d stones; it buzzed and exploded in
the very face of Haig, and under the pony's belly. If he had been
caught in a burning storehouse of fireworks--rockets, Roman candles,
pinwheels, and all the ingenious products of the pyrotechnician--the
experience might have been like this, only a thousand times less
terrifying. He dodged and ducked, and threw up his hands to shield his
face, expecting instantly that one of those exploding things would
make an end of him.

Then there were other horrors to be endured. The din became
incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the
lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air
above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the
first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. But the
wind had steadily increased in violence. It did not blow against him,
bowling him over, but whirled around him with a speed that was every
instant accelerated. He felt that he had no weight. He seemed
about to be lifted into the vortex of the storm, to be flung far
out into space.

"Down, girl! Down!" he tried to shout.

But there was no sound from his lips. He felt the pony stiffening
under him, bracing herself stiff-legged on the stones; and he knew
that she shared his fear. And all this time the rain beat down upon
him, in lead-like sheets, with intermittent bombardments of
hailstones. It occurred to him to wonder dully which would win--the
wind that sought to whirl him up into the sky, or the rain that was
for beating him to earth, or the lightning that would burn him to
cinders. Then thought left him, and his last impression was of being
torn limb from limb, and atom from atom, in excruciating pain.

He was roused at length to the consciousness of having been lifted and
hurled; and found himself prostrate on the ground, face downward, with
the rain flooding him. Trixy lay at his side, flat like himself, her
head stretched out among the stones. They seemed to lie in a vacuum,
in the very hollow of the storm. Around them the clatter, the clang
and the uproar were even more terrifying than before because they were
now separated from these noises, no longer a part of them. All was
blackness, shot through with fire. Haig was no more tortured in his
body, except for the sense of being suffocated. He seemed to inhale
raw ozone; the air fairly stank with the odors of decomposition; the
saliva in his mouth had a peculiar pungent and disagreeable tast