STANLEY POOL. 1338 
for in the rainless months the sky is mostly covered with 
a whitish haze; but now, distant mutterings of thunder 
were heard from time to time, and threatening clouds - 
began to shadow the broad face of the still Pool, which 
erewhile reflected nothing but.unsullied azure. Then rose 
suddenly a fearful inky black mass, rendered more weird 
by two flecks of pallid white cloud that seemed the eyes 
of the storm-fiend. Vivid zigzags of pink hghtning played 
over the still water, and the thunder rumbled and tumbled 
as if they were moving colossal furniture in heaven. Yet — 
the storm did not immediately burst on us, but rather 
erept round and round the horizon, as if playing with its 
victims. At one time I had lost all fear of it, thinking it 
seemed quite resolved to go off to the west; when, 
suddenly, a puff of wind sprang up in the opposite 
direction to the prevailing breeze, and in two or three 
minutes the cruel clouds were swept upon us, and a deluge 
of rain was hissing down. Useless to put up a sail shelter, 
the scornful wind whipped it off, and we could only sit 
patiently and soak. 
This is the dreary part of an African rain-storm. The 
first beginning of the tempest is most awe-striking and 
impressive. One is half inclined to think that some great 
natural catastrophe, some appalling conflict of physical 
forces is at hand. The purple-black clouds that rise in 
fantastic masses, which an imaginative eye could resolve 
into unearthly beings overshadowing the earth and its 
frightened children; the dazzling snowy-white of their 
colossal heads rising up into the blue zenith and accen- 
tuating the inky darkness round the horizon ; the jagged 
lightning, the first skirmishing attack of the storm, and 
the sudden bursts of roaring, deafening thunder—all this 
is grand and imposing, and fascinates the attention while 
it lasts. This is the “stagey” part of a tropical storm, 
and one which scarcely any book treating of the tropics 
fails to describe. But what does not seem to be equally 
noticed after the wonderful effects of thunder and light- 
ning have had their due description, is the dreary 
persistent downpour which ensues, when the sky becomes 
