Chapter XVI: Messina (ave Atque Vale!) 466 (2)

“Snuffed out,” Bonanno said, “or so we hope, like so many rush candles.” A few steps farther on the King met four soldiers carrying a wounded officer on a litter. The King glanced at the man and a flash of recognition lighted his face.

“_Fermate!_” he cried. The bearers set down the litter; the King propped the poor head, rolling helplessly from side to side, with a fragment of gray military cloak folded for a pillow, wiped the ashen face, and whispered the one brave word ever on his lips “_Coraggio!_”

The streets through which the King passed were mountains of rubbish, the houses heaps of ruins, the air pestilential; the fire still burned in many places, and the smell of roasting flesh was simply overpowering. The few survivors who hung about the ruins added to the despair of the scene; some crazed with hunger, thirst, despair, behaved like maddened children; they talked of their dead or lost families with the terrible indifference of the insane; their minds were not strong enough to grasp what had happened. Others, oftenest women, appealed to every passer-by, imploring help in their frenzied efforts to reach some beloved being buried under tons of masonry. A woman tearing desperately with her bare hands at a huge mass of stone it would have taken a regiment of men a week to move recognized the King; she ran as if in frantic haste, threw

herself at his feet, raised her bleeding hands in an agony of appeal.

“_Maestá, aiuto!_ Save them! They are alive. I hear them, my husband, my son, my only son.”

“It is too much,” the King broke from her with a sob. “Help her, you others, if you can,” he cried to his aides and pushed on through the ghastly ruin of what three days ago had been the famous Marina, one of the most beautiful streets in the world.

“The King’s walk through Messina,” said Bonanno the _avvocato_ who followed him, “was like the walk of Dante and Virgil through the Inferno. At every step raving men, weeping women clutched at him, clung to him, stretched out their hands to him. Those hands! I dream of them now, hairy hands of men, transparent hands of women, old shrivelled hands with gripping fingers, chubby hands of little children lifted to the King, as if he could help them. I would not have been in his place, no, not for three kingdoms.”

From that desperate throng one tragic figure must stand out clear in the King’s memory as it does in Bonanno’s--the Deputy Ludovico Fulci pacing back and forth before the ruin of his brother’s house. Though Bonanno knew him well, he did not at first recognize him; in four days the deputy had grown twenty years older.

“Nicoló, Nicoló! Art thou yet alive?” he shrieked. “Oh, my brother, make one little sign! Until tonight I heard his voice crying for help! It has grown weaker and weaker; now I hear no sound. If help had come in time, I could have saved him, saved my brother, do you hear? Him, his wife, his little child, God knows how many others now dead, _sotto le macerie_.”

Under the masonry! No one who was in Italy during this dreadful season will ever forget that phrase, “_sotto le macerie_,” the deadly refrain of the great tragedy. Where is your mother, your lover, your child? The answer was always the same “_sotto le macerie_.”

The King, Bonanno said, above all else insisted that his visit should bring no interruption to the rescue work: indeed it proved an impetus to it, for he did much to establish something approaching system. The work of excavation was begun by the Russian sailors. Three Russian warships, the “Cesarevich,” the “Makaroff” and the “Slava,” cruising off the Calabrian coast, met a vessel--some say English, some say Italian--flying to Naples with the news of the earthquake: the Russians hurried to Messina, they were the first to arrive on the ground. What they did there Sicily will remember as long as her history survives. Like Francesco Calabresi, my plumber, the Avvocato Bonanno described their work in rescuing the entombed men, women and children as something superhuman.

“They did not wait for orders, they did not need them; each of them was an inspired leader; they saw no danger, but rushed like madmen among crumbling ruins, toppling walls; they worked like Titans I tell you. The English were not long behind the Russians, as you may believe. What a people! We Sicilians know what we owe them! Did these foreigners save many lives? Yes, hundreds, thousands of lives. More than all, the sight of their incredible labors--I say it to you again, they worked like gods not men--broke the spell of apathy that at first held us powerless. _Madonna mia!_ I myself felt it, though at Taormina the shock was light. At first I was stunned, dazed, lacked power to lift a hand! These unfortunates, you may believe, were worse. The first man I met after I returned to Messina was a colleague of mine; we had worked in the same office. He was quite stupefied. He did not know if any of his family had escaped or not, he did not seem to care. The visit of the King roused the people; ah! it was like cordial to one who faints. Imagine, on the fourth day hardly a cup of water, scarcely a loaf of bread had come to us from the outside. Was it wonderful we believed the end of the world had come, that we were abandoned by God and man?”

And all this time the great stream of supplies was pouring in a steady flood toward Messina. The city was like a man who dies of starvation in the midst of plenty, because he has lost the power to swallow.

“I went first to the house where I had lived,” Bonanno said. “It was a heap of ruins fallen outwards into the street; the inner wall was standing. How did I know the house? From the crimson paper on my bedroom wall. That wall--I can show it to you still--was perfect. There was the crucifix my mother hung over the bed, the palm from last Palm Sunday; there was the Venetian mirror without a crack, a portrait of Lola, the Spanish dancing girl (she is among the missing). A lot of soldiers were at work excavating our house; an officer with an iron crowbar lay flat on a mass of rubbish, and pried with all his might at a great stone coping from under which came faint groans. Another officer lay on his back below and somehow,--it looked a miracle,--they got a purchase on the stone. With strength that seemed incredible they tugged and heaved and at last lifted the great mass of granite; then they stopped to breathe and the soldiers quickly cleared away the smaller rubbish. We took out Agnese, the wife of my landlord, and her little child; they could not speak; their mouths were full of mortar. When we had freed their mouths and nostrils from the mortar we found they were both too much hurt to stand. We carried them to the field hospital in the piazza, where the doctors from the English ships were at work under a tarpaulin stretched over some posts. Not much of a hospital, but they worked, those doctors, as the sailors worked, like demons, as one might say, with all respect. Wet to the skin, fasting like we others, but working till their eyes refused to see, their hands to use the knife.”

“Was Agnese’s husband saved too?”

“Antonio? Yes, he was saved; that was a strange case, one of the strangest. He was saved by his dog. That blessed animal--I knew him well, his name was Leone--would not let Antonio sleep, but barked and barked and pulled at the blankets till Antonio got up from his bed, dressed himself and went out of the house. It was about half past four o’clock. He could not tell why he did so; it seemed as if the dog’s intelligence controlled his. Leone led the way, Antonio followed to the Piazza del Duomo, where he sat down on the steps of the Cathedral. Leone was not satisfied and still barked and whined and ran back and forth, until Antonio finally got up and went and sat down on a bench in the middle of the piazza. He was sitting there with the dog beside him when the earthquake came and the marble Bambino fell down out of the arms of the Madonna over the door of the Matrice, just at the place where he had been sitting; if he had remained there he would surely have been killed. These things

are not to be explained but there were many such happenings.”

“Were there any others saved from your house?”

“Agnese’s old grandfather. He lay quite still in his bed and went down in it to the lowest floor of the house. The beams fell so as to protect the bed. When we found him he was without a scratch, but quite blind from the dust in his eyes. I shook the old man by the shoulder to rouse him. He turned his blind eyes towards me and cried with the voice of a wounded lion:

“‘Leave me in peace! The earth is dying; I die with the earth!’”

Arcangelo’s stories of miraculous escapes would fill a volume; that of Marietta is one of the most extraordinary.

“Marietta certainly owes her life to me,” he began, “or rather to my ears. You must know that my ears are remarkable--so were my father’s. I have in truth the hearing of a cat. No one else could have heard the faint knocking inside the heap of rubbish that had been Ugo’s workshop. At first I doubted my senses, then I remembered that Marietta lived in the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, and it occurred to me at the same time that Ugo was working at a job in Catania. I gave information and after many hours of hard work the soldiers succeeded in making a space large enough to let down a basket with food and water to the woman buried under the ruins, whose tapping I had heard. I could now hear what she said; she was quite unhurt; her bed had been placed under an arch, the safest place of course, and the arch remained standing; she had not so much as a bruise. The house had fallen so that unless great care was taken the remaining walls would crumble and crush the woman under the arch. The fifth morning I came with a piece of bread and three dried figs I had found in the ruins for her; I made the usual signal; there was no answer.

“‘Marietta, canst thou hear?’ I called to her. She did not reply. I put my ear to the hole; what did I hear? A sharp thin voice that wailed and wailed but said no word.

“‘Marietta, art thou alive?’ ‘I am alive, and so is the child. Water, for the love of Mary!’ _Poverina!_ Alone in that dark pit she had borne her first child. On the eighth day we took Marietta and her baby from the _macerie_. It was a boy, stout and strong as a young bull, for we had fed the mother and her milk had not failed. Miracles? Ah, well, that is as one believes. I myself put the two of them on the train for Taormina. There be many rich _forestieri_ at Taormina; I doubt not they have cared for Marietta; they have great charity, those _forestieri_ of Taormina. They have charity, and they understand us a little, those who live among us here in Sicily; they shared our calamity, they knew our people. Some others do not understand, and should not judge. It may be true that this official ran away, that this other was relieved of office for incompetence. This they know, but they do not know the state of mind and body to which those men were reduced. It was better that they fled, for they were not fit to hold positions of responsibility; few of us were; we were too much broken. No one who has not seen Messina, who has not known the survivors, can understand; it was not like a battle, where men go in prepared for death, it was quite another thing!”

While the King was at Messina martial law was proclaimed. General Mazza, who was at home on sick leave, left his bed and hurried to Messina to take command of the troops. I asked Bonanno what manner of man the general was; I remember his answer well.

“A good man and a brave soldier. He has but one fault, the incurable one: he is sixty-eight years old and out of health besides!”

The proclaiming of martial law was a military necessity. The prison at Messina had been destroyed by the earthquake, and the convicts, the scum of Sicily, were at large. From Naples, from Palermo, from all over Italy, the offscouring of the cities raced, like beasts of prey who scent the carnage of battle, to the ruin of Messina, the beautiful. It seemed as if Nature’s cruelty in destroying half a province roused the basest passions in the base, and the noblest in the noble. The soldiers on their rounds at night saw things--desecrations of the helpless dead, offences against nature--that turned them from thoughtless boys to grave men. Here again the Russians, swift to save, swift to punish, terrible in their anger, set the example. A young Russian midshipman, a beautiful boy,--his blue eyes were like ice with fire below, Bonanno said,--found one of the human vultures at work. The midshipman had very little Italian, only a few words; they were enough:

“_Ladro!_” he cried and put his pistol to the ruffian’s head, “_condannato a morte_,” and fired.

After this the soldiers’ orders were explicit; when the offence was monstrous, the human monsters were shot without delay. It is a terrible thing to proclaim martial law but there was no other way. Not only were the Red Cross Knights of Europe, England and America pressing on to the relief of the afflicted city, but the murderers, thieves and ravishers from the four quarters of the earth were hastening in search of plunder and rapine to Messina, the rich, to Reggio, the prosperous, the sister city across the uneasy straits.

“Do you know the worst?” Bonanno whispered, as if it were too horrible to speak aloud. “Some of our girls--think of it--lost, dazed, stricken creatures, were kidnapped for the brothels of Naples! The slave hunters saw their chance from the first hour; who knows how many of our Sicilian virgins, the purest, the most beautiful of God’s daughters, are now lost in that hideous, that worst of all slavery? Ah, it is too much! Dear God, had we not enough to bear without this? One I have tried to trace, a flower, a lily, the girl whose eyes said to mine, ‘When the time comes for you to speak, I am ready.’ She was seen alive and well on board one of the first boats that left for Naples; she has never been heard of since.”

Bonanno dashed the tears from his eyes, shook his fist in the direction of Naples. “Accursed city!” he cried, “sink of Europe!”

* * * * *

While King Victor was in Messina helping organize the rescue work, Queen Elena remained in the harbor shaping the course of the hospital-ship work. She went from ship to ship, for every vessel, merchantman or man-of-war of whatever nationality, became for the nonce a floating hospital. The most seriously wounded were carried on board the ships, where they could receive better care than in the hospital stations on shore where, in the midst of confusion, and difficulties beyond belief, the faithful surgeons worked early and late under the pitiless rain, drenched to the skin, fasting and suffering with thirst and cold like all the rest. It was a time when men and women toiled with every fibre of their being; there was too much to do to allow of specialization; the King planned, but he lent a hand too when he saw the chance; the Queen practically shaped the whole future course of the hospital-ship work; but that was not enough. She rolled up her sleeves, put on her apron and went to work to help the doctors as only a good nurse can. On board one of the floating hospitals she received the wounded, washed and dressed their wounds, bandaged broken limbs, soothed the sick, comforted the dying. It was then that she came into her true woman’s kingdom, earned for once and all the title of Queen Elena the Good.

Her fame as a nurse has been spread throughout Italy, throughout the world, not by courtiers or reporters, but by the patients she tended. That is a sort of reputation that lasts. In Syracuse a young Messinese said to a Blue Sister from Malta, who was doing up her shattered arm:

“Guardi, the Queen put on that bandage; mind you roll it as smoothly as she did.”

In a Naples hospital a child was heard to cry, “The Queen did not hurt me as much as you do, and she had to pick the mortar out of the wound before she dressed it.”

It is said that more than one woman died in the Queen’s arms at Messina; it is certain that she was so much impressed by what she saw there that she became the most impassioned of all who worked for Italy in the dark hour. She suffered even in her person; one poor frenzied creature in her struggles to throw herself overboard, struck the Queen and hurt her, it was feared at first seriously. Her example of service was followed by the court ladies and by heroic women of every class; her energy aroused hope in the forlorn remnant of the stricken people; it was a moral tonic and stimulus to the whole nation.

When they left Rome both the King and Queen believed the disaster to be even more complete than it proved; they had been told that all the inhabitants of Messina and Reggio were killed. Orders were given to the Roman Red Cross Society to wait their instructions. When they reached Messina and found how matters stood, the Queen sent a wire to the president of the Red Cross asking for nurses and doctors to be sent down. From Vera, one of the first to volunteer, I heard something of the expedition.

“I got my summons on New Year’s day--you remember, we met at the Campidoglio that morning and you told me where to go for shoes? I had just succeeded in finding those shoes for my _profughi_ when I was called to the telephone. Could I be ready to start that evening for Messina? Naturally I could--we all could; not that we had been idle, for there was plenty to do for the refugees already on our hands in Rome; but if I could be of more use at Messina, I was ready to go. There were forty of us women in the Red Cross party and a number of surgeons. The officer in command made us an amusing speech--he didn’t mean to be amusing: ‘You will take the minimum of luggage and the maximum of obedience,’ he said. ‘You will drop your titles and remember you are under military discipline and that insubordination will be punished’--then came a hint of a dark cabin and of manacles for insubordinates. We listened to him and felt that we were back in the days of the French Revolution, that we should henceforth be known as Citizeness this or that. Many of us had titles, but not all. There was Princess Teano--you knew her as the beautiful Vittoria Colonna; there was the Marchesa Guiccioli, whose husband is equerry to the Queen Mother; there was Countess Teresina Tua, the violinist; Madame Agresti, Rossetti’s daughter. We left Rome for Spezia, way up at the top of Italy; it seemed a waste of time when we wanted to go to the south; it was a dreadful night journey; I sent Natika back to Rome from Spezia.”

Vera sighed; Natika was her Calmuck maid; that little sigh was the only whimper I ever heard from her through these months when she lived, worked, spent her genius, power, money, all that she has and is as freely as water _pro Calabria e Sicilia_.

“At Spezia we caught the troop-ship ‘Taormina’ bound for Messina with a regiment of soldiers. After endless delays we at last set sail; before we were well outside the harbor we were recalled by a ‘wireless’ and had to turn round and go back. I sketched the harbor and Gulf of Spezia, the arsenal, the dockyard, the two forts, the purple hills behind, the white fishing villages in the foreground. It was all interesting, but the delay was hard to bear! Every heart-beat spelt ‘hurry’; every hour of waiting meant so many fewer lives saved. The soldiers who had only just embarked were ordered on shore again, and we had to wait until they had all disembarked!”

Vera’s small nervous hands opened and shut impatiently. She speaks with a slight lisp that is like the soft pedal of a piano to the music of her voice. Vera was brought up by an English governess; she is many-colored as a chameleon, polished as a many-faceted jewel; when she is with us she turns the English facet to the light.

“As we passed the Bay of Lerici I thought of Lord Byron and of Shelley who passed his last days there. Is it true you no longer read those poets? We do in Russia.”

At sunrise on the morning of Saturday, January 2nd, five days after the earthquake, the “Taormina” with the Red Cross party on board sailed into the harbor of Messina; the ships at anchor saluted by dipping the colors; on the admiral’s vessel, the marines presented arms. The “Taormina” dropped anchor near enough the shore for those on board to see the sunken Marina, the great yawning cracks in the solid ground, the railroad station with the cars heaped together as if there had been a collision. A locomotive lay overturned on its side: some of the cars had been carried out to sea, where they lay idly washing to and fro, others had been seized and turned into dwellings by the wretched _superstiti_. An endless procession of soldiers and sailors with stretchers bearing the wounded filed past, and the rattle of the gay little painted Sicilian carts heaped with the dead never ceased as the long line moved towards the huge funeral pyre. The fumes of the burning bodies reached them on board the “Taormina,” sickening but not discouraging the perfumed ladies of the court. There had been some doubt whether they would be ordered on shore to help in the hospitals under the rude tents, or whether the wounded would be brought on board. At last the order came clear and direct: “Prepare to receive the wounded on board.” After that no time was lost. The operating rooms were made ready, the long tables were cleared, the surgeons put on their white gowns, laid out their shining instruments, chose their assistants. When the forty nurses reported for duty one only among them all wore the uniform of a trained nurse, Phyllis Wood of the Buffalo General Hospital.

“I would have exchanged my title for hers,” Vera said, “and what would I not have given for her clinical thermometer, the only one on board!”

Later I saw and talked with Nurse Phyllis herself: “We had come in for the worst, for the wounded that were brought on board the ‘Taormina’ had been _sotto le macerie_ for days,” she said. “They were suffering from intolerable thirst and hunger. Oh, the cries for water, the screams of pain, as the poor maimed creatures were brought on board in the arms of the soldiers and sailors. The first day I was detailed to do the dressing of the wounds; later I was ordered down into the hold to assist Dr. Guarneri, the chief surgeon, with the operations. Then my real work began. We worked at the rate of sixty operations a day, all sorts of settings, every conceivable fracture. There was no time to give anesthetics (indeed we had none to give), yet we hardly heard a murmur from these poor lips. We had two extemporized operating tables and two young doctors worked with me under Guarneri. Sometimes it seemed impossible to keep up with the work, to have the dressings and antiseptics ready; but Guarneri is a splendid surgeon, full of energy and enthusiasm, so calm and self-possessed that we worked under him unconscious of time or of fatigue; our hours were from six in the morning till one at night.”

There was work for doctors and nurses among the rescuers as well as among the rescued. Many of the brave soldiers and sailors, who had worked with splendid courage and devotion, died from gangrene caused by handling the decomposing bodies; the death of one of these heroes stands clear in the nurse’s memory. A young lieutenant of Bersaglieri was brought on board the “Taormina,” dying from a hemorrhage brought on by his tremendous exertions.

“He was conscious to the last,” the nurse said. “We had no time to undress him, so he lay in his uniform and we placed his sword beside him. He was only one of many who laid down their lives!”

“I had for my helper,” Nurse Phyllis went on, “a young Roman belle, not twenty years old, with no more knowledge of nursing than a baby. She stood up to her work like a veteran--it was not easy; no American girl of that sort could have done what she did.”

Those days on the “Taormina” were not easy days for the Red Cross ladies, but I do not think one of them would be willing to give up the experience they brought. Whatever else was lacking, on board the hospital ship they had splendid surgical skill, for the Italian surgeons are among the best in the world. In this dire emergency the national characteristic, the capacity of working on a spurt, came into play. Soon help came to the “Taormina” from the other ships already on the ground; one sent sterilized gauze, another sent bandages, a third medicines, a fourth a supply of vaseline.

“The English Jackies from a neighboring ship,” said Phyllis, “made and sent us a quantity of long white garments for our poor naked patients; they were very primitive, made of a long piece of white cloth with two seams and a hole for the head, but we were mighty glad to get them.”

How like the decent English this was; how I should have loved to see the dear sailors sitting on deck sewing the long seams!

While Vera was with the Red Cross at Messina, there was a rumor that the authorities had decided to destroy what was left of the city.

“Each day we heard a new report,” Vera said, “till we did not know what to believe. Your friend, the Avvocato Bonanno, brought us one of the most startling rumors. I remember his saying, ‘We count the dead by tens of thousands. How can they be decently buried, how can a pestilence be prevented? There is but one way to complete the destruction the earthquake has wrought. We should send away the few survivors, then let the warships bombard this vestige of a city till the last walls crumble, fall, and bury together the city and its dead.’”

* * * * *

News from Taormina at last--the city, not the ship! Letters began to come to us in Rome from one and another of our people there, letters that gave us glimpses of their experiences and the work they were doing. My old friend Anne Lee of Boston wrote:

“I was wakened by the earthquake but not very much frightened at first. I did get up and go to the window to watch the sea. It was terrible to hear and most curious. Out in the bay there was a wide circle of whitish yellow light which stayed in one place; it looked like moonlight, but there was no moon, and it was round, not straight like the wake of a star. I could see the waves breaking high on the shore. In no time the poor _contadini_ were coming out of their houses over on the hills with their lanterns; they looked like Will o’ the wisps; they were hurrying over to the town for protection. The big quaking lasted forty seconds, but we had small ones all day. The town was in a panic; men, women, and children ran out into the streets without anything on, or trying to struggle into their clothes. Some of their shirts were upside down; all were screaming with fright. They crowded into the churches by hundreds. At eight I heard music; I went to the window and saw a procession marching down the narrow street that runs along by the old Roman wall. First came the _Misericordia_, dressed in white with red shoulder capes carrying lighted candles. On a _paso_ was San Pancrazio dressed as a bishop, with two rows of candles burning before him. As soon as they were in sight of the sea they stopped and cried out a prayer and waved their hands towards the sea; they went on again to the end of the street, waving towards Etna standing against the blue sky like a great white pyramid with a mass of new fallen snow on the summit. It was glorious. The band was playing a slow muffled march, the other instruments stopping while the muffled drum carried on the time with slow steady taps. Before San Pancrazio walked the Archpriest with his two assistants carrying lighted candles, then came the great crowd of men, women and children, the white Carmelite nuns, and the yellow and red handkerchiefs of the peasants making spots of color in the dark mass; they were all so terrified and earnest looking! They took San Pancrazio from his own church to the cathedral to wait and protect them for a while until Saint Peter could be brought to join him. About five o’clock in the afternoon they brought Saint Peter with the same sort of procession, only more people, and placed the two cousins opposite each other in the cathedral. At the mass the church was packed with people kissing their hands and crossing themselves when they passed the statues. My poor old cook Venera spent most of the day on her knees. Down at the little town of Giardini there was a cloudburst a few weeks before the earthquake. Some of the houses were entirely crushed or buried. After the earthquake a fearful tidal wave took the water out to sea over twenty feet, then it rushed back and inundated the town, breaking and spoiling all that the deluge had spared and sweeping the fishing boats out to sea. Before the quake the people in Giardini saw two flashes of lightning; they saw a great fiery dragon pass over towards Calabria, and queer little dancing light spots as if the water were boiling.

“Since Tuesday all the English and Americans and a few Sicilians have been working night and day down at the station, feeding and watering the sick, wounded, and dying on the endless trains passing through from Messina to Catania. Many refugees have been left here; one woman gave birth to a dear little boy at the station. The American and English are organizing committees to help the sick and wounded who remain here in Taormina. Miss Swan and I are on the cooking committee; we go Wednesdays and Fridays and tend the cooking of a great kettle of pasta, or beans, or rice. Some take the food home; others eat it in the old deserted church near the clock tower, that used to be used as a school. We give them cheese, wine, and clothing--some of them have never before been so well fed or clothed. Many grumbled because they did not have meat, and didn’t like their clothes--they are already sadly spoiled. The news was brought by a sailor who walked from Messina; he told us that Messina was destroyed and thousands killed. Mr. Wood went over Tuesday morning to see if he could find Mr. and Mrs. Cheney. The great palace where they lived was a mass of rubbish. He could look into what had been their parlor and just see a corner of a piece of their beautiful antique furniture, a mirror still hanging on the wall, one of the yellow damask silk curtains hanging out of the window. When they found the dear little woman they only recognized her by the locket she always wore.”

The Cheneys had spent Christmas at Palermo, where their friends had urged them to stay longer, but they had felt obliged to return to Messina.

“As the trains came into the station the first cry was ‘Water, water.’ Six hundred or more were put off here at Taormina. We went down to the station at ten, worked there all day and did not get home till eleven or twelve at night. There were five or six trains during the day and as many during the night. The first week was the hardest work and kept us all jumping. In a few days we got settled and organized into committees. There were about three groups all working for the same thing, but each head was afraid some other head would get the greater credit and praise. Truth is, we were all working for humanity, to try and give the poor scared hungry souls food and drink and homes; it didn’t matter whether it was A, B or C; they all did splendid work and all worked with all their souls, and every one, including the Sicilian ladies and people from Russia, Germany, Austria and France, was only too glad to help. We gave away over three hundred loaves of bread a day, crackers, oranges, cooked polenta, everything that could be found to eat, milk, water and wine, all paid for by the _forestieri_, and a few of the townspeople. They were so much dazed for the most that it took them ten days to ‘come to.’ So many had lost friends that at first they could think of nothing else, and some were perfectly willing to stand by and let the strangers do the work. The first official action of the town authorities was on the eleventh day. I looked up from boiling some coffee for a train that was coming, and there stood the Mayor and two or three other short fat fathers of the town all talking at the tops of their voices, their hands and arms going in every direction. They were perfectly purple in the face and looked like so many bantam cocks ready to tear each other to pieces. I asked what the matter was?

“The Mayor and the municipality had come down to forbid any more bread or food being given away; there would be a bread famine, a wheat famine; we were taking the bread out of the mouths of the Taorminesi, and soon there would be a mob and the people would break into our houses. We had on hand three hundred loaves of bread bought, paid for, and broken up. In spite of the city fathers the bread was given to the refugees on the next train. Then there was a rumor that the milk had given out. Just before I reached the station that day I met three men driving a herd of twenty goats; they had escaped with their goats from Messina. The milk was bargained for and fifteen quarts, good and fresh, was milked from the goats and paid for by some Boston girls.”

A young lady, whose name is I think Miss Fernald, wrote the following story of what she saw at that station of Giardini to her brother:

“The first train from Messina. Oh, George, you can never imagine the horror of that first train! It squirmed through the tunnel like an injured worm, and stopped at our station crammed jammed with dying, crushed and bleeding humanity, leaving a trail of human blood as it wound its way from Messina. We had provided ourselves with bandages, brandy, wine, bread, milk. As soon as the train stopped we rushed to the windows and doors with our supplies. I shall never forget the roar of this groaning humanity wildly screaming for water and doctors. People were dying every moment, stretcher after stretcher was brought in and gently laid down in the station. Dr. and Mrs. Dashwood (English residents of Taormina) were angels in the work of rescue; they brought four babies into the world at the station. We turned the place into a hospital in the twinkling of an eye; soon the building was packed with the injured and dying. Delirious women, women gone mad from fright, wounded children, and gentlemen, so patient and grateful. It made my heart ache to hear their humble thanks for what was being done to comfort them. One train we entered had a basket with twelve or fifteen babies, five of whom had died on the way from Messina. The hour’s journey had taken nine hours because of the many washouts. One beautiful young lady, who, no one knew, died at the station; they called her ‘a princess.’ Every person from the villas went down with huge supplies of food. There was hot soup and cocoa, besides bread and fruit. We girls spent three nights and three days at the station and saved many lives by giving nourishment and what comfort was possible to half naked and starving people. The trains returning to Messina were crowded with people looking for their families, and also with a bad set of thieves. We have a regiment now at the station and soldiers all along the beach to Messina. Any one seen in the ruined city without a passport is shot on sight. Our new year’s eve was spent resting on sacks of figs at the station, administering to and comforting the poor crazed women and children, and waiting for the next train. I can’t write of the effect of this dreadful spectacle. Now things are more systematic as regards our work. It was my duty to go about and find the poor wretches who had wandered into Taormina. I found in one church five sisters who had found their way with great difficulty from Messina. The distance is nearly thirty miles. They were thinly clad and in a starving condition. The natives here have responded to the call fairly well and clothes have come in--but such rags. However, new ones are being made and distributed as fast as possible. The Prince of Cherami of the San Domenico is doing wonderful work as well as the villa people. All the visitors have fled from Taormina, the hotels are entirely deserted and will of course be closed. At the station I saw a woman with a cage of twelve birds; she had lost all her five children. We have felt shocks for five days. Most of the villa people are trembling with fear. What is to be done with these homeless wretched people? God only knows. It’s over a week now since the earthquake; the trains still come in filled to overflowing with injured taken every day from the ruins.”

“The German battle-ship ‘Serapim,’” says Miss Lee, “brought a great number of refugees. One music hall singer had her little canary on her finger; the little creature was singing, the only happy thing on that dreadful ship. I worked for over three weeks at the station of Giardini. One night Mr. Kitson was going through the Red Cross car, helping with milk, wine and so forth. At the end of the car was a large clothes basket full of little new-born babies, two dead, three or five alive, and nothing to cover them or keep them warm, so the dead ones had been kept for that. They had been born on the train and had had no one to tend them, poor little souls. It made him perfectly sick and was, we think, partly responsible for his long illness. I was kept in the surgical ward room to have the water ready for the doctors and so I did not see all the horrors as those did who went through the cars--I was spared that, thank God.”

III

AMERICA TO THE RESCUE

On the first of January, three days after the great earthquake, a band of Calabrians, living in New York, flashed this message across the Atlantic to their mother country:

“Do not forget Scylla!”

Scylla, how the old name thrills! Scylla had suffered severely, though its gray castle, perched high on the cliff that rises sheer from the shore, was spared. Scylla, the ancient village at the foot of the purple Calabrian mountains, was not forgotten, nor Reggio, nor the white fishing hamlets that line the tawny shores of Sicily and Calabria on either side of the restless straits. The people of the coast were soonest reached and soonest helped by the sailors of the passing ships, for the navies of the world flew on the wings of love and pity to succor the stricken ports. Never were ships watched for with such eagerness, never were sailors greeted with such passionate rapture since Theseus sailed back from Crete to Athens with his precious freight of Athenian youths and maidens, saved from the dreadful Minotaur. The people who lived in the hills and valleys of the interior suffered longest, were last relieved; but even to them help came, for the sailors were faithful and carried the world’s bounty to the desolate inland towns of Sicily and Calabria. The story of their labor of love would fill an encyclopedia. This is the story of the American relief ship “Bayern,” that brought comfort and hope to the forlorn survivors of the great earthquake; to tell the story clearly, we must go back to Rome where the cruise was planned.

Saturday afternoon, January second, the Via Quattro Fontane, in the neighborhood of the American Embassy, was crowded with carriages, cabs and automobiles. The tall handsome porter of the Palazzo del Drago was on duty in full dress; he wore a long broadcloth overcoat that came down to his feet, a black cocked hat with a cockade of red, white and blue. His mighty staff of office, a certain grand air he has, make him a formidable personage to those who have no real business at the palace. Once you are known to this Cerberus, he has no terrors for you; he is gentle by nature as such big men so often are.

“Can I see the Ambassador?” I asked the porter.

“That I cannot promise, lady. He has just returned from the Quirinal; there are many persons waiting to see him, but--” he raised his shoulders with the Latin gesture that expresses doubt--“who knows? The Signora can but try.” He stood back, made me a splendid bow with as fine a flourish of his tricorne as if I had been a princess, and the way was free. I entered the handsome _portone_, walked through the long marble gallery, past the courtyard where the noise of the fountain sounds like the trampling of impatient steeds, past the twin lions of giallo antico that guard the entrance, and up the magnificent stairway leading to the _piano nobile_, the home of the American Ambassador. At the door of the apartment I was met by another of those prodigious serving men--the giants of the American Embassy were the talk of Rome that winter--they were recruited from the ex-cuirassiers of the King’s own body guard, the glorious hundred, the shortest of whom is six feet tall.

“Her Excellency would receive me; as to his Excellency, it was just possible. The ladies were in the dancing hall.” He waved me towards the mirrored gallery. I paused a moment to stare about the great anticamera, big enough to hold an ordinary embassy. At one end there is a wide fireplace, over which, instead of armorial bearings, our Eagle spreads its mighty sheltering wings. This splendid anticamera was in strange confusion, crowded with packing cases, piled half-way to the ceiling with bales of goods, boxes of clothing, boots, food, medicines, relief supplies of all kinds. Every able-bodied American in Rome was working _pro Sicilia e Calabria_, and the Ambassador’s home was not only the nerve-center of the relief work but a warehouse, a base of supplies.

From the ballroom came the sound of women’s voices, the snip-snip of shears, the click of sewing machines. Here was another transformation; the sumptuous ballroom with the smooth polished floor had become a busy workroom. Under the gilt chandelier stood a long table, heaped with bales of flannel and cloth, over which leaned four or five ladies, scissors in hand, cutting out skirts, blouses and jackets. On the satin-covered benches sat a bevy of young women and girls, basting, sewing, planning, and chatting as they worked.

“I have nothing left but red flannel,” said the chief cutter-out, “what shall I do with it?”

“Petticoats and under jackets,” said the Doctor’s wife. “We must put all the colored goods into under-clothing. The poor things beg so for black dresses. You wouldn’t want to wear red or blue if you had lost twenty-five members of your family, as my _profughi_ have.”

“Still we must use what material we have. Let us keep the black for our _profughi_ here in Rome and send the colored things down there where the need is greater and they cannot be so particular.”

The scene was typical of Rome, of Italy, of the civilized world at that time. In every home, rich or poor, in every country, women of all classes were sewing for those naked wretches who had escaped from the great earthquake with nothing but their lives. In the Palace of the Quirinal the little princesses, Jolanda and Mafalda, sat up in their high chairs, stitching busily for the children of the stricken South. The fury of benevolence that had driven men and women all over the world into some action, some sacrifice, for their suffering brothers, was being organized, had become the great driving force that should compel some sort of order out of chaos unparalleled. When it grew too dark to see in the ballroom the friendly giant lighted the chandelier and the candles in the gilt sconces. As he passed me he murmured:

“If the Signora can wait till the other ladies have gone her Excellency--“

“Of course I can wait.” I settled down to overcast the seams of a black woolen frock.

“Do you know where one can buy handkerchiefs?” asked the chief cutter-out. “Every shop I tried today was sold out. All Sicilians use handkerchiefs, even the poorest; it’s one of their good points. I was at the station this morning helping the English Committee--they meet every train from Naples that brings ‘survivors,’ and fit out the poor things with shoes and clothes. Some of them were half naked; one pretty girl--a perfect Hebe--was dressed in an officer’s uniform. The poor souls cry so one _has_ to give them one’s own handkerchief; I have hardly one left!”

“Ask the Ambassadress; she knows more about what’s left in Rome than anybody,” said the Doctor’s wife. Then in an undertone to me: “It’s wonderful how she takes the lead and the rest of us all fall in line; she makes us lose sight of the woman in the Ambassadress; she’s taken command of the scattered forces of the colony like a generalissimo; she’s proclaimed an armistice to internecine strife. Look at those two women, the lamb and the wolf cutting out together; it took the earthquake and Mrs. Griscom to bring that about!”

“Time to go home,” said the chief cutter-out, as the cracked bells of San Bernardo’s rang six. “My hands ache with the weight of these shears; this is the best day’s work we have done.”

One by one, the ladies, colonials and transients, fashionable and unfashionable, took their leave. When all had gone, the giant ushered me into the yellow drawing-room, where I found her Excellency seated in a low chair before the fire making tea. She greeted me with her flashing smile and bade me welcome.

I asked for news of those who had gone down to the city of the dreadful night; we had heard nothing of Major Landis, Mr. Cutting, Mr. Chanler and the others who had gone to Messina the Thursday before.

“No news--but from home, oh, so much! It is as we all knew it would be; we shall do our share.”

Rumor already had it that great sums of money had been cabled from America, both to the Ambassador and to the Italian Red Cross. If that money was to be well spent, the Ambassador’s work was cut out for him, as hard work as even he could covet.

A few moments later Mr. Griscom came in and asked his wife for a cup of tea. His Excellency’s dark inscrutable face showed fatigue; the veiled fire of the eyes was nearer the surface than usual, the clear-cut lips were compressed. As the Doctor’s wife said, it was fortunate for us that we had these strong young people to take the lead in the American relief work. From the first they bore the brunt gallantly; work as hard as their helpers might, they out-stripped all others, gave with a lavish hand, power, sympathy, wit, energy, health; in a word they gave themselves. We turned to them as to our natural leaders in all large and even in small questions. It had seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that, having given away all our available cash and all the clothes we could spare, I should go to the Embassy to beg for my _profughi_, the family of Francesco Calabresi, the plumber from Messina.

“You have received large sums of money from home,” I said to Mr. Griscom.

“Yes,” he looked at me steadily, ready to guard the treasure from the most desperate assault. He listened patiently to my story of the Calabresi family, to my plea for money to buy clothes and a cradle for the imminent baby, and plumber’s tools to set Francesco up in business before he should become demoralized by the dreadful Roman system of paying so much _per capita_ every day to each family of _profughi_, without demanding any work in return for the money. First to lose everything they owned, then to be robbed of their habit of self-dependence was the cruel fate of too many.

“We must help these poor people to help themselves,” said the Ambassador, sounding the key-note of the American relief work from first to last. Then very kindly he pointed out to me that my interest in an individual case made me lose sight of the fact that he must deal with the situation as a whole. The American funds must be distributed with method and exactness; the generous help our country was sending must be well spent; his work was to lay out the general scheme, the detail was for others; he had appointed an American Relief Committee; they had held their first meeting that morning.

I saw it all then in a flash, got a sense of some great plan maturing, and took my leave, mortified enough that I should have troubled the god-in-the-machine with a mere detail.

The next day, Sunday, was like a poem bound in blue and gold. I went up on the terrace to gather the last chrysanthemums that had escaped the frost, and to loosen the soil about the first hyacinth, whose close-furled pointed leaves pricked through the brown mould. Below the Tiber rolled, a tawny flood, under the arches of the Ponte Margherita. Across the river the angel of the Castel Sant’ Angelo lifted his bronze sword over the tomb of Hadrian, the dome of St. Peter’s showed like a pale blue bubble against the deeper blue of the sky; the bells of Rome rocked and pealed in their towers, calling the people to mass. From the barracks in the Prati di Castello the bugles sounded, and a regiment swung down the white road by the Tiber, past the statue of Ciceruácchio, and over the bridge to the gay music of the royal march. I was leaning over the parapet to watch the soldiers out of sight, when Agnese called me downstairs.

“A messenger from the Embassy, Signora, with a bundle so large we had to open both sides of the _portone_ to let it pass!”

I hurried down in time to thank the good-natured giant for the gigantic parcel he had brought. Agnese cut the strings and handed me a card with a line in pencil signed Elizabeth Griscom.