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 awful 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 forth, 
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, 
und remember nothing more until tho steady blazing of the 
