ooping with a
refluent wave, that even from this high hillside was seen to be
monstrous. It fell on their decks, drowning and smothering: their
masts only were visible above the smother, some pointing firmly,
others tottering and breaking. Some rose no more. Others, as the
great wave passed on, lurched up into sight again, broken, dismasted,
wrenched from their moorings, spinning about aimlessly, tossed like
corks amid the spume; and still, its crest arching, its deep note
gathering, the great wave came on straight for the harbour quay.

Ruth and Langton, staring down on this portent, did not witness the
end; for a dense cloud of dust, on this upper side dun-coloured
against the sunlight, interposed itself between them and the city,
over which it made a total darkness. Into that darkness the great
wave passed and broke; and almost in the moment of its breaking a
second tremor shook the hillside. Then, indeed, wave and earthquake
together made universal roar, drowning the last cry of thousands; for
before it died away earthquake and wave together had turned the
harbour quay of Lisbon bottom up, and engulfed it. Of all the
population huddled there to escape from death in the falling streets,
not a corpse ever rose to the surface of Tagus.

But Ruth saw nothing of this. She clung to Langton, and his arm was
about her. She believed, with so much of her mind as was not
paralysed, that the end of the world was come.

As the infernal hubbub died away on the dropping wind, she glanced
back over her shoulder at the house. The poor little _criada-moga_
was no longer there, peering over the edge she dared not leap. Nay,
the house was no longer there--only three gaunt walls, and between
them a heap where rooms, floors, roof had collapsed together.

Of a sudden complete silence fell about them. As her eyes travelled
along the edge of the terrace where the balustrade had run, but ran
no longer, she had a sensation of standing on the last brink of the
world, high over nothingness. Langton's arm still supported her.

"As safe here as anywhere," she heard him saying. "For the chance
that led you here, thank whatever Gods may be."

"But I must find him!" she cried.

"Eh? Noll?--find Noll? Dear lady, small chance of that!"

"I must find him."

"He was to attend High Mass in the Cathedral--"

"Yes . . . with that woman. What help could such an one bring to him
if--if--Oh, I must find him, I say!"

"The Cathedra