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informed them of what we were unable to conceal--that it was the intention of the American commander to _bombard the city_. The scene was to us deeply distressing. Dona Joaquina wrung her hands, and called upon the Virgin with all the earnestness of entreaty. The sisters clung alternately to their mother and Don Cosme, weeping and crying aloud, "_Pobre Narcisso! nuestro hermanito--le asesinaran_!" (Poor Narcisso, our little brother!--they will murder him!) In the midst of this distressing scene the door of the drawing-room was thrown suddenly open, and a servant rushed in, shouting in an agitated voice, "_El norte! el norte_!" CHAPTER FOURTEEN. "The Norther." We hurried after Don Cosme towards the _ante-sala_, both myself and my companions ignorant of this new object of dread. When we emerged from the stairway the scene that hailed us was one of terrific sublimity. Earth and heaven had undergone a sudden and convulsive change. The face of nature, but a moment since gay with summer smiles, was now hideously distorted. The sky had changed suddenly from its blue and sunny brightness to an aspect dark and portentous. Along the north-west a vast volume of black vapour rolled up over the Sierra Madre, and rested upon the peaks of the mountains. From this, ragged masses, parting in fantastic forms and groupings, floated off against the concavity of the sky as though the demons of the storm were breaking up from an angry council. Each of these, as it careered across the heavens, seemed bent upon some spiteful purpose. An isolated fragment hung lowering above the snowy cone of Orizava, like a huge vampire suspended over his sleeping victim. From the great "parent cloud" that rested upon the Sierra Madre, lightning-bolts shot out and forked hither and thither or sank into the detached masses--the messengers of the storm-king bearing his fiery mandates across the sky. Away along the horizon of the east moved the yellow pillars of sand, whirled upward by the wind, like vast columnar towers leading to heaven. The storm had not yet reached the rancho. The leaves lay motionless under a dark and ominous calm; but the wild screams of many birds--the shrieks of the swans, the discordant notes of the frightened pea-fowl, the chattering of parrots as they sought the shelter of the thick olives in terrified flight--all betokened the speedy advent of some fearful convulsion. The rain in large drops
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