Plunging through prickly thickets and dashing through the turbid brooks,
we hastened toward the clearing, committed Cranberry Lodge to the
custody of the "hired man," and untied our horses from the saplings to
which they were made fast. In another moment we were on the back trail.
Scarcely, however, was the clearing shut out of view when a little
hesitating puff of wind from the east blew chill upon us; the breeze had
veered, and the tempest was at hand. In the twinkling of an eye, the
western horizon was overhung with the same ghastly storm-bank that
threatened in the east, while a monitory gust rustled through the
sighing pines, wildly twisting and tossing the undergrowth,--overspread
with a quivering pallor as it bent before the breeze,--and bade us be
prepared. Next moment, a clap of thunder, rattling like the artillery of
ten thousand sieges, or like millions of bars of iron dashed furiously
together, broke upon the forest. It was the most awful sound, terrible
even in its expected suddenness, that I ever heard. Simultaneously a
flash of purple lightning fell from the zenith to the horizon, splitting
the clouds asunder, and with it there descended rain in a cataract
rather than in torrents, so that in the twinkling of an eye the thirsty
sand was saturated, and bubbling pools of water pattered in the deluged
path.
Pages:
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126