“The storm! Do you see any signs of one, doctor? I don’t.”
“Yes, I see signs; but I own I should not have thought it would break out for some hours. But the changes of the atmosphere are wonderfully rapid in this country, and I have no doubt the Hottentot is right. Will it be on us in another hour, Omatoko?”
“Perhaps half an hour, perhaps three-quarters,” was the answer.
“Half an hour! We must be off this minute, and move as fast as we can. Here, Frank, Ernest—hoist Omatoko on to my shoulders; I can carry him for a quarter of a mile, any way, and that will be ten minutes saved.”
“And I’ll take him as far as I can, when you’ve done with him,” added Warley, “and so, I doubt not, will the others. Lift him up. There, that’s right. Now step out as fast as we can.”
By the time that the doctor’s “quarter of a mile,” as it was called—though it was in reality nearly twice that distance—was completed, the signs of the approaching hurricane began to gather so fast, that even the most unobservant must have perceived them. The clouds came rapidly up, and gradually hid the rich blue of the sky. The light breeze which had stirred the foliage of the few trees which rose above the level of the scrub, gradually died away, and a dead, ominous calm succeeded. Warley, to whose back the sick man had now been transferred, hurried on with all the speed he could command, and rapid way was made. Every minute they expected the rain to burst forth. The black clouds which hid the horizon, every other minute seemed to be split open, and forked flashes of fire issued from them. Presently there came a furious rush of wind, almost icy cold—the immediate precursor of the outburst.
“We close by now,” exclaimed Omatoko, as he was transferred from Ernest’s shoulders to those of Frank. “Not hundred yards off. Turn round tall rock by pool there. Kraal little further on.”
They all ran as fast as their exhausted limbs would allow. The corner was attained, and there, sure enough, some forty or fifty yards further, were the ruins of a number of mud cottages thatched with reed. They were, for the most part, mere ruins. The walls had been broken down, the thatch scattered to the four winds. Some one or two, which had stood in the background, immediately under the shelter of a limestone precipice, had retained their walls, and some portions of the thatch unhurt. But one hut only, which stood in a corner under a sloping shelf, presented the spectacle of a roof still firm and whole. Frank hurried along the narrow defile leading to this cottage, putting out all strength to reach it. He was only a few yards from it, when the tempest at last broke forth in all its fury. The wind swept down with a force, which on the open plain no man or horse would have been able to stand against. The hail, or rather the large lumps of ice into which the rain was frozen, rattled against the rocks like cannon balls against the walls of a besieged fortress, and the sky grew so dark, that it was with difficulty that the travellers could discern each other’s features. But they had reached the friendly shelter of the cottage, and that was everything. For two hours the fury of the elements beggared all description. The rain, which after a quarter of an hour or so had succeeded the hail, seemed to descend in one great sheet of water, converting the path along which they had travelled not half an hour before, into a foaming torrent, bearing trees and stones before it. One flash of lightning succeeded another so rapidly that the light inside the cottage was almost continuous. Lavie looked several times anxiously at the thatch overhead, which could not have resisted the deluge incessantly poured upon it, if it had not been for the shelving rocks which nearly formed a second roof above it. As it was, not a drop penetrated, and when the raging of the wind and the deluge of rain at last subsided, not one of the party had sustained any injury.
The Hottentot had been laid on a heap of reeds which blocked up one corner of the hut, having been driven in there apparently at one time or another by the wind. He had been at first somewhat exhausted by the speed at which he had been carried for the last half mile or so, but he seemed quite restored before the storm had ceased. He now directed the boys to go out and gather some wild medlars, which he had noticed growing on a tree at no great distance from the rocky defile where they had turned aside from the main path, declaring them to be excellent eating. He also requested them to bring him a straight branch, about three feet long, from a particular tree which he described, and a dozen stout reeds from the edge of the pool. Out of these he intended, he said, to make a bow and arrows, by means of which he would soon provide the party with all the food they would require.
“Three feet long?” repeated Gilbert. “You mean six, I suppose.”