Old Vesuvius was too quiet. For days the evil mountain had brooded, had hardly puffed a breath into the sky. Then the giant belched. Up from the crater roared towering pillars of smoke and ash. Down from the crater's lip licked tongues of molten stone.
Not in 72 years had Vesuvius erupted so violently. In Bari, 130 miles across the Italian boot, daylight darkened with dust, householders turned on lights, chickens went to roost. In the Bay of Naples, shipmasters worried lest quake and tidal wave follow the eruption. Along the road to Salerno,...
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