n the sun look pale, and speeding across my field of
vision came also a huge black cloud thick and ominous, but to me a most
blessed sight a messenger of mercy a miracle! Swiftly it sped, but
would it be in time?

The sun had reached the diamond now, and shrink as I would I already
felt the roasting heat that beat upon the stone but a few inches from
my head. Surely it would reach me, my brain would crack . . . but now,
thank God! . . . the cloud had swept across, and for the moment I was
safe, at least from this terror.

And now, with the almost incessant roar of thunder came the rain a few
huge, stinging drops at first then a downpour such as I had never seen.
In incessant sheets it fell like a huge cataract, beating upon my
helpless face till I gasped for breath, as one half drowned; and soon
the roar of water falling upon water almost drowned the pealing
thunder. The shouts of joy that had hailed the first few drops were
soon changed to wild cries of alarm, and as still the deluge continued
as though the very flood-gates of heaven were opened, the screams of
the vast multitude joined the roar of water and the pealing of thunder
in one stupendous chorus. I could not see, but I could hear and realize
that an awful struggle was going on below me: there in that vast hollow
the unseen people would be trapped beyond hope, for into it the water
from the plains above would rush in one vast cataract. And still the
torrent beat down and the thunder pealed; and I, half mad with my
sufferings, yelled and shouted, in mockery of the screams of those who
would have immolated me, and who were now themselves perishing all
around me. At length the groans and screams of the dying multitude died
down to choking gasps, then even these ceased, but still the thunder
pealed, and the rain beat down upon my unprotected body till my
overwrought senses rebelled, and I sank into a swoon.

A voice the voice that I had heard in invocation came to me in my
disordered dreams calling me back. Its insistence troubled me, for I
was unwilling to return. But again and again it called, and I at length
came back reluctantly to reality.

"Fear not, thy life is thine own again," said the grave, vibrant
accents in my ear, and I opened my eyes to find myself still lying upon
the altar.

Gazing down upon me was a face that I shall never forget to my dying
day the face of a woman, whose skin of ivory whiteness accentuated the
unfathomable blackness of the