"Because he knew the dog would track him, and he hoped by taking to the run to make me think he had crossed the country instead of striking for the railroad."
I felt sure the Colonel was wrong, but knowing him to be tenacious of his own opinions, I made no further objection.
Directing Sandy to call on Madam P—— and acquaint her with our progress, he then dismissed the negro-hunter, and once more led the way up the road.
The next twenty miles, like our previous route, lay through an unbroken forest. As we left the watercourses, we saw only the gloomy pines, which there—the region being remote from the means of transportation—were seldom tapped, and presented few of the openings that invite the weary traveller to the dwelling of the hospitable planter.
After a time the sky, which had been bright and cloudless all the morning, grew overcast, and gave out tokens of a coming storm. A black cloud gathered in the west, and random flashes darted from it far off in the distance; then gradually it neared us; low mutterings sounded in the air, and the tops of the tall pines a few miles away, were lit up now and then with a fitful blaze, all the brighter for the deeper gloom that succeeded. Then a terrific flash and peal broke directly over us, and a great tree, struck by a red-hot bolt, fell with a deafening crash, half way across our path. Peal after peal followed, and then the rain—not filtered into drops as it falls from our colder sky, but in broad, blinding sheets—poured full and heavy on our shelterless heads.
"Ah! there it comes!" shouted the Colonel. "God have mercy upon us!"
As he spoke, a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed that all the legions of darkness were unloosed in the forest, and were mowing down the great pines as the mower mows the grass with his scythe. Then an awful, sweeping crash thundered directly at our backs, and turning round, as if to face a foe, my horse, who had borne the roar and the blinding flash till then unmoved, paralyzed with dread, and panting for breath, sunk to the ground; while close at my side the Colonel, standing erect in his stirrups, his head uncovered to the pouring sky, cried out:
"Thank God, we are saved!"
There—not three hundred yards in our rear, had passed the TORNADO—uprooting trees, prostrating dwellings, and sending many a soul to its last account, but sparing us for another day! For thirty miles through the forest it had mowed a swath of two hundred feet, and then moved on to stir the ocean to its briny depths.
With a full heart, I remounted, and turning my horse, pressed on in the rain. We said not a word till a friendly opening pointed the way to a planter's dwelling. Then calling to me to follow, the Colonel dashed up the by-path which led to the mansion, and in five minutes we were warming our chilled limbs before the cheerful fire that roared and crackled on its broad hearth-stone.