DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0089
72 THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE
when you arc on an island which everywhere bears
marks of the mighty force which has convulsed it,
and left ruined homes and churches, and pain and
poverty in its track. You have seen what such a
tremendous force can do; you feel absolutely help-
less in its hands. One may become so thoroughly
accustomed to the motion of water as to have a sense
of mental and physical exhilaration in riding on its
waves; but when the very earth shakes beneath you
like a sieve, you feel as helpless dust within it.
It was four days after the great shock which left
town and village sadly shattered that I had my first
experience with an active earthquake. It was a
sort of shuddering reminiscence of what had gone
before, a premonition, too, of what was to follow, not
the kind of dessert you want for your dinner. It
was not what it did that frightened one, so much as
what it seemed capable of doing. Emotionally at
least you had considered this " terrestrial ball" as
solid and inert. You are suddenly amazed to find
it alive. It is arching its gigantic back; it is trem-
bling with anger or pain. More fearful than the
thought that its motion is voluntary is the terribly
swift suspicion that it may be involuntary; that the
great creature cannot help it; that it is the victim of
internal distress. If you were not so frightened, you
might even be sympathetic; you are immensely re-
lieved when the shaking stops; but you have no
surety that it will not come again.
In this pale incertitude none of us left the table.
We might have done so had it not been for the stolid
indifference of the hotel keeper. He was the only
person or thing in the vicinity that in the midst of
when you arc on an island which everywhere bears
marks of the mighty force which has convulsed it,
and left ruined homes and churches, and pain and
poverty in its track. You have seen what such a
tremendous force can do; you feel absolutely help-
less in its hands. One may become so thoroughly
accustomed to the motion of water as to have a sense
of mental and physical exhilaration in riding on its
waves; but when the very earth shakes beneath you
like a sieve, you feel as helpless dust within it.
It was four days after the great shock which left
town and village sadly shattered that I had my first
experience with an active earthquake. It was a
sort of shuddering reminiscence of what had gone
before, a premonition, too, of what was to follow, not
the kind of dessert you want for your dinner. It
was not what it did that frightened one, so much as
what it seemed capable of doing. Emotionally at
least you had considered this " terrestrial ball" as
solid and inert. You are suddenly amazed to find
it alive. It is arching its gigantic back; it is trem-
bling with anger or pain. More fearful than the
thought that its motion is voluntary is the terribly
swift suspicion that it may be involuntary; that the
great creature cannot help it; that it is the victim of
internal distress. If you were not so frightened, you
might even be sympathetic; you are immensely re-
lieved when the shaking stops; but you have no
surety that it will not come again.
In this pale incertitude none of us left the table.
We might have done so had it not been for the stolid
indifference of the hotel keeper. He was the only
person or thing in the vicinity that in the midst of