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open fields, distributing bread to hungry children and their reluctant, grateful parents.

Here, too, moved the representatives of many charitable organisations and religious bodies, working without rest for the comfort of the homeless.

Like life-giving rafts borne on a destroying torrent, trucks, loaded with clothing, blankets and food supplies, dotted the stream of cars from the south, piloted by capable, curious and kindly men and women—Samaritans with healing oil—the sympathetic leaven which redeemed this conflux from the stigma of pharisaism.

Death brooded over the countryside on this sunny morning; but the cries of those whom He chose made little volume of sound in the excited chatter of Roman holiday-makers.

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James Harley’s first glimpse of Napier brought him a sense of relief which was almost painful.

The Bluff still stood against the sky!

It had not been levelled. In the distance it appeared as it had always done, save for the heavy smoke which veiled it, and a slight alteration in contour on the seaward face where landslides had buried the road at the foot of the cliffs. The summit and the landward slopes were still green with trees, amidst which stood the dwellings of the fortunate.

Distance obscured the damage to these dwellings, obscured the piles of broken masonry which had been the Public Hospital and the Nurses’ Home, obscured the frantic activity of the hundreds who toiled to improvise a hospital camp in the Botanical Gardens.

However, the Bluff still stood against the sky!

This evidence of exaggeration in the first reports of the disaster induced the first recognisable gleam of hope which James Harley had experienced since he had read those ghastly headlines.

Napier had not been wiped from the map. The evidence was before his eyes. Annihilation was far