Page:Restless Earth.djvu/9

before last, it’s got to be a good heavy shake to make me notice it. I was in Westport when that one happened—just outside the Post Office. I feels the thing coming—I can always feel a shake coming: sort of sécond-sight, you know—and I hops it into the middle of the street, quick and busy. There was a little bit of a bump and then the ground heaved up like as though it was alive, and the Post Office tower split. You could see the ground waving, and———”

He became silent abruptly as the earth tremor increased slightly. His eyes widened and stark fear petrified him for a second.

“She’s still going,” observed Harley unnecessarily, looking at the swinging wires in the roadway. “Must be a pretty fierce shake somewhere. Perhaps Murchison is getting it again.”

The labourer leaned against the fence and the cigarette trembled in his fingers.

Harley glanced at him and smiled.

“Sorry, old man,” he said, as he climbed back over the fence. “You might have slept through it if I hadn’t charged over.”

“Such damned uncanny things!” growled the labourer. “Never twice alike. I don’t mind the sharp bumps, but these corkscrew things turn my stomach.”

Harley descended to the patch of tall grass, which had been a lawn a few weeks since. He felt vastly superior. He excused his own momentary panic, but he could find no toleration for the other’s obvious funk. He smoked his cigarette to the end, imagining the earth still shook long after it had ceased to do so. He swayed upon his feet with a curious enjoyment until his gaze again rested upon the telephone wires. He laughed as he observed that they no longer moved.

When he tossed his cigarette-end into the vegetable garden he was almost cheerful with the exhilaration which comes of a knowledge of peril survived.

He returned to the house, glancing around the hall curiously as he entered. No damage there. In the