But the trees in the dark forest beneath them found no hiding place, no rocks to fall on them and cover them from the wrath of the sky.
A blazing fireball fell among them and one tree, sometimes two, jumped into the air—clearly in the glare the girls saw them—then fell, riven.
“Oh! those fireballs they seem to open my head ... every time one strikes,” said Pemrose—a weak, bird-mouthed twitter.
Una sat still as the planks beneath her, cheeks as white as the sudden white light which, at the heart of the storm, weirdly cleft the clouds—and reigned for minutes upon the mountainside, upon the torn, staggering forest, and in the sky.
“Oh-h! this is aw-ful. I wish I had been a better girl,” whined Dorothy. “The black tops of those pines! There—there goes another fireball.... I can’t bear to see them strike.”
“‘When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee ... and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee,’” said the Guardian finding nothing more applicable to her steadfast faith. “We may be thankful to be, so far, above the storm—only the lightning climbing—”
The lightning, forked, blue, zigzagging up and down the shuddering mountain, as the white light faded, counted every coral berry-bunch on the mountain ash, every needle on the grinning spruces; but, although it was so vivid—so lingering its dazzle—it was but the tail end of a flash which climbed to this summit camp on old Pocohosette, two thousand feet above the valley—almost three thousand above sea level.
“Oh, my! The horses! The horses in the Long Pasture! I wonder how they’re taking it? If one of them should be struck! Rev-el-a-tion!” Pemrose felt as if the fireball, now striking, was in her heart.
Far away, on a hilltop, a barn blazed.
“Revel!” whimpered Una. “Revel!” It was the first sound she had made. “If—anything—should happen to her-r!”