Buried Cities | Page 3

worked tenderly on the face. With a few little strokes he made
the mouth smile kindly. He made the blue eyes deep and gentle. He
lifted the golden curls with a little breeze from Olympos. The god's
smile cheered him. The beautiful colors filled his mind. He forgot his
sorrows. He forgot everything but his picture. Minute by minute it grew
under his moving brush. He smiled into the god's eyes.
Meantime a great noise arose in the house. There were cries of fear.
There was running of feet.
"A great cloud!" "Earthquake!" "Fire and hail!" "Smoke from hell!"
"The end of the world!" "Run! Run!"
And men and women, all slaves, ran screaming through the house and
out of the front door. But the painter only half heard the cries. His ears,

his eyes, his thoughts were full of Apollo.
For a little the house was still. Only the fountain and the shadows and
the artist's brush moved there. Then came a great noise as though the
sky had split open. The low, sturdy house trembled. Ariston's brush was
shaken and blotted Apollo's eye. Then there was a clattering on the
cement floor as of a million arrows. Ariston ran into the court. From
the heavens showered a hail of gray, soft little pebbles like beans. They
burned his upturned face. They stung his bare arms. He gave a cry and
ran back under the porch roof. Then he heard a shrill call above all the
clattering. It came from the far end of the house. Ariston ran back into
the private court. There lay Caius, his master's little sick son. His couch
was under the open sky, and the gray hail was pelting down upon him.
He was covering his head with his arms and wailing.
"Little master!" called Ariston. "What is it? What has happened to us?"
"Oh, take me!" cried the little boy.
"Where are the others?" asked Ariston.
"They ran away," answered Caius. "They were afraid, Look! O-o-h!"
He pointed to the sky and screamed with terror.
Ariston looked. Behind the city lay a beautiful hill, green with trees.
But now from the flat top towered a huge, black cloud. It rose straight
like a pine tree and then spread its black branches over the heavens.
And from that cloud showered these hot, pelting pebbles of pumice
stone.
"It is a volcano," cried Ariston.
He had seen one spouting fire as he had voyaged on the pirate ship.
"I want my father," wailed the little boy.
Then Ariston remembered that his master was away from home. He
had gone in a ship to Rome to get a great physician for his sick boy. He
had left Caius in the charge of his nurse, for the boy's mother was dead.
But now every slave had turned coward and had run away and left the
little master to die.
Ariston pulled the couch into one of the rooms. Here the roof kept off
the hail of stones.
"Your father is expected home to-day, master Caius," said the Greek.
"He will come. He never breaks his word. We will wait for him here.
This strange shower will soon be over."
So he sat on the edge of the couch, and the little Roman laid his head in

his slave's lap and sobbed. Ariston watched the falling pebbles. They
were light and full of little holes. Every now and then black rocks of
the size of his head whizzed through the air. Sometimes one fell into
the open cistern and the water hissed at its heat. The pebbles lay piled a
foot deep all over the courtyard floor. And still they fell thick and fast.
"Will it never stop?" thought Ariston.
Several times the ground swayed under him. It felt like the moving of a
ship in a storm. Once there was thunder and a trembling of the house.
Ariston was looking at a little bronze statue that stood on a tall, slender
column. It tottered to and fro in the earthquake. Then it fell, crashing
into the piled-up stones. In a few minutes the falling shower had
covered it.
Ariston began to be more afraid. He thought of Death as he had painted
him in his picture. He imagined that he saw him hiding behind a
column. He thought he heard his cruel laugh. He tried to look up
toward the mountain, but the stones pelted him down. He felt terribly
alone. Was all the rest of the world dead? Or was every one else in
some safe place?
"Come, Caius, we must get away," he cried. "We shall be buried here."
He snatched up one of the blankets from the couch. He threw the ends
over his shoulders and let a loop hang at his back. He stood the