ut like a spectral throng in its
supernatural glare. Before a clock could tick, the report followed
with a roar, deafening and tremendous, rattling and echoing along the
sky like the simultaneous discharge of a thousand deeply freighted
cannon. Terrified at the unearthly glare and stunning thunder-bolt,
the horse plunged aside with a fierce impetuosity, that would have
flung the rider to the earth had he not clung to the mane with his
utmost strength; and even for minutes after "the jaws of darkness" had
devoured up the scene, and the fearful report had died away in the
distance, his eyes still ached with the intense light, and his ears
rung with the deafening bolt that had followed.

Now came the arrowy flight and form of the hurricane itself. It
crushed the tall and sturdy trees to the ground as if they had been a
forest of reeds. On it came, darker, fiercer, and more impetuous, as
if under the influence of some angry fiend enjoying a triumph. The
shrieking of the lashed winds; the crashing thunder; the noise of the
giant monarchs of the forest upheaving from their deep-set
foundations, and toppling to the ground; the rush and howling of the
tempest--all mingled in one swelling uproar, and deafened the very
heavens. Now the whole malignity and embodied power of the hurricane
was upon them. The shivering horse sprang forward into the shelter of
a huge rock that frowned upon the road like some stern sentinel
guarding the passage, and David White leaped from the saddle, and
crouched in terror against the dark mass that towered above and
afforded protection.

On it came, winding its tortuous pathway from right to left and from
left to right, crushing and twisting the Titans of the woods from
their trunks in its awful rush of destruction. The wheeling clouds and
tumultuous atmosphere were lashed through and through with the fiery
lightning, and masses of loose leaves, and branches, with all their
wealth of mangled foliage--saplings twisted up by the roots, and
bunches of shrubs tossed themselves impetuously into the air, flung
into the wildest and most rapid agitation--now rushing together as if
consolidating into masses--now scattered abroad in the deepest
confusion, while a stubborn oak, disdaining to bend, was dashed
headlong across the road, where the horse and his rider had stood only
a few moments previous, and hurling the soil to their very feet.

Rush after rush of the trooping winds went by--each succeeding ons