174 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
are for the most part wonderfully indifferent, to storm 
and tempest, and at first scarcely a remark was made 
upon the subject. Ere long, however, it became 
apparent that no ordinary storm was pending, for, as 
it often happens before very terrible hurricanes in 
the East, the fitful sighing of the breeze was suddenly 
lulled, and was succeeded by a sultry calm, — the 
leaden clouds dropped nearer to the earth, and 
seemed to compress the sluggish atmosphere with their 
superincumbent weight, until it became almost too 
dense for respiration. The threatening aspect of 
nature alarmed all living things around ; the yelling 
jackall and the screaming night-birds vied with one 
another in raising an ominous discord, which not the 
calmest stoic could listen to without forebodings of 
evil, and which even the wandering cattle and skulk- 
ing paria dogs understood as warnings, and forthwith 
betook themselves to the covered tombs. 
The party in search of the cotton had arrived 
within a short distance of the Jaod Bliae, when a crim- 
son flash of almost blinding light was suddenly darted 
from the impending clouds, and appeared to be the 
signal for the war of elements to commence, for, 
with the crashing peal of thunder which imme- 
diately followed it, there burst upon them a gust of 
wind so violent that not only were their torches ex- 
tinguished in a second, but themselves were well nigh 
carried away, so that they all threw themselves upon 
the earth to avoid the danger; and in the next instant. 
