had found in a tin on the shelf, and listening to the rambling
of Berselius, when the thunder-clap came, making the lamp shiver on the
table.

Meeus, who had been silent since his death sentence had been read to him,
cried out at the thunder, but Berselius did not heed--he was hunting
elephants under a burning sun in a country even vaster than the elephant
country.

Adams rose up and came to the door; not a drop of rain had fallen yet. He
crossed the yard and stood at the fort wall looking into blackness. It was
solid as ebony, and he could hear the soldiers, whose huts were outside
the wall, calling to one another.

A great splash of light lit up the whole roof of the forest clear as day,
and the darkness shut down again with a bang that hit the ear like a blow,
and the echoes of it roared and rumbled and muttered, and died, and
Silence wrapped herself again in her robe and sat to wait.

Now, there was a faint stirring of the air, increasing to a breeze, and
far away a sound like the spinning of a top came on the breeze. It was the
rain, miles away, coming over the forest in a solid sheet, the sound of it
increasing on the great drum of the forest's roof to a roar.

Another flash lit the world, and Adams saw the rain.

He saw what it is given to very few men to see. From horizon to horizon,
as if built by plumb, line and square, stretched a glittering wall,
reaching from the forest to the sky. The base of this wall was lost in
snow-white billows of spray and mist.

Never was there so tremendous a sight as this infinite wall and the
Niagara clouds of spray, roaring, living, and lit by the great flash one
second, drowned out by the darkness and the thunder the next.

Adams, terrified, ran back to the house, shut the door, and waited.

The house was solidly built and had withstood many rains, but there were
times when it seemed to him that the whole place must be washed away
bodily. Nothing could be heard but the rain, and the sound of such rain is
far more terrifying than the sound of thunder or the rumble of the
earthquake.

There were times when he said to himself, "This cannot last," yet it
lasted. With the lamp in his hand he went into the sleeping room to see
how Berselius and Meeus were doing. Berselius was still, to judge from the
movements of his lips, delirious, and just the same. Meeus was lying with
his hands on his breast. He might have been asleep, only for his eyes,
wide open and bright, and fol