To pacify her, the cars stopped and Dodo was asked if she saw the bag that had held her mother"s evening wrap.
"No, but I thought I caught up one of Ma"s belongings," Dodo called back. "When I got to the garage and turned the light on to see what I had saved I found it was a bed-pillow!"
A laugh greeted this reply, and Nancy then admitted: "I didn"t know what I was doing when I first jumped out of bed, but I intended getting my hair-brush and comb in case of need. When we got out on the street I found I had the cake of soap and the telephone pad that was kept on the stand beside the bed."
"Well, Ma," asked Mr. Alexander, as Dodo started her car again, "are you going to get out and go back for them things?"
"You are a bad cruel man, Ebeneezer Alexander, and I wonder that I could live with you as long as I have," snapped his wife.
"I wonder at it myself," chuckled the cheerful "cruel" man.
But they drove on and no more was said about the elaborate evening wrap that was lost in the earthquake that night.
As they sped away, determined to get as far from the scene of disaster as possible, that night, Eleanor spoke.
"I wonder if there is anything else I have to live through before I can settle down quietly."
"Now what"s the matter?" demanded Polly.
"Oh nothing, but I was just thinking-I went through a snow-slide on Grizzly Peak; a land-slide on the Flat Top; a great mountain blizzard, on the Rockies; a hold-up in New York, one night; an avalanche on the Alps, and now an earthquake in Rome. What next, I wonder?"
"You ought to be grateful that you never experienced a sinking at sea caused by a German submarine," said Polly, earnestly.
The very seriousness of her remark made her friends laugh, so that spirits rose accordingly, and just as they felt that the worst was over, another severe quake shook the ground they were speeding over.
Dodo"s car was ahead, with its headlights streaming in advance upon the roadway. Immediately after the last shake, a deep rumbling and crackling was heard as if something ahead of them had parted and fallen down. Dodo leaned forward anxiously and gasped.
Mrs. Fabian was with her in the roadster, and the girl quickly put on the brakes and reversed the wheel. "Just look out, Mrs. Fabian, and see if you can see a gap across the road."
Even as she spoke, Mr. Alexander pa.s.sed the little car and shouted to Dodo: "What"d you stop for-right in the middle of the road?"
The next moment he was biting his tongue when the front wheels on his car caved into the newly made crevice across the road. Everyone was jounced up and down frightfully as the wheels settled into the soft earth, and Dodo jumped out to see if anyone was injured.
"Oh, oh! I know Pa"s broken my neck!" cried Mrs. Alexander, as she caught her plump neck between two fat hands.
"Blame it all on the pesky earthquake!" shouted Mr. Alexander, thickly, while the end of his tongue began swelling where his teeth had cut into it.
Everyone was ordered out, while Mr. Alexander tried to back the touring car out of the cleft across the roadway. But it was a deep trench and the front of the car had settled into the earth.
"The only way to get her up is to plank down several rails and run her out on them," said Mr. Alexander, lispingly, as he studied the situation.
"It"s too dark to hunt for rails or boards, and there isn"t a house in sight," Dodo replied.
"What can we do, then?" asked the perplexed little man, scratching his head for an idea to start from his brain.
It was nearly dawn when the peasants started from their homes for the city, to sell their market-goods, so the tourists had not long to sit and wait, before a cart drawn by two st.u.r.dy oxen rumbled along.
"Hey, there! If you hook them beasts to my car and pull it out of this hole fer me, I"ll pay fer the animals!" called Mr. Alexander, hoping the man understood his English.
Mr. Fabian then interpreted what had been said, and the man examined the condition of the ditch before he replied. Then he gave Mr. Fabian to understand that he could remove two heavy side-boards from the cart and try in that way to help run the wheels out.
After strenuous labor and many pulls and tugs on the part of the oxen, the car was backed to the road again. But the ditch was still there, and it was too deep to cross without a bridge, or by filling it in.
By the time the peasant had been paid his price, a number of other carts had driven up and the men sat pondering how to get over. It was Mr.
Alexander who waved his arms like a wind-mill in Holland, and shouted to make them understand.
"Let"s all get busy and scoop the earth into the ditch. Some of us can dig it from that field and others can carry it in their hats to fill in."
Mr. Fabian tried to explain, but the peasants shook their heads. One man jumped out and ran back in haste along the road.
"What"s the matter? Is he afraid we"ll make him work?" demanded Mr.
Alexander, impatiently.
"No," explained Mr. Fabian, "he said he knew where he could get a shovel and other implements. There"s a farm a bit farther on."
Shortly after that, the man returned and with him came two young men, all carrying shovels, and one pushed a cart. With these tools for work, every man went at the job, and in half an hour the crevice caused by the quake was temporarily filled up.
While they worked the men asked Mr. Fabian about the earthquake in the city, and he told them what havoc it had made. The sun had risen by the time the two cars were able to cross the bridged crevice, and then waited to allow the ox-carts to get past.
"Say, there! Are you going to take that stuff to Rome, to sell?" called Mr. Alexander, eagerly.
The men comprehended and nodded their heads.
"Well, here! We"re starved now and will buy the fruit and ready-to-eat stuff. Got anything cooked?" called he.
One farmer had fowl, another had fruit and still another had a load of vegetables, so the tourists bought all the fruit they wanted, and the peasants went their way, rejoicing at the good luck the quake had brought them in the form of rich Americans who paid so well for filling the ditch, and then selling them fruit.
As soon as the tourists reached a quiet spot beside the road, they halted the cars and enjoyed the fruit, for that was all the breakfast they would have until they reached Naples.
Late in the afternoon they stopped at a good hotel and sighed in relief to think they could have a good, long, night"s rest. The daily papers were filled with the account of the damage done in Rome by the recent earthquake, but the list of those dead or lost was not yet complete, as so many were buried under the debris of fallen buildings.
Suddenly Mr. Alexander threw back his head and roared.
"What"s the matter, Pa?" asked Dodo, frowning at his shout.
"Ho, I just read how we"re all dead. Did you know we were lost in the "quake last night?"
They all stared at him. Mr. Fabian ran over to see the article for himself. Then he read it aloud: "Among those stopping at the Hotel -- in Rome, which collapsed at the third severe shock, were a party of American tourists who were with Mr. Fabian, the well-known authority on Antiques. Mrs. Fabian and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander and daughter, and two young misses, were members in this party. A few other guests of the hotel are also unaccounted for."
"If that isn"t the strangest thing," exclaimed Mr. Fabian, "to sit here and read our own death-notice. Now I"ll have to wire Ashby that we"re all right, and we"ll have to cable to the States that this report is false."
The girls wanted to read the notice, too, and Nancy said they ought to keep the notice as a joke on journalism in Italy.
"No joke about it, say I. Now I have to wear crepe fer myself, because everyone out West will celebrate when they believe me done for," said Mr. Alexander.