were struck by bullets. The automobile had been
used as an ambulance and the Red Cross flag was displayed on it. The
excuse of the shooters was that they did not see the flag and that the
car did not stop when challenged. This act led to an order forbidding
the carrying of firearms by the citizens' committees and to stricter
regulation of the soldiers in the use of their weapons.

Later on looting took a new form different from that at first shown and
was practiced by a different class of people. These were the sightseers,
many of them people of prominence, who entered upon a crusade of relic
hunting in Chinatown, gathering and carrying off from the ashes of this
quarter valuable pieces of chinaware, bronze ornaments, etc. It became
necessary to put a stop to this, and on April 30th four militiamen were
arrested while digging in the ruins of the Chinese bazaars, and others
were frightened away by shots fired over their heads. A strong military
line was then drawn around the district, and this last resource of the
looter came to an end.

CHAPTER V.

The Panic Flight of a Homeless Host.

The scene that was visible in the streets of San Francisco on that dread
Wednesday morning was one to make the strongest shudder with horror.
Those three minutes of devastating earth tremors were moments never to
be forgotten. In such a time it is the human instinct to get into the
open air, and the people stumbled from their heaving and quivering
houses to find even the solid earth was swaying and rising and falling,
so that here and there great rents opened in the streets. To the
panic-stricken people the minutes that followed seemed years of terror.
Doubtless some among them died of sheer fright and more went mad with
terror. There was a roar in the air like a burst of thunder, and from
all directions came the crash of falling walls. They would run forward,
then stop, as another shock seemed to take the earth from under their
feet, and many of them flung themselves face downward on the ground in
an agony of fear.

Two or three minutes seemed to pass before the fugitives found their
voices. Then the screams of women and the wild cries of men rent the
air, and with one impulse the terror-stricken host fled toward the
parks, to get themselves as far as possible from the tottering and
falling walls. These speedily became packed with people, most of them
in the night clothes in which they had leaped or been flung from their
beds