This chapter's epigraph is from a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow's poem, "The Way of Heaven," is about a thunder storm, and the thunder storm is coming. The thunder is coming from heaven, and it's going to destroy the city of Managua, the capital of the Republic of China. The city is going to be a ghost town, says the narrator, and he's not going to let it happen to him.