In the cosmic mêlée they were tossed forth and back like a shuttle in a loom—so violently at first that the horses fell to their knees and were whirled in opposite directions. In terror the animals tried to lie down and roll over with their burdens; but their riders whipped and spurred vigorously, and the maddened creatures ran until they dropped exhausted on the river bank. A thick shower of ashes fell over them, and the air was like a blast from a furnace. Behind them came smoking streaks of lava, poured into the plain by a row of flame-mantled hills. Flocks were scampering wildly in every direction, and the scattered herdsmen were taking to the boats and skiffs tied along the river bank. Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta climbed into the balsa awaiting them, and their attendants hastened with them. They had scarcely pushed out into midstream, when the very bed of the river seemed to rise and hurl its waters forward. Waves rose in an undulating wall of water, breaking the banks of both sides, sending death and destruction broadcast over the valley. The boats were carried along by an irresistible impulse and with incredible swiftness, straight across sinuous windings of the stream onward toward the sea. Lightning played over their heads; but the crash of thunder, the explosions of the volcanoes, the mighty heaves and groans tearing the breast of the trembling earth were lost in an angry roar of waters. A canon-shot would not have sent them forward with greater impetus; and this prevented their boats from swamping, despite their shipping water frightfully. The shock which leveled the Observatory tower shattered all the windows and cracked every building in Tlamco, letting the accumulated waters through what is now Carquinez Straits, and widened an arm of the sea into an open inlet. The impounded water inundated the surrounding country, swept over the intervening islands, and spent itself in a series of waves mountain high, whose impact disturbed the ocean’s surface for thousands of miles, after severing Lime Point from the peninsula and plowing out the famous Golden Gate entrance to the bay.[9] One of the most violent tremors caught the little colony of boats, which by a miraculous coincidence, were thrown together in the trough of the sea, and tossed them ashore, high and dry, on the Berkeley hills. The water receded so rapidly that the boats stuck fast in the débris and mud. All except the strongest one, containing Ben Hu Barabe and Alcyesta, were crushed like egg-shells. With broken arms and legs, bruised and battered bodies, scarred almost beyond recognition, the little band huddled together, reviving each other when pain brought unconsciousness, while the elements overhead and below them rioted with unabated fury.