ding frightful
Pyramids of ruined Fronts, some inclining one Way, some another; then
on the other hand with Horror, in viewing Heaps of Bodies crushed to
death, half-buried and half-burnt; and if one went through the broad
Places or Squares, there was nothing to be met with but People
bewailing their Misfortunes, wringing their Hands, and crying
_The World is at an End_. In short, it was the most lamentable Scene
that Eyes could behold. As the Shocks, though Small, are frequent,
the People keep building Wooden Houses in the Fields; but the King
has ordered no Houses to be built to the Eastward of _Alcantara_
Gate.--Just now four _English_ Sailors have been condemned for
stealing Goods, and hiding them in the Ballast, with Intent to make a
Property of them."

Chapter VII.

THE LAST OFFER

His villa being destroyed, they had carried Sir Oliver out to Belem,
to one of the wooden hospitals hastily erected in the royal grounds.
There the King's surgeon dressed his wounds and set the broken left
arm, Ruth attending with splints and bandages.

When all was done and the patient asleep, she crept forth. She would
fain have stayed to watch by him; but this would have meant crowding
the air for the sufferers, who already had much ado to breathe.
She crept forth, therefore, and slept that night out on the naked
ground, close under the lee of the canvas.

Early next morning she was up and doing. A dozen hospitals had been
improvised and each was crying out for helpers. She chose that of
her friend Mr. Castres, the British envoy. It stood within a
high-walled garden, sheltered from the wind which, for some days
after the earthquake, blew half a gale. At first the hospital
consisted of two tents; but in the next three days these increased to
a dozen, filling the enclosure. Then, just as doctors and nurses
despaired of coping with it, the influx of wounded slackened and
ceased, almost of a sudden. In the city nothing remained now but to
bury the dead, and in haste, lest their corpses should breed
pestilence. It was horribly practical; but every day, as she awoke,
her first thought was for the set of the wind; her first fear that in
the night it might have shifted, and might be blowing from the east
across Lisbon. The wind, however, kept northerly, as though it had
been nailed to that quarter. She heard that gangs were at work
clearing the streets and collecting the dead; at first burying them
laboriously aft