I
roused slowly to the thought that here was something unusual toward.
Then, indeed, a sort of insane _abandon_ flashed into life in me, and I
leapt to my feet with maniac eyes. Something stirring in King's Cobb! I
should have thought nothing less than the last trump could have pricked
it out of its accustomed grooves; and that even then it would have
slipped back into them with a sluggish sense of grievance after the first
flourish.

I left my congealing dish, snatched up my hat, and joined the attenuated
chase. It was making in one direction--a point, apparently, to the east
of the town. As I sped excited through the narrow and tortuous streets, a
great bulge of acrid dust bellied upon me suddenly at a corner; and,
turning the latter, I plunged into a perfect fog of the same gritty
smoke. In this, phantom figures moved, appeared, and vanished; hoarse
cries resounded, and a general air of wild confusion and alarm prevailed.
For the moment, I felt as if some history of the town's past were
re-enacting, as if a sudden swoop of Frank or Dutchman upon the coast had
called forth all the defensive ardour of its people. There was nothing of
gunpowder in the stringent opacity, however; but, rather, a strong
suggestion of ancient and disintegrated mortar.

A shape sped by me in the fog, and I managed to stay and question it.

"What is it all?" I asked.

"House fell down," was the breathless answer; "and a poor chap left aloft
on the ruins."

Then I grew as insane as the rest of the company. I strode aimlessly to
and fro, striving at every coign to pierce with my eyesight the white
drift. I pushed back my hat; I gnawed my knuckles; I felt that I could
not stay still, yet knew not for what point to make. Almost I felt that
in another moment I should screech out--when a breath of sea air caught
the skirt of the cloud, and rolled the bulk of it up and away over
the house-tops.

Then, at once, was revealed to me the cause and object of all this
gaggle, and confusion, and outcry. It was revealed to the crowd, too,
that stood about me, and, in the revelation, the noise of its mouthing
went off and faded, till a tense silence reigned and the murmur of one's
breathing seemed a sacrilege.

I saw before me a ruinous space--a great ragged gap in a lofty block of
brick and mortar. This block had evidently, at one time, consisted of two
high semi-detached houses, and of these, one lay a monstrous heap of
tumbled and shattered _debr