he light breeze which
had stirred the foliage of the few trees which rose above the level of
the scrub, gradually died away, and a dead, ominous calm succeeded.
Warley, to whose back the sick man had now been transferred, hurried on
with all the speed he could command, and rapid way was made. Every
minute they expected the rain to burst forth. The black clouds which
hid the horizon, every other minute seemed to be split open, and forked
flashes of fire issued from them. Presently there came a furious rush
of wind, almost icy cold--the immediate precursor of the outburst.

"We close by now," exclaimed Omatoko, as he was transferred from
Ernest's shoulders to those of Frank. "Not hundred yards off. Turn
round tall rock by pool there. Kraal little further on."

They all ran as fast as their exhausted limbs would allow. The corner
was attained, and there, sure enough, some forty or fifty yards further,
were the ruins of a number of mud cottages thatched with reed. They
were, for the most part, mere ruins. The walls had been broken down,
the thatch scattered to the four winds. Some one or two, which had
stood in the background, immediately under the shelter of a limestone
precipice, had retained their walls, and some portions of the thatch
unhurt. But one hut only, which stood in a corner under a sloping
shelf, presented the spectacle of a roof still firm and whole. Frank
hurried along the narrow defile leading to this cottage, putting out all
strength to reach it. He was only a few yards from it, when the tempest
at last broke forth in all its fury. The wind swept down with a force,
which on the open plain no man or horse would have been able to stand
against. The hail, or rather the large lumps of ice into which the rain
was frozen, rattled against the rocks like cannon balls against the
walls of a besieged fortress, and the sky grew so dark, that it was with
difficulty that the travellers could discern each other's features. But
they had reached the friendly shelter of the cottage, and that was
everything. For two hours the fury of the elements beggared all
description. The rain, which after a quarter of an hour or so had
succeeded the hail, seemed to descend in one great sheet of water,
converting the path along which they had travelled not half an hour
before, into a foaming torrent, bearing trees and stones before it. One
flash of lightning succeeded another so rapidly that the light inside
the cott