THREE TERRIBLE SOUNDS 233 



that the beast would have dropped down dead even 

 if it had not been shouted at. 



It may be so; but poor Bias, who had already been 

 made to fear his own voice, was greatly troubled; for 

 if a creature big and tough as an ox could be killed 

 in that way, what might not happen to his nigger boy, 

 a cunning little liar and very impudent, but who 

 shivered like an aspen leaf when he scolded him; or 

 to his wife when her foolishness made him angry and 

 he shouted at her! 



I knew Bias well, and he was known to everyone in 

 the district where I belonged as the man who killed 

 an ox by shouting at it. 



This brain of mine has, I believe, registered a 

 greater number and variety of sounds than most 

 brains, but when I recall the tremendous or terrible 

 sounds heard in my lifetime, I find that there are 

 just three which stand apart and are of far greater 

 importance than all the others. 



One was when I was a boy of twelve and came near 

 to being drowned in the Plata river: I was knocked 

 off a rock I was standing on by another bigger boy, 

 and sinking to the bottom, thought it was all over 

 with me, that I should never come up again, and the 

 roaring sound in my ears was awful and unlike any 

 noise I had ever heard before; the sounds I had heard 

 previously had been conveyed by means of air- 

 vibration and not by water. 



The second awful sound was one I went out of 

 my way to hear, when I climbed into the belfry of 



