to hide her nakedness. In Sicily the old Italian habit of sleeping without night clothes still prevails. There is a widespread prejudice against night clothes. Nena, an old Venetian servant, once told me that it was very unwholesome to sleep dressed. This absolute nakedness, both of the living and of the dead, seemed to the rescuers the last touch of horror.

“It was quite dark,” the old woman continued, “only out over the sea there was a strange light like fire. We found our way to the Villa Mazzini. Part of the railing and the gates had been thrown down so that we could get into the garden. That is how we escaped being killed. We waited together till it was light, then Francesco went and tried to find help. We stayed in the villa two days and two nights. The rain never stopped for one moment. We had no food, no clothes, no shelter, but we were alive and safe.”

“Did you see any of your neighbors?”

“No, but as we ran we heard people all about us crying ‘misericordia.’”

“Did you expect to escape?”

“Oh, no! I believed it was the end of the world. The earth shook and rumbled underneath us. When it grew light it seemed as if the mountains of Calabria were coming at us across the straits to crush us.”

Francesco now took up the story: “I made my way down to the Faro. When it was light I found a boat and rowed out to the ships in the harbor. Later, when the Russian vessels came, they gave me a little food and a few clothes. In the end they took us on board their ship, they fed and clothed us. Russians, did I say, Signora? No, they were angels. They took us and many, many others to Naples on their great ship. At Naples the highest signoria waited upon us as if they had been servants. They gave us white bread and wine and more clothes, shoes also, and they showed us the kindness of brothers and sisters. We shall never forget them. Then the Duchess of Aosta paid our fare to Rome.”

“What? The railroad did not take you free?”

“Oh, no! Every one was paid for by the Duchessa benedetta.”

As they seemed pleased to have me stay with them, I sat and comforted them as well as I could for an hour. After a little Lucia came and sat beside me and promised me that she would not grieve when her time came to go to the hospital. We made out a list of the things most needed, headed by a set of plumber’s tools for Francesco and a basket for the baby to sleep in. I promised to return in a few days, and as I rose to take leave they clung to me as if I had been an old friend.

“Is it your wish in the future,” I said to Francesco, “to remain in Rome, or later to return to Messina?” Even now we outsiders had not yet grasped the awful completeness of the disaster.

At my question Rosina became terrified, and for the first time in our interview lost her self-control. She threw both her hands above her head with a dreadful gesture of despair and shrieked:

“Messina? What is it that you say? Messina non esiste più!”

It was from Rosina that the eagle-faced man had got his phrase; it was from her that I for the first time had an inkling of the true extent of the calamity. When I look back at these last months during which I have lived with the thought of Messina always with me, till it seems as if the word Messina must be found seared upon my heart when I am dead, I hear those words, “Messina non esiste più!” When I pass in review the hundreds of survivors I have seen and talked with in Rome, Syracuse, Palermo, finally in Messina itself, I see clearest of all the face of Rosina, the ancient woman; I hear her shriek of woe:

“Messina non esiste più!”

II
THE STRAITS OF DEATH

Wednesday, December 30th, the King and Queen of Italy sailed through the straits and into the harbor of Messina. As their ship, the “Vittorio Emanuele,” approached the Faro, the gunners of the Russian cruisers, the English men-of-war, and the Italian battleships began to fire the royal salute.

“Cease firing!” The signal flashed from the King’s ship; this was no time for royal salvos. The “Vittorio Emanuele” crept cautiously along, feeling every inch of her way, for a new terror had been added to the old perils of Scylla and Charybdis. It was said that under the seething waters of the uneasy straits a submarine volcano had arisen, and no one knew how much the bottom of straits or harbor had been altered by the action of this hidden volcano.

A fleet of small boats filled with desperate half-naked men put off from the shore and surrounded the King’s ship. This was the third day after the earthquake; the survivors were starving, dying of cold and hunger, when in every Italian village men and women had taken the clothes from their backs, the food from their mouths for them, when in Rome the poor prisoners in the gaols had voted to a man that the little sums they had earned and put by against their release should be spent for them. The shivering figures in the boats stretched out appealing hands towards the King.

“Aiutarteci, aiutarteci!” they cried. “Help us, Majesty. Give us to eat, give us to drink, clothes to cover us, the abandoned of God and man!” These broken men were the King’s escort, their frenzied cries Messina’s greeting to her sovereign. In a crazy felucca a tall old sailor held up a hand to silence the clamoring crew, snatched a red biretta from his silver curls, waved it above his head with a ringing cry:

“Evviva! We have the King, we have all!”

“Thou sayest well, Luigi,” the young avvocato, Arcangelo Bonanno, called out from the pier. He knew Luigi, the old fisherman, and had sailed with him from Giardini to Messina

MESSINA. THE WATER FRONT. [Page 41.]

MESSINA. A FUNERAL BARGE. [Page 42.]

THE KING AND THE WOUNDED OFFICER. [Page 43.]

in the “Stella del Mare,” one of the few boats spared by the tidal wave that had made total wrecks of most of the fishing smacks along the coast.

As the “Vittorio Emanuele” neared the shore those on board saw the white façade of the palazzata through the gray rain—for still it rained and always rained a fine cold rain, “not quite like any other rain,” as Rosina Calabresi had said. “Earthquake rain” I remember she called it. At first sight it seemed as if the palazzata—the splendid row of palaces two miles long, that lined the sickle-shaped harbor fronting the straits—was little damaged. As they came nearer they saw that the outer wall, with its sculptured façade of graceful reclining goddesses, was an empty shell.

“There were three shocks,” Rosina said. “One from side to side, one up and down as if the earth jumped under us, one round and round; that was the worst, the very earth groaned with the pain of it.”

These three shocks that reduced the beautiful city of Messina to a heap of ruins, lasted just thirty-two seconds! The sidewise movement threw down the side walls; then the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth floors, with all that in them lived, dropped one over the other in awful chaos to the bottom of the cellars. Along the water front high in air hung a cloud of dun smoke; for after earthquake and tidal wave came fire. That drifting smoke was the only thing in sight that moved as the King approached; it might have been the soul of Messina hanging over the dead city.

The King’s launch made its way through the harbor’s dreadful debris,—there were floating corpses everywhere,—and drew up at the heavy stone quay; here the land looked like the waves of the sea, in some places it had sunk six feet below the water, in others it had been heaved high in air. A long line of unrecognized dead had been laid out for identification; naked and helpless the poor disfigured corpses washed to and fro with the tide, while those among the survivors who had the heart and courage tried to find a name for each. Our friend the Avvocato Bonanno (he had spent the night of the 28th in Taormina and so escaped destruction) was helping make up the tragic rollcall.

“That is Maddalena, youngest daughter of Count Q.; I danced with her on Christmas Day. This is her old grandmother, yes, I am sure, I remember the little mole on her cheek. And this—might be Nina, the eldest daughter; look for an emerald scarab on her left hand. Ah, God, the human brutes!” The emerald ring, the finger it had graced were both gone, cut off by ghouls that rob the dead.

The launch touched the quay, and the King stepped on shore where he was met by the few city officials who had survived. The spokesman began a halting address of welcome:

“The visit of your august majesty is an honor that we shall never forget, in the name of the city—“

The King cut the good man short with an abrupt:

“Scusi, do not let us talk nonsense,” and in silence led the way to the barracks where hundreds of his brave soldiers had perished.

“Snuffed out,” Bonanno said, “or so we hope, like so many rush candles.” A few steps farther on the King met four soldiers carrying a wounded officer on a litter. The King glanced at the man and a flash of recognition lighted his face.

“Fermate!” he cried. The bearers set down the litter; the King propped the poor head, rolling helplessly from side to side, with a fragment of gray military cloak folded for a pillow, wiped the ashen face, and whispered the one brave word ever on his lips “Coraggio!”

The streets through which the King passed were mountains of rubbish, the houses heaps of ruins, the air pestilential; the fire still burned in many places, and the smell of roasting flesh was simply overpowering. The few survivors who hung about the ruins added to the despair of the scene; some crazed with hunger, thirst, despair, behaved like maddened children; they talked of their dead or lost families with the terrible indifference of the insane; their minds were not strong enough to grasp what had happened. Others, oftenest women, appealed to every passer-by, imploring help in their frenzied efforts to reach some beloved being buried under tons of masonry. A woman tearing desperately with her bare hands at a huge mass of stone it would have taken a regiment of men a week to move recognized the King; she ran as if in frantic haste, threw

MESSINA. THE BARRACKS. [Page 43.]

MESSINA. RUINS OF A CHURCH. [Page 44.]

MESSINA. DIGGING FOR THE BURIED-ALIVE. [Page 47.]

THE KING AT MESSINA. [Page 45.]

herself at his feet, raised her bleeding hands in an agony of appeal.

“Maestá, aiuto! Save them! They are alive. I hear them, my husband, my son, my only son.”

“It is too much,” the King broke from her with a sob. “Help her, you others, if you can,” he cried to his aides and pushed on through the ghastly ruin of what three days ago had been the famous Marina, one of the most beautiful streets in the world.

“The King’s walk through Messina,” said Bonanno the avvocato who followed him, “was like the walk of Dante and Virgil through the Inferno. At every step raving men, weeping women clutched at him, clung to him, stretched out their hands to him. Those hands! I dream of them now, hairy hands of men, transparent hands of women, old shrivelled hands with gripping fingers, chubby hands of little children lifted to the King, as if he could help them. I would not have been in his place, no, not for three kingdoms.”

From that desperate throng one tragic figure must stand out clear in the King’s memory as it does in Bonanno’s—the Deputy Ludovico Fulci pacing back and forth before the ruin of his brother’s house. Though Bonanno knew him well, he did not at first recognize him; in four days the deputy had grown twenty years older.

“Nicoló, Nicoló! Art thou yet alive?” he shrieked. “Oh, my brother, make one little sign! Until tonight I heard his voice crying for help! It has grown weaker and weaker; now I hear no sound. If help had come in time, I could have saved him, saved my brother, do you hear? Him, his wife, his little child, God knows how many others now dead, sotto le macerie.”

Under the masonry! No one who was in Italy during this dreadful season will ever forget that phrase, “sotto le macerie,” the deadly refrain of the great tragedy. Where is your mother, your lover, your child? The answer was always the same “sotto le macerie.”

The King, Bonanno said, above all else insisted that his visit should bring no interruption to the rescue work: indeed it proved an impetus to it, for he did much to establish something approaching system. The work of excavation was begun by the Russian sailors. Three Russian warships, the “Cesarevich,” the “Makaroff” and the “Slava,” cruising off the Calabrian coast, met a vessel—some say English, some say Italian—flying to Naples with the news of the earthquake: the Russians hurried to Messina, they were the first to arrive on the ground. What they did there Sicily will remember as long as her history survives. Like Francesco Calabresi, my plumber, the Avvocato Bonanno described their work in rescuing the entombed men, women and children as something superhuman.

“They did not wait for orders, they did not need them; each of them was an inspired leader; they saw no danger, but rushed like madmen among crumbling ruins, toppling walls; they worked like Titans I tell you. The English were not long behind the Russians, as you may believe. What a people! We Sicilians know what we owe them! Did these foreigners save many lives? Yes, hundreds, thousands of lives. More than all, the sight of their incredible labors—I say it to you again, they worked like gods not men—broke the spell of apathy that at first held us powerless. Madonna mia! I myself felt it, though at Taormina the shock was light. At first I was stunned, dazed, lacked power to lift a hand! These unfortunates, you may believe, were worse. The first man I met after I returned to Messina was a colleague of mine; we had worked in the same office. He was quite stupefied. He did not know if any of his family had escaped or not, he did not seem to care. The visit of the King roused the people; ah! it was like cordial to one who faints. Imagine, on the fourth day hardly a cup of water, scarcely a loaf of bread had come to us from the outside. Was it wonderful we believed the end of the world had come, that we were abandoned by God and man?”

And all this time the great stream of supplies was pouring in a steady flood toward Messina. The city was like a man who dies of starvation in the midst of plenty, because he has lost the power to swallow.

“I went first to the house where I had lived,” Bonanno said. “It was a heap of ruins fallen outwards into the street; the inner wall was standing. How did I know the house? From the crimson paper on my bedroom wall. That wall—I can show it to you still—was perfect. There was the crucifix my mother hung over the bed, the palm from last Palm Sunday; there was the Venetian mirror without a crack, a portrait of Lola, the Spanish dancing girl (she is among the missing). A lot of soldiers were at work excavating our house; an officer with an iron crowbar lay flat on a mass of rubbish, and pried with all his might at a great stone coping from under which came faint groans. Another officer lay on his back below and somehow,—it looked a miracle,—they got a purchase on the stone. With strength that seemed incredible they tugged and heaved and at last lifted the great mass of granite; then they stopped to breathe and the soldiers quickly cleared away the smaller rubbish. We took out Agnese, the wife of my landlord, and her little child; they could not speak; their mouths were full of mortar. When we had freed their mouths and nostrils from the mortar we found they were both too much hurt to stand. We carried them to the field hospital in the piazza, where the doctors from the English ships were at work under a tarpaulin stretched over some posts. Not much of a hospital, but they worked, those doctors, as the sailors worked, like demons, as one might say, with all respect. Wet to the skin, fasting like we others, but working till their eyes refused to see, their hands to use the knife.”

“Was Agnese’s husband saved too?”

“Antonio? Yes, he was saved; that was a strange case, one of the strangest. He was saved by his dog. That blessed animal—I knew him well, his name was Leone—would not let Antonio sleep, but barked and barked and pulled at the blankets till Antonio got up from his bed, dressed himself and went out of the house. It was about half past four o’clock. He could not tell why he did so; it seemed as if the dog’s intelligence controlled his. Leone led the way, Antonio followed to the Piazza del Duomo, where he sat down on the steps of the Cathedral. Leone was not satisfied and still barked and whined and ran back and forth, until Antonio finally got up and went and sat down on a bench in the middle of the piazza. He was sitting there with the dog beside him when the earthquake came and the marble Bambino fell down out of the arms of the Madonna over the door of the Matrice, just at the place where he had been sitting; if he had remained there he would surely have been killed. These things

MESSINA. THE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE DISASTER. [Page 50.]

THE CATHEDRAL AFTER THE DISASTER. [Page 50.]

ARCANGELO’S HOUSE. [Page 48.]

MESSINA. WHERE MARIETTA LIVED. [Page 51.]

are not to be explained but there were many such happenings.”

“Were there any others saved from your house?”

“Agnese’s old grandfather. He lay quite still in his bed and went down in it to the lowest floor of the house. The beams fell so as to protect the bed. When we found him he was without a scratch, but quite blind from the dust in his eyes. I shook the old man by the shoulder to rouse him. He turned his blind eyes towards me and cried with the voice of a wounded lion:

“‘Leave me in peace! The earth is dying; I die with the earth!’”

Arcangelo’s stories of miraculous escapes would fill a volume; that of Marietta is one of the most extraordinary.

“Marietta certainly owes her life to me,” he began, “or rather to my ears. You must know that my ears are remarkable—so were my father’s. I have in truth the hearing of a cat. No one else could have heard the faint knocking inside the heap of rubbish that had been Ugo’s workshop. At first I doubted my senses, then I remembered that Marietta lived in the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, and it occurred to me at the same time that Ugo was working at a job in Catania. I gave information and after many hours of hard work the soldiers succeeded in making a space large enough to let down a basket with food and water to the woman buried under the ruins, whose tapping I had heard. I could now hear what she said; she was quite unhurt; her bed had been placed under an arch, the safest place of course, and the arch remained standing; she had not so much as a bruise. The house had fallen so that unless great care was taken the remaining walls would crumble and crush the woman under the arch. The fifth morning I came with a piece of bread and three dried figs I had found in the ruins for her; I made the usual signal; there was no answer.

“‘Marietta, canst thou hear?’ I called to her. She did not reply. I put my ear to the hole; what did I hear? A sharp thin voice that wailed and wailed but said no word.

“‘Marietta, art thou alive?’ ‘I am alive, and so is the child. Water, for the love of Mary!’ Poverina! Alone in that dark pit she had borne her first child. On the eighth day we took Marietta and her baby from the macerie. It was a boy, stout and strong as a young bull, for we had fed the mother and her milk had not failed. Miracles? Ah, well, that is as one believes. I myself put the two of them on the train for Taormina. There be many rich forestieri at Taormina; I doubt not they have cared for Marietta; they have great charity, those forestieri of Taormina. They have charity, and they understand us a little, those who live among us here in Sicily; they shared our calamity, they knew our people. Some others do not understand, and should not judge. It may be true that this official ran away, that this other was relieved of office for incompetence. This they know, but they do not know the state of mind and body to which those men were reduced. It was better that they fled, for they were not fit to hold positions of responsibility; few of us were; we were too much broken. No one who has not seen Messina, who has not known the survivors, can understand; it was not like a battle, where men go in prepared for death, it was quite another thing!”

While the King was at Messina martial law was proclaimed. General Mazza, who was at home on sick leave, left his bed and hurried to Messina to take command of the troops. I asked Bonanno what manner of man the general was; I remember his answer well.

“A good man and a brave soldier. He has but one fault, the incurable one: he is sixty-eight years old and out of health besides!”

The proclaiming of martial law was a military necessity. The prison at Messina had been destroyed by the earthquake, and the convicts, the scum of Sicily, were at large. From Naples, from Palermo, from all over Italy, the offscouring of the cities raced, like beasts of prey who scent the carnage of battle, to the ruin of Messina, the beautiful. It seemed as if Nature’s cruelty in destroying half a province roused the basest passions in the base, and the noblest in the noble. The soldiers on their rounds at night saw things—desecrations of the helpless dead, offences against nature—that turned them from thoughtless boys to grave men. Here again the Russians, swift to save, swift to punish, terrible in their anger, set the example. A young Russian midshipman, a beautiful boy,—his blue eyes were like ice with fire below, Bonanno said,—found one of the human vultures at work. The midshipman had very little Italian, only a few words; they were enough:

“Ladro!” he cried and put his pistol to the ruffian’s head, “condannato a morte,” and fired.

After this the soldiers’ orders were explicit; when the offence was monstrous, the human monsters were shot without delay. It is a terrible thing to proclaim martial law but there was no other way. Not only were the Red Cross Knights of Europe, England and America pressing on to the relief of the afflicted city, but the murderers, thieves and ravishers from the four quarters of the earth were hastening in search of plunder and rapine to Messina, the rich, to Reggio, the prosperous, the sister city across the uneasy straits.

“Do you know the worst?” Bonanno whispered, as if it were too horrible to speak aloud. “Some of our girls—think of it—lost, dazed, stricken creatures, were kidnapped for the brothels of Naples! The slave hunters saw their chance from the first hour; who knows how many of our Sicilian virgins, the purest, the most beautiful of God’s daughters, are now lost in that hideous, that worst of all slavery? Ah, it is too much! Dear God, had we not enough to bear without this? One I have tried to trace, a flower, a lily, the girl whose eyes said to mine, ‘When the time comes for you to speak, I am ready.’ She was seen alive and well on board one of the first boats that left for Naples; she has never been heard of since.”

Bonanno dashed the tears from his eyes, shook his fist in the direction of Naples. “Accursed city!” he cried, “sink of Europe!”

While King Victor was in Messina helping organize the rescue work, Queen Elena remained in the harbor shaping the course of the hospital-ship work. She went from ship to ship, for every vessel, merchantman or man-of-war of whatever nationality, became for the nonce a floating hospital. The most seriously wounded were carried on board the ships, where they could receive better care than in the hospital stations on shore where, in the midst of confusion, and difficulties beyond belief, the faithful surgeons worked early and late under the pitiless rain, drenched to the skin, fasting and suffering with thirst and cold like all the rest. It was a time when men and women toiled with every fibre of their being; there was too much to do to allow of specialization; the King planned, but he lent a hand too when he saw the chance; the Queen practically shaped the whole future course of the hospital-ship work; but that was not enough. She rolled up her sleeves, put on her apron and went to work to help the doctors as only a good nurse can. On board one of the floating hospitals she received the wounded, washed and dressed their wounds, bandaged broken limbs, soothed the sick, comforted the dying. It was then that she came into her true woman’s kingdom, earned for once and all the title of Queen Elena the Good.

Her fame as a nurse has been spread throughout Italy, throughout the world, not by courtiers or reporters, but by the patients she tended. That is a sort of reputation that lasts. In Syracuse a young Messinese said to a Blue Sister from Malta, who was doing up her shattered arm:

“Guardi, the Queen put on that bandage; mind you roll it as smoothly as she did.”

In a Naples hospital a child was heard to cry, “The Queen did not hurt me as much as you do, and she had to pick the mortar out of the wound before she dressed it.”

It is said that more than one woman died in the Queen’s arms at Messina; it is certain that she was so much impressed by what she saw there that she became the most impassioned of all who worked for Italy in the dark hour. She suffered even in her person; one poor frenzied creature in her struggles to throw herself overboard, struck the Queen and hurt her, it was feared at first seriously. Her example of service was followed by the court ladies and by heroic women of every class; her energy aroused hope in the forlorn remnant of the stricken people; it was a moral tonic and stimulus to the whole nation.

When they left Rome both the King and Queen believed the disaster to be even more complete than it proved; they had been told that all the inhabitants of Messina and Reggio were killed. Orders were given to the Roman Red Cross Society to wait their instructions. When they reached Messina and found how matters stood, the Queen sent a wire to the president of the Red Cross asking for nurses and doctors to be sent down. From Vera, one of the first to volunteer, I heard something of the expedition.

“I got my summons on New Year’s day—you remember, we met at the Campidoglio that morning and you told me where to go for shoes? I had just succeeded in finding those shoes for my profughi when I was called to the telephone. Could I be ready to start that evening for Messina? Naturally I could—we all could; not that we had been idle, for there was plenty to do for the refugees already on our hands in Rome; but if I could be of more use at Messina, I was ready to go. There were forty of us women in the Red Cross party and a number of surgeons. The officer in command made us an amusing speech—he didn’t mean to be amusing: ‘You will take the minimum of luggage and the maximum of obedience,’ he said. ‘You will drop your titles and remember you are under military discipline and that insubordination will be punished’—then came a hint of a dark cabin and of manacles for insubordinates. We listened to him and felt that we were back in the days of the French Revolution, that we should henceforth be known as Citizeness this or that. Many of us had titles, but not all. There was Princess Teano—you knew her as the beautiful Vittoria Colonna; there was the Marchesa Guiccioli, whose husband is equerry to the Queen Mother; there was Countess Teresina Tua, the violinist; Madame Agresti, Rossetti’s daughter. We left Rome for Spezia, way up at the top of Italy; it seemed a waste of time when we wanted to go to the south; it was a dreadful night journey; I sent Natika back to Rome from Spezia.”

Vera sighed; Natika was her Calmuck maid; that little sigh was the only whimper I ever heard from her through these months when she lived, worked, spent her genius, power, money, all that she has and is as freely as water pro Calabria e Sicilia.

“At Spezia we caught the troop-ship ‘Taormina’ bound for Messina with a regiment of soldiers. After endless delays we at last set sail; before we were well outside the harbor we were recalled by a ‘wireless’ and had to turn round and go back. I sketched the harbor and Gulf of Spezia, the arsenal, the dockyard, the two forts, the purple hills behind, the white fishing villages in the foreground. It was all interesting, but the delay was hard to bear! Every heart-beat spelt ‘hurry’; every hour of waiting meant so many fewer lives saved. The soldiers who had only just embarked were ordered on shore again, and we had to wait until they had all disembarked!”

Vera’s small nervous hands opened and shut impatiently. She speaks with a slight lisp that is like the soft pedal of a piano to the music of her voice. Vera was brought up by an English governess; she is many-colored as a chameleon, polished as a many-faceted jewel; when she is with us she turns the English facet to the light.

“As we passed the Bay of Lerici I thought of Lord Byron and of Shelley who passed his last days there. Is it true you no longer read those poets? We do in Russia.”

At sunrise on the morning of Saturday, January 2nd, five days after the earthquake, the “Taormina” with the Red Cross party on board sailed into the harbor of Messina; the ships at anchor saluted by dipping the colors; on the admiral’s vessel, the marines presented arms. The “Taormina” dropped anchor near enough the shore for those on board to see the sunken Marina, the great yawning cracks in the solid ground, the railroad station with the cars heaped together as if there had been a collision. A locomotive lay overturned on its side: some of the cars had been carried out to sea, where they lay idly washing to and fro, others had been seized and turned into dwellings by the wretched superstiti. An endless procession of soldiers and sailors with stretchers bearing the wounded filed past, and the rattle of the gay little painted Sicilian carts heaped with the dead never ceased as the long line moved towards the huge funeral pyre. The fumes of the burning bodies reached them on board the “Taormina,” sickening but not discouraging the perfumed ladies of the court. There had been some doubt whether they would be ordered on shore to help in the hospitals under the rude tents, or whether the wounded would be brought on board. At last the order came clear and direct: “Prepare to receive the wounded on board.” After that no time was lost. The operating rooms were made ready, the long tables were cleared, the surgeons put on their white gowns, laid out their shining instruments, chose their assistants. When the forty nurses reported for duty one only among them all wore the uniform of a trained nurse, Phyllis Wood of the Buffalo General Hospital.

“I would have exchanged my title for hers,” Vera said, “and what would I not have given for her clinical thermometer, the only one on board!”

Later I saw and talked with Nurse Phyllis herself: “We had come in for the worst, for the wounded that were brought on board the ‘Taormina’ had been sotto le macerie for days,” she said. “They were suffering from intolerable thirst and hunger. Oh, the cries for water, the screams of pain, as the poor maimed creatures were brought on board in the arms of the soldiers and sailors. The first day I was detailed to do the dressing of the wounds; later I was ordered down into the hold to assist Dr. Guarneri, the chief surgeon, with the operations. Then my real work began. We worked at the rate of sixty operations a day, all sorts of settings, every conceivable fracture. There was no time to give anesthetics (indeed we had none to give), yet we hardly heard a murmur from these poor lips. We had two extemporized operating tables and two young doctors worked with me under Guarneri. Sometimes it seemed impossible to keep up with the work, to have the dressings and antiseptics ready; but Guarneri is a splendid surgeon, full of energy and enthusiasm, so calm and self-possessed that we worked under him unconscious of time or of fatigue; our hours were from six in the morning till one at night.”

There was work for doctors and nurses among the rescuers as well as among the rescued. Many of the brave soldiers and sailors, who had worked with splendid courage and devotion, died from gangrene caused by handling the decomposing bodies; the death of one of these heroes stands clear in the nurse’s memory. A young lieutenant of Bersaglieri was brought on board the “Taormina,” dying from a hemorrhage brought on by his tremendous exertions.

“He was conscious to the last,” the nurse said. “We had no time to undress him, so he lay in his uniform and we placed his sword beside him. He was only one of many who laid down their lives!”

“I had for my helper,” Nurse Phyllis went on, “a young Roman belle, not twenty years old, with no more knowledge of nursing than a baby. She stood up to her work like a veteran—it was not easy; no American girl of that sort could have done what she did.”

Those days on the “Taormina” were not easy days for the Red Cross ladies, but I do not think one of them would be willing to give up the experience they brought. Whatever else was lacking, on board the hospital ship they had splendid surgical skill, for the Italian surgeons are among the best in the world. In this dire emergency the national characteristic, the capacity of working on a spurt, came into play. Soon help came to the “Taormina” from the other ships already on the ground; one sent sterilized gauze, another sent bandages, a third medicines, a fourth a supply of vaseline.

“The English Jackies from a neighboring ship,” said Phyllis, “made and sent us a quantity of long white garments for our poor naked patients; they were very primitive, made of a long piece of white cloth with two seams and a hole for the head, but we were mighty glad to get them.”

How like the decent English this was; how I should have loved to see the dear sailors sitting on deck sewing the long seams!

While Vera was with the Red Cross at Messina, there was a rumor that the authorities had decided to destroy what was left of the city.

“Each day we heard a new report,” Vera said, “till we did not know what to believe. Your friend, the Avvocato Bonanno, brought us one of the most startling rumors. I remember his saying, ‘We count the dead by tens of thousands. How can they be decently buried, how can a pestilence be prevented? There is but one way to complete the destruction the earthquake has wrought. We should send away the few survivors, then let the warships bombard this vestige of a city till the last walls crumble, fall, and bury together the city and its dead.’”

. . . . . . . . . .

News from Taormina at last—the city, not the ship! Letters began to come to us in Rome from one and another of our people there, letters that gave us glimpses of their experiences and the work they were doing. My old friend Anne Lee of Boston wrote:

“I was wakened by the earthquake but not very much frightened at first. I did get up and go to the window to watch the sea. It was terrible to hear and most curious. Out in the bay there was a wide circle of whitish yellow light which stayed in one place; it looked like moonlight, but there was no moon, and it was round, not straight like the wake of a star. I could see the waves breaking high on the shore. In no time the poor contadini were coming out of their houses over on the hills with their lanterns; they looked like Will o’ the wisps; they were hurrying over to the town for protection. The big quaking lasted forty seconds, but we had small ones all day. The town was in a panic; men, women, and children ran out into the streets without anything on, or trying to struggle into their clothes. Some of their shirts were upside down; all were screaming with fright. They crowded into the churches by hundreds. At eight I heard music; I went to the window and saw a procession marching down the narrow street that runs along by the old Roman wall. First came the Misericordia, dressed in white with red shoulder capes carrying lighted candles. On a paso was San Pancrazio dressed as a bishop, with two rows of candles burning before him. As soon as they were in sight of the sea they stopped and cried out a prayer and waved their hands towards the sea; they went on again to the end of the street, waving towards Etna standing against the blue sky like a great white pyramid with a mass of new fallen snow on the summit. It was glorious. The band was playing a slow muffled march, the other instruments stopping while the muffled drum carried on the time with slow steady taps. Before San Pancrazio walked the Archpriest with his two assistants carrying lighted candles, then came the great crowd of men, women and children, the white Carmelite nuns, and the yellow and red handkerchiefs of the peasants making spots of color in the dark mass; they were all so terrified and earnest looking! They took San Pancrazio from his own church to the cathedral to wait and protect them for a while until Saint Peter could be brought to join him. About five o’clock in the afternoon they brought Saint Peter with the same sort of procession, only more people, and placed the two cousins opposite each other in the cathedral. At the mass the church was packed with people kissing their hands and crossing themselves when they passed the statues. My poor old cook Venera spent most of the day on her knees. Down at the little town of Giardini there was a cloudburst a few weeks before the earthquake. Some of the houses were entirely crushed or buried. After the earthquake a fearful tidal wave took the water out to sea over twenty feet, then it rushed back and inundated the town, breaking and spoiling all that the deluge had spared and sweeping the fishing boats out to sea. Before the quake the people in Giardini saw two flashes of lightning; they saw a great fiery dragon pass over towards Calabria, and queer little dancing light spots as if the water were boiling.

“Since Tuesday all the English and Americans and a few Sicilians have been working night and day down at the station, feeding and watering the sick, wounded, and dying on the endless trains passing through from Messina to Catania. Many refugees have been left here; one woman gave birth to a dear little boy at the station. The American and English are organizing committees to help the sick and wounded who remain here in Taormina. Miss Swan and I are on the cooking committee; we go Wednesdays and Fridays and tend the cooking of a great kettle of pasta, or beans, or rice. Some take the food home; others eat it in the old deserted church near the clock tower, that used to be used as a school. We give them cheese, wine, and clothing—some of them have never before been so well fed or clothed. Many grumbled because they did not have meat, and didn’t like their clothes—they are already sadly spoiled. The news was brought by a sailor who walked from Messina; he told us that Messina was destroyed and thousands killed. Mr. Wood went over Tuesday morning to see if he could find Mr. and Mrs. Cheney. The great palace where they lived was a mass of rubbish. He could look into what had been their parlor and just see a corner of a piece of their beautiful antique furniture, a mirror still hanging on the wall, one of the yellow damask silk curtains hanging out of the window. When they found the dear little woman they only recognized her by the locket she always wore.”

The Cheneys had spent Christmas at Palermo, where their friends had urged them to stay longer, but they had felt obliged to return to Messina.

“As the trains came into the station the first cry was ‘Water, water.’ Six hundred or more were put off here at Taormina. We went down to the station at ten, worked there all day and did not get home till eleven or twelve at night. There were five or six trains during the day and as many during the night. The first week was the hardest work and kept us all jumping. In a few days we got settled and organized into committees. There were about three groups all working for the same thing, but each head was afraid some other head would get the greater credit and praise. Truth is, we were all working for humanity, to try and give the poor scared hungry souls food and drink and homes; it didn’t matter whether it was A, B or C; they all did splendid work and all worked with all their souls, and every one, including the Sicilian ladies and people from Russia, Germany, Austria and France, was only too glad to help. We gave away over three hundred loaves of bread a day, crackers, oranges, cooked polenta, everything that could be found to eat, milk, water and wine, all paid for by the forestieri, and a few of the townspeople. They were so much dazed for the most that it took them ten days to ‘come to.’ So many had lost friends that at first they could think of nothing else, and some were perfectly willing to stand by and let the strangers do the work. The first official action of the town authorities was on the eleventh day. I looked up from boiling some coffee for a train that was coming, and there stood the Mayor and two or three other short fat fathers of the town all talking at the tops of their voices, their hands and arms going in every direction. They were perfectly purple in the face and looked like so many bantam cocks ready to tear each other to pieces. I asked what the matter was?

“The Mayor and the municipality had come down to forbid any more bread or food being given away; there would be a bread famine, a wheat famine; we were taking the bread out of the mouths of the Taorminesi, and soon there would be a mob and the people would break into our houses. We had on hand three hundred loaves of bread bought, paid for, and broken up. In spite of the city fathers the bread was given to the refugees on the next train. Then there was a rumor that the milk had given out. Just before I reached the station that day I met three men driving a herd of twenty goats; they had escaped with their goats from Messina. The milk was bargained for and fifteen quarts, good and fresh, was milked from the goats and paid for by some Boston girls.”

A young lady, whose name is I think Miss Fernald, wrote the following story of what she saw at that station of Giardini to her brother:

“The first train from Messina. Oh, George, you can never imagine the horror of that first train! It squirmed through the tunnel like an injured worm, and stopped at our station crammed jammed with dying, crushed and bleeding humanity, leaving a trail of human blood as it wound its way from Messina. We had provided ourselves with bandages, brandy, wine, bread, milk. As soon as the train stopped we rushed to the windows and doors with our supplies. I shall never forget the roar of this groaning humanity wildly screaming for water and doctors. People were dying every moment, stretcher after stretcher was brought in and gently laid down in the station. Dr. and Mrs. Dashwood (English residents of Taormina) were angels in the work of rescue; they brought four babies into the world at the station. We turned the place into a hospital in the twinkling of an eye; soon the building was packed with the injured and dying. Delirious women, women gone mad from fright, wounded children, and gentlemen, so patient and grateful. It made my heart ache to hear their humble thanks for what was being done to comfort them. One train we entered had a basket with twelve or fifteen babies, five of whom had died on the way from Messina. The hour’s journey had taken nine hours because of the many washouts. One beautiful young lady, who, no one knew, died at the station; they called her ‘a princess.’ Every person from the villas went down with huge supplies of food. There was hot soup and cocoa, besides bread and fruit. We girls spent three nights and three days at the station and saved many lives by giving nourishment and what comfort was possible to half naked and starving people. The trains returning to Messina were crowded with people looking for their families, and also with a bad set of thieves. We have a regiment now at the station and soldiers all along the beach to Messina. Any one seen in the ruined city without a passport is shot on sight. Our new year’s eve was spent resting on sacks of figs at the station, administering to and comforting the poor crazed women and children, and waiting for the next train. I can’t write of the effect of this dreadful spectacle. Now things are more systematic as regards our work. It was my duty to go about and find the poor wretches who had wandered into Taormina. I found in one church five sisters who had found their way with great difficulty from Messina. The distance is nearly thirty miles. They were thinly clad and in a starving condition. The natives here have responded to the call fairly well and clothes have come in—but such rags. However, new ones are being made and distributed as fast as possible. The Prince of Cherami of the San Domenico is doing wonderful work as well as the villa people. All the visitors have fled from Taormina, the hotels are entirely deserted and will of course be closed. At the station I saw a woman with a cage of twelve birds; she had lost all her five children. We have felt shocks for five days. Most of the villa people are trembling with fear. What is to be done with these homeless wretched people? God only knows. It’s over a week now since the earthquake; the trains still come in filled to overflowing with injured taken every day from the ruins.”

“The German battle-ship ‘Serapim,’” says Miss Lee, “brought a great number of refugees. One music hall singer had her little canary on her finger; the little creature was singing, the only happy thing on that dreadful ship. I worked for over three weeks at the station of Giardini. One night Mr. Kitson was going through the Red Cross car, helping with milk, wine and so forth. At the end of the car was a large clothes basket full of little new-born babies, two dead, three or five alive, and nothing to cover them or keep them warm, so the dead ones had been kept for that. They had been born on the train and had had no one to tend them, poor little souls. It made him perfectly sick and was, we think, partly responsible for his long illness. I was kept in the surgical ward room to have the water ready for the doctors and so I did not see all the horrors as those did who went through the cars—I was spared that, thank God.”

III
AMERICA TO THE RESCUE

On the first of January, three days after the great earthquake, a band of Calabrians, living in New York, flashed this message across the Atlantic to their mother country:

“Do not forget Scylla!”

Scylla, how the old name thrills! Scylla had suffered severely, though its gray castle, perched high on the cliff that rises sheer from the shore, was spared. Scylla, the ancient village at the foot of the purple Calabrian mountains, was not forgotten, nor Reggio, nor the white fishing hamlets that line the tawny shores of Sicily and Calabria on either side of the restless straits. The people of the coast were soonest reached and soonest helped by the sailors of the passing ships, for the navies of the world flew on the wings of love and pity to succor the stricken ports. Never were ships watched for with such eagerness, never were sailors greeted with such passionate rapture since Theseus sailed back from Crete to Athens with his precious freight of Athenian youths and maidens, saved from the dreadful Minotaur. The people who lived in the hills and valleys of the interior suffered longest, were last relieved; but even to them help came, for the sailors were faithful and carried the world’s bounty to the desolate inland towns of Sicily and Calabria. The story of their labor of love would fill an encyclopedia. This is the story of the American relief ship “Bayern,” that brought comfort and hope to the forlorn survivors of the great earthquake; to tell the story clearly, we must go back to Rome where the cruise was planned.

Saturday afternoon, January second, the Via Quattro Fontane, in the neighborhood of the American Embassy, was crowded with carriages, cabs and automobiles. The tall handsome porter of the Palazzo del Drago was on duty in full dress; he wore a long broadcloth overcoat that came down to his feet, a black cocked hat with a cockade of red, white and blue. His mighty staff of office, a certain grand air he has, make him a formidable personage to those who have no real business at the palace. Once you are known to this Cerberus, he has no terrors for you; he is gentle by nature as such big men so often are.

“Can I see the Ambassador?” I asked the porter.

“That I cannot promise, lady. He has just returned from the Quirinal; there are many persons waiting to see him, but—” he raised his shoulders with the Latin gesture that expresses doubt—“who knows? The Signora can but try.” He stood back, made me a splendid bow with as fine a flourish of his tricorne as if I had been a princess, and the way was free. I entered the handsome portone, walked through the long marble gallery, past the courtyard where the noise of the fountain sounds like the trampling of impatient steeds, past the twin lions of giallo antico that guard the entrance, and up the magnificent stairway leading to the piano nobile, the home of the American Ambassador. At the door of the apartment I was met by another of those prodigious serving men—the giants of the American Embassy were the talk of Rome that winter—they were recruited from the ex-cuirassiers of the King’s own body guard, the glorious hundred, the shortest of whom is six feet tall.

“Her Excellency would receive me; as to his Excellency, it was just possible. The ladies were in the dancing hall.” He waved me towards the mirrored gallery. I paused a moment to stare about the great anticamera, big enough to hold an ordinary embassy. At one end there is a wide fireplace, over which, instead of armorial bearings, our Eagle spreads its mighty sheltering wings. This splendid anticamera was in strange confusion, crowded with packing cases, piled half-way to the ceiling with bales of goods, boxes of clothing, boots, food, medicines, relief supplies of all kinds. Every able-bodied American in Rome was working pro Sicilia e Calabria, and the Ambassador’s home was not only the nerve-center of the relief work but a warehouse, a base of supplies.

From the ballroom came the sound of women’s voices, the snip-snip of shears, the click of sewing machines. Here was another transformation; the sumptuous ballroom with the smooth polished floor had become a busy workroom. Under the gilt chandelier stood a long table, heaped with bales of flannel and cloth, over which leaned four or five ladies, scissors in hand, cutting out skirts, blouses and jackets. On the satin-covered benches sat a bevy of young women and girls, basting, sewing, planning, and chatting as they worked.

“I have nothing left but red flannel,” said the chief cutter-out, “what shall I do with it?”

“Petticoats and under jackets,” said the Doctor’s wife. “We must put all the colored goods into under-clothing. The poor things beg so for black dresses. You wouldn’t want to wear red or blue if you had lost twenty-five members of your family, as my profughi have.”

“Still we must use what material we have. Let us keep the black for our profughi here in Rome and send the colored things down there where the need is greater and they cannot be so particular.”

The scene was typical of Rome, of Italy, of the civilized world at that time. In every home, rich or poor, in every country, women of all classes were sewing for those naked wretches who had escaped from the great earthquake with nothing but their lives. In the Palace of the Quirinal the little princesses, Jolanda and Mafalda, sat up in their high chairs, stitching busily for the children of the stricken South. The fury of benevolence that had driven men and women all over the world into some action, some sacrifice, for their suffering brothers, was being organized, had become the great driving force that should compel some sort of order out of chaos unparalleled. When it grew too dark to see in the ballroom the friendly giant lighted the chandelier and the candles in the gilt sconces. As he passed me he murmured:

“If the Signora can wait till the other ladies have gone her Excellency—“

“Of course I can wait.” I settled down to overcast the seams of a black woolen frock.

“Do you know where one can buy handkerchiefs?” asked the chief cutter-out. “Every shop I tried today was sold out. All Sicilians use handkerchiefs, even the poorest; it’s one of their good points. I was at the station this morning helping the English Committee—they meet every train from Naples that brings ‘survivors,’ and fit out the poor things with shoes and clothes. Some of them were half naked; one pretty girl—a perfect Hebe—was dressed in an officer’s uniform. The poor souls cry so one has to give them one’s own handkerchief; I have hardly one left!”

“Ask the Ambassadress; she knows more about what’s left in Rome than anybody,” said the Doctor’s wife. Then in an undertone to me: “It’s wonderful how she takes the lead and the rest of us all fall in line; she makes us lose sight of the woman in the Ambassadress; she’s taken command of the scattered forces of the colony like a generalissimo; she’s proclaimed an armistice to internecine strife. Look at those two women, the lamb and the wolf cutting out together; it took the earthquake and Mrs. Griscom to bring that about!”

“Time to go home,” said the chief cutter-out, as the cracked bells of San Bernardo’s rang six. “My hands ache with the weight of these shears; this is the best day’s work we have done.”

One by one, the ladies, colonials and transients, fashionable and unfashionable, took their leave. When all had gone, the giant ushered me into the yellow drawing-room, where I found her Excellency seated in a low chair before the fire making tea. She greeted me with her flashing smile and bade me welcome.

I asked for news of those who had gone down to the city of the dreadful night; we had heard nothing of Major Landis, Mr. Cutting, Mr. Chanler and the others who had gone to Messina the Thursday before.

“No news—but from home, oh, so much! It is as we all knew it would be; we shall do our share.”

Rumor already had it that great sums of money had been cabled from America, both to the Ambassador and to the Italian Red Cross. If that money was to be well spent, the Ambassador’s work was cut out for him, as hard work as even he could covet.

A few moments later Mr. Griscom came in and asked his wife for a cup of tea. His Excellency’s dark inscrutable face showed fatigue; the veiled fire of the eyes was nearer the surface than usual, the clear-cut lips were compressed. As the Doctor’s wife said, it was fortunate for us that we had these strong young people to take the lead in the American relief work. From the first they bore the brunt gallantly; work as hard as their helpers might, they out-stripped all others, gave with a lavish hand, power, sympathy, wit, energy, health; in a word they gave themselves. We turned to them as to our natural leaders in all large and even in small questions. It had seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that, having given away all our available cash and all the clothes we could spare, I should go to the Embassy to beg for my profughi, the family of Francesco Calabresi, the plumber from Messina.

“You have received large sums of money from home,” I said to Mr. Griscom.

“Yes,” he looked at me steadily, ready to guard the treasure from the most desperate assault. He listened patiently to my story of the Calabresi family, to my plea for money to buy clothes and a cradle for the imminent baby, and plumber’s tools to set Francesco up in business before he should become demoralized by the dreadful Roman system of paying so much per capita every day to each family of profughi, without demanding any work in return for the money. First to lose everything they owned, then to be robbed of their habit of self-dependence was the cruel fate of too many.