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Eames--even if such was not their original intention.



CHAPTER IV


Next morning, at precisely 4 a.m., there was an earthquake.
Foreigners unaccustomed to Nepenthean conditions rushed in their
pyjamas out of doors, to escape the falling wreckage. An American lady,
staying at Mr. Muhlen's high-class hotel, jumped from her bed-room on
the third floor into the courtyard below, and narrowly escaped bruising
her ankle.
It was a false alarm. The sudden clanging of every bell on the place,
the explosion of twelve hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of
an enormous cannon--that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the
lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke--might
have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise
and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It
was the signal for the festival of the patron saint to begin.
Nobody could have slept through that din. Mr. Heard, dog-tired as he
was, woke up and opened his eyes.


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