What could have happened? A thunderstorm? The place struck by lightning? He gripped his temples. He had never heard of a thunderstorm in a dense fog. Besides, thunder never occurred in the long, continuous, rhythmical acceleration of volume of sound. Yet what else but thunder and lightning could account for the blasted homestead that reeked before his eyes? He looked around. The stone enclosure was strewn with unspeakable wreckage; great blocks of masonry, unrecognizable shafts of timber, bits of twisted iron railing, ashes, charred wood. . . . He rose dizzily to his feet. His head was one agony. He felt something wet on his neck, and realized that the wound evidently caused by the concussion of his head against a stone, had begun to bleed afresh. Before he could tie around his brows the handkerchief which he mechanically drew out, he saw, close by, the dead body of the dog Brutus, and he returned the handkerchief to his pocket. The dog seemed to have been killed outright by a great piece of granite that had been hurled upon him. Then for the first time his mind grew quite clear. The unknown convulsion had dealt not only destruction but death. Where was Quong Ho? He started forthwith on an agonized search. They had been standing together a few paces away from the front door. Thither he went, but could find no trace of him among the wreckage. From the roofless enclosure of granite and through the windows poured black volumes of smoke. It was useless, even impossible, to look inside. Baltazar called out loudly the Chinaman’s name, as he made a circuit of the devastated house, only to find fresh evidences of complete catastrophe. Here and there lay fragments of iron, unfamiliar to him, which in his anxiety for Quong Ho’s safety he did not speculate on or examine. He nearly tripped over something by the burned-down stable. Looking down, to his sickening horror, he found it to be the head of the old grey mare. He went on. No sign of Quong Ho. In the little enclosed grass patch, now foul with rubbish, the very goats lay dead, mostly dismembered. He stared at them stupidly. A sudden shrill noise caused him to jump aside in terror. A second later he realized that it came from a solitary cockerel, strutting about in the sunshine, the sole survivor of the poultry-run, cynically proclaiming his lust of life.