Suddenly he started, threw up his head and looking up to the sky uttered some strange words. Then he strode abruptly toward her doorway. She fell back breathless. He stopped just outside, and she knew that he was listening for sounds from within. After many minutes she stealthily looked forth again. He was standing near the fire, his back toward her, looking off into the night.
The wind was growing stronger; the breezes fanned the night into a rush of shivery coolness. Constant flickerings of lightning illuminated the forest, transforming the tree-tops into great black waves. Tall reeds along the river bank began to bend their tops, to swing themselves gently to and from the wind. In the lowlands down from the cave "will o' the wisps" played tag with "Jack o' the lanterns," merrily scampering about in the blackness, reminding her of the revellers in a famous Brocken scene. Low moans grew out of the havoc, and voices seemed to speak in unintelligible whispers to the agitated twigs and leaves. The secrets of the wind were being spread upon the records of the night; tales of many climes passed through the ears of Nature.
From gentle undulations the marshland reeds swept into lower dips, danced wilder minuets, lashed each other with infatuated glee, mocking the whistle of the wind with an angry swish of their tall bodies. Around the cornices of the Inn of the Hawk and Raven scurried the singing breezes, reluctant to leave a playground so pleasing to the fancy. Soon the night became a cauldron, a surging, hissing, roaring receptacle in which were mixing the ingredients of disaster. Night-birds flapped through the moaning tree-tops, in search of shelter; reeds were flattened to the earth, bowing to the sovereignty of the wind; clouds roared with the rumble of a million chariots, and then the sky and the earth met in one of those savage conflicts that make all other warfare seem as play.
As Beverly sank back from the crash, she saw him throw his arms aloft as though inviting the elements to mass themselves and their energy upon his head. She shrieked involuntarily and he heard the cry above the carnage. Instantly his face was turned in her direction.
"Help! Help!" she cried. He bounded toward the swishing robes and blankets, but his impulse had found a rival in the blast. Like a flash the walls of the guest chamber were whisked away, scuttling off into the night or back into the depths of the cavern. With the deluge came the man. From among the stifling robes he snatched her up and bore her away, she knew not whither.
CHAPTER VI — THE HOME OF THE LION
"May all storms be as pleasant as this one!" she heard someone say, with a merry laugh. The next instant she was placed soundly upon her feet. A blinding flash of lightning revealed Baldos, the goat-hunter, at her side, while a dozen shadowy figures were scrambling to their feet in all corners of the Hawk and Raven. Someone was clutching her by the dress at the knees. She did not have to look down to know that it was Aunt Fanny.
"Goodness!" gasped the princess, and then it was pitch dark again. The man at her side called out a command in his own language, and then turned his face close to hers.