When this shock ceased, the earthquake appeared to have terminated for that time, but even if it had continued, further damage could scarcely have been done, for the little town was reduced to a heap of ruins. The desolation was complete. Scarcely a house was left uninjured, and the greater part of the buildings were completely demolished. But the sights that met the eye were not more terrible than the sounds which filled the ear. Death and destruction reigned on every side. Groans of agony and frantic cries for deliverance were heard issuing from beneath the ruins, while men, women, and children were seen rushing about with dishevelled hair and bloodshot eyes, wildly searching for, and shouting the names of, their lost relatives and friends, or crying to God for mercy. It was a sickening and terrible sight—a sight in regard to which those who dwell in the more favoured parts of our sin-smitten world can form but a very faint conception.

At first all was disorder, but by degrees the spirits of the survivors began to calm down a little, and then systematic efforts were made to rescue those who had not been killed outright. It need scarcely be said that in this work our hero and his companions were conspicuously energetic. Will and Don Pedro organised the men into gangs and wherever cries or groans were heard, they tore up and removed the ruins so vigorously that the poor sufferers were speedily released; but in performing this work they uncovered the torn, crushed, and mangled bodies of hundreds of the dead.

“Come here, Larry,” said Will, in a low, sad tone, as he stood on a pile of rubbish digging towards a spot where he had heard a faint cry as if from a female. The Irishman leaped to his side and saw a small hand sticking out of the rubbish. It quivered convulsively, showing that life still remained. With desperate eagerness, yet tender care, the two men disentombed the poor creature, who proved to be a women with a child clasped tightly in her broken and lacerated right arm. The woman was alive, but the poor child was dead, the skull having been completely smashed and its brains scattered on its mother’s bosom. As they carried them away, the woman also expired.

In the course of a few hours great numbers of wounded persons, young and old, were laid under the lemon-trees by the banks of the little stream that traversed the town. Some were slightly hurt, but by far the greater number were terribly crushed and lacerated—many of them past all hope of recovery. To these sufferers Will Osten now gave his undivided attention, washing and bandaging wounds, amputating limbs, and endeavouring by every means to relieve them and save their lives, while to the dying he tried, in the little Spanish he knew, to convey words of spiritual comfort, sometimes finding it impossible to do more than whisper the name of Jesus in a dying ear, while hurriedly passing from one to another. If earnest heart-expressive glances from eyes that were slowly fading conveyed any evidence of good having been done, Will’s labour of love was not spent in vain.

Reader, a volume would not suffice to detail a tithe of the sights and scenes of thrilling and dreadful interest that occurred in that small South American town on the occasion of the earthquake. Yet, awful though these were, they were as nothing compared with the more stupendous calamities that have been caused by earthquakes in that land of instability, not only in times long past, but in times so very recent that the moss cannot yet have begun to cover, nor the weather to stain, the tombstones and monuments of those who perished.

For many weeks Will Osten remained there tending the sick and dying. Then he bade his kind unfortunate friends farewell, and, once more turning his face towards the Cordillera of the Andes, resumed his homeward journey with his faithful attendants.

There are times in the career of a man—especially of one who leads a wandering and adventurous life—when it seems as though the events of a lifetime were compressed into the period of a few months, or weeks, or even days. Such, at least, was the experience of our hero while he travelled in the equatorial regions of South America. Events succeeded each other with such rapidity, and accumulated on each other to such an extent, that when he looked back it appeared utterly incredible that he and his companions had landed on the coast of Peru only a few months before. It was natural, indeed, that in such a region, where the phenomena and the forces of nature are so wild and vast, one incident or adventure should follow quickly on the heels of another, but it did not seem to be altogether natural that each incident should be more singular or tremendous than its predecessor. In short, there seemed to be neither rhyme nor reason, as Larry said, in the fact that they should be continually getting out of the frying-pan into the fire. Yet so it was, and, now that they had left the low country and plunged into the magnificent recesses of the great Andes, the metaphor was still applicable, though not, perhaps, equally appropriate, for, whereas the valleys they had quitted were sweltering in tropical heat, the mountains they had now ascended were clothed in wintry snow.

Far down in the valleys Will Osten and his friends had left their canoe, and hired mules with an arriero or mule-driver to guide them over the difficult and somewhat dangerous passes of the Andes. They had reached the higher altitudes of the mountains when we again introduce them to the reader, and were urging their mules forward, in order to reach a somewhat noted pass, before the breaking out of a storm which the arriero knew, from certain indications in the sky, was rapidly approaching. The party consisted of four—Will, Larry, Bunco, and the arriero—with three baggage-mules.

On reaching an elevated position at a turn in the road whence they could see far in advance, they halted.

“Why, I had supposed this was the pass,” said Will Osten, turning to Bunco; “ask the arriero how far off it is now.”

“Troth, it’s my belaif that there’s no pass at all,” said Larry, somewhat doggedly, as he shifted about uneasily in the saddle; “haven’t we bin comin’ up to places all day that we thought was the pass,—but they wasn’t; I don’t think Mister Arryhairo knows it hisself, and this baist of a mule has blistered my hands an’ a’most broke my arms with baitin’ of it—not to mintion other parts o’ me body. Och, but it’s a grand place, afther all—very nigh as purty as the Lakes of Killarney, only a bit bigger.”

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