“Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can come on in advance.”
“It’s the way with shadows,” said Amos, drily.
“Soh! but it’s a queer thing to hear the hum of a wind-storm before the wind comes along; jes’ ’sif th’re messages going ahead to warn critturs and trees to stand firm. Well, I squinted around, and bymby, as the light grew, far above I seed a something movin’, and the noise of its coming grew. ’Twas no bigger’n a umbrella when I fixed it; but it soon spread out, wider and wider, and what was the curiosest, it lengthened out behind like my old concertina. I tell you, I begun to get skeered, for I thought maybe ’twas one o’ them water-spouts. Then the light grew stronger and there was a twinkling from the growing column jes’ if thousands and thousands o’ poplar leaves was stirred by the wind. ‘’Tis alive,’ I said, jumping to my feet, and I scaled down that rock and scooted through the pools, and up over the sand hills to the shelter of the woods. I thought it was one o’ them here sea-serpents.”
“But it was not?”
“No sonny; it was a heaven-high column of quail. That’s what it were.”
“Falling from the moon, eh?”
“When the head of the column reached the ground, which it did, on the beach the whole length just collapsd like a falling tree, and the whole lot were just scattered along the coast in a twinkling.”