Every one will remember, too, the long and ringing shower of broken glass that followed instantly upon the terrific report.

Every window looking westward was broken at once, except some few on the lower stories of houses protected by buildings opposite.
Giovanni Severi was in the main building over the vaults a short time before the catastrophe, having just finished a special inspection which had occupied most of the afternoon.

He was moving to leave the place when an unfamiliar sound caught his ears, a noise muffled yet sharp, like that of the discharge of musketry heard through a thick wall.

The junior officers and the corporal who were with him heard it, too, but did not understand its meaning.

Giovanni, however, instantly remembered the story told by one of the survivors from a terrible explosion of ammunition near Naples many years previously.