292 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



The black heaven of clouds came rolling up out of the 

 south-east, and already I felt the cold breath that drove 

 it on, dash with a fresh heavy chill against my face, like 

 the spray of a cataract. The rush and roar that followed left 

 me no time for thought. In a moment, horse and man were 

 prostrate, helpless along the plain. 



Such crashes ! — such tremendous claps — such sheeting the 

 horizon with swift piercing blazes — such beating, crushing 

 floods, that but seemed a better medium to transmit the 

 mighty clangor hurled around by the strong wind, with 

 vast black clouds that dipped and spun like flakes of ebon 

 down, or sudden fire above ! Such an image of sublimest 

 anarchy never before came to overwhelm an already desperate, 

 wearied, and starving wanderer. I clutched at the strong 

 rooted grass in the blindness of my astound, and knew not, 

 in the horrid tumult, that my horse had fallen upon my leg. 



I was so stunned that I did not feel the pain. I tried to 

 look up to understand the awfiil clamor. Was the last day 

 come ? Had some God descended in the terror of his might ? A 

 keen shaft, in clattering zigzag, would pierce the chaos, blind- 

 ing as it illuminated. The crashing of torn limbs, caught up 

 miles away, and projected with the flooding rain — the stifling 

 grass-tops, torn and hurled into my face — the bellowing moan 

 of frightened buffaloes — the shaking trample of their strug- 

 gling feet, all came commingled, as the only interludes to my 

 confused senses. 



My horse, at last, as terror-stricken as myself, burst fortli, 

 while he lay writhing upon my crushed leg, into a wild and 

 strangely harrowing cry — peculiar to these animals when 

 overcome by panic — and which now rose a weird shriek of 

 agony into the tempest. I had never heard it before, and 

 could not know its source ; and the sudden coming of this 

 shrill and unimaginable cry so close to my head, had an effect 

 of the supernatural so absolutely appalling, that I fainted, 

 and remember nothing more until the steady blazing of the 



