“Here it comes; get indoors, Bertha!” cried Tom sharply. But he was not quite quick enough, for before Bertha could turn and run, a blast of wind took her, which whirled her round and round, taking her breath and battering the sense out of her.
She was conscious that Tom seized her by the arm and dragged her inside the house; but if it had not been for his timely grip of her, she must have been whirled away on that terrible blast, for she had no strength to stand against it.
Bruised and battered to an incredible soreness from that moment of conflict with the tempest wind, Bertha crept across the floor to the side of Grace, and, gathering the terrified children in her arms, cowered there in shrinking dread. Doors and windows were rattling and banging. She was aghast at the riot all around her. Then there was a sudden crash as a whirling something dashed against the window and stove it inwards, the glass flying in a shower over the heads of the children and herself. Even Grace was struck on the face by a flying fragment, which cut her cheek, making it bleed.
“Come and help, Bertha, come quick!” shouted Tom, who was trying vainly to barricade the broken window.
She sprang up to his assistance, and then was suddenly beaten back by what seemed a solid blast of icy cold. At first she was almost choked, for it had come full in her face, taking her breath and her strength too. But the next moment she had rallied her forces, and was struggling across the room to help him turn the big table up against the window, which had been blown in as if driven with a battering ram.
“Is it rain?” she gasped, marvelling that drops of water could be so cold and cut like knives.
“No, it is hail,” he answered, in the wrung tone of one who realizes that the very worst has happened that by any possibility could happen.
Then the full force of the disaster made itself clear to Bertha, as she stood beside Tom, helping to keep the table steady against the broken window. Speech was not possible now, for no shouting could have pierced the noise of the tempest. Even the crashing of the thunder came to their ears only as a distant, far-away sound, for the roar of the hail filled all space, and it was the most terrible sound that she had ever heard. The lightning flashed in and out, but no one heeded it, for a greater force than the swift darting flashes was abroad, and the terror of it was too dreadful to be borne.
The children gathered closer and closer to their mother, and if they cried with fear, neither Tom nor Bertha could hear, nor could they leave their post for a single moment; for if once the tornado wind got into the room, the whole house might be wrecked. So they stuck at their post, and it seemed to Bertha that she had been holding on with her whole force to that table, pressing it against the aperture of the broken window, when the voice of Tom reached her as from a great distance:
“You can leave it now, Bertha; I think the hail is over.”