The rain grew heavier.
Water already covered the ankles of everyone on Loguetown's streets.
Marines hurried everywhere, trying to keep order amid the chaos.
"Everyone, listen up!"
"Stay away from the harbor!"
"Move the elderly and children to higher ground first!"
"Shops, close immediately! Everyone else, get indoors for now!"
Smoker stood on a raised platform, his face grim.
Straw Hat Luffy had escaped.
Worse, the leader of the Revolutionary Army, Monkey D. Dragon, had rescued him right under Smoker's nose.
Once word got out, Marine Headquarters would demand answers.
But Smoker had no time to worry about that now.
The strange disturbances across Loguetown were growing impossible to ignore.
Rumble!
A muffled tremor rose from underground.
At first, many people mistook it for thunder.
Then the buildings along both sides of the street began to sway.
Tables, chairs, windows, and shelves rattled and knocked against one another.
"An earthquake?"
A merchant closing his shop went deathly pale.
The next instant—
Crack!
The ground split open beside his feet.
At first, the crack was only a finger's width across. In the blink of an eye, it raced toward the far end of the street. Paving stones buckled, earth broke apart, and a carriage parked by the roadside sank straight into the fissure.
The horse screamed.
The driver scrambled free.
"Run!"
"The ground's splitting open!"
"Everybody, run!"
All of Loguetown plunged into even greater panic.
Near the harbor.
No one knew when the waves had begun rising so high.
The ships moored along the shore pitched up and down beneath their blows, their ropes straining with a teeth-grating creak.
Boom!
Another violent tremor struck.
A section of the harbor's stone seawall suddenly collapsed.
Seawater surged through the breach.
The people who had been watching from near the docks shrieked and stumbled