heard in the howling
of the wind as it shrieked about the angles of the building.

Then came the rain. It fell in great drops whose sheer weight and size
carried them, at the moment of impact, through the ragged shirts to
the warm flesh beneath. In a second, it seemed, a waterspout was upon
them and was pouring its tide into the roofless hut.

With the deluge, the elemental battle began in desperate earnest. Peal
after peal of thunder crashed directly overhead, and with it came such
a display of heavenly pyrotechnics that in their wildest moments these
men had never dreamed of. Their eyes were blinded, and their ear-drums
were bursting with the incessant hammering of the thunder.

But the wind had passed on, shrieking and tearing its way into the dim
distance until its voice was utterly drowned in the sterner
detonations of the battle.

Drenched to the skin, knee-deep in water, the men stood herded
together like sheep in a pen. Their blankets were awash and floated
about, tangling their legs in the miniature lake that could not find
rapid enough exit through the doorway. They could only stand there
stupidly. To go outside was to find no other shelter, and only the
more openly to expose themselves to the savage forks of lightning
playing across the heavens in such blinding streaks. Nor could they
help the women even if they needed help in the other huts. The roofs
and doors would or would not hold, and, in the latter case, until the
force of the storm abated no help could serve them.

The storm showed no signs of abatement. The black sky was the sky of
an unlit night. There was no lightening in any direction, and the
blinding flashes amidst the din of thunder only helped to further
intensify the pitchy vault. The splitting of trees amidst the chaos
reached the straining ears, and it was plain that every flash of light
was finding a billet for its forked tongue in the adjacent forests.

The time dragged on. How long or how short was the period of the storm
none of the men wondered or cared. The rapidity of the thunder
crashes, the swift successions of lightning entirely held them, and,
strong as they were, these things kept their nerves jumping.

Once in the midst of it all a man suddenly cried out. His cry came
with a more than usually brilliant flash of purplish, steel-blue fire.
The intensity of it carried pain to the now supersensitive nerves of
his vision, and he turned and flung himself with his face buried u