that something was happening.

There suddenly was a perfect silence in the room--the sort of silence
that makes the heart beat too fast. The mist swimming before me did not,
I perceived, come from my own eyes, but from the changing colour of the
air, the usual transparency of which was being tinged with yellow. The
sultriness of the day was deepening, and seemed to carry a threat with
it.

"Something is going to happen," thought I, and over the whole room
spread the same conviction. Electric currents seemed to snap from one
consciousness to another. We dropped our books, and turned our eyes
toward the western windows, to look upon a changed world. It was as if
we peered through yellow glass. In the sky soft-looking, tawny clouds
came tumbling along like playful cats--or tigers. A moment later we saw
that they were not playful, but angry; they stretched out claws, and
snarled as they did so. One claw reached the tall chimneys of the
schoolhouse, another tapped at the cupola, one was thrust through the
wall near where I sat.

Then it grew black, and there was a bellowing all about us, so that the
commands of the teacher and the screams of the children barely could be
heard. I knew little or nothing. My shoulder was stinging, something had
hit me on the side of the head, my eyes were full of dust and mortar,
and my feet were carrying me with the others along the corridor, down
the two flights of wide stairs. I do not think we pushed each other or
were reckless. My recollection is only of many shadowy figures flying on
with sure feet out of the building that seemed to be falling in upon us.

Presently we were out on the landing before the door, with one more
flight of steps before us, that reached to the street. Something so
strong that it might not be denied gathered me up in invisible arms,
whirled me round once or twice and dropped me, not ungently, in the
middle of the road. And then, as I struggled to my knees and, wiping the
dust from my eyes, looked up, I saw dozens of others being lifted in
the same way, and blown off into the yard or the street. The larger
ones were trying to hold on to the smaller, and the teachers were
endeavouring to keep the children from going out of the building, but
their efforts were of no avail. The children came on, and were blown
about like leaves.

Then I saw what looked like a high yellow wall advancing upon me--a
roaring and fearsome mass of driven dust, sticks, debris. It came