A STRANGE BARK.
In a few moments the gigantic water-spout struck the ombu and enveloped it in its watery folds. The tree was shaken to its very base, so that Glenarvan might have thought that the alligators had attacked it with their powerful jaws and were uprooting it from the ground. His companions and he, clinging to one another, felt the mighty tree give way and fall, and saw its flaming branches plunge into the tumultuous waters with a frightful hiss. It was the work of a second. The water-spout had passed, to exert elsewhere its destructive violence, and pumping the waters of the plain as if it would exhaust them.
The tree now, loosened from its moorings, floated onward under the combined impulses of wind and current. The alligators had fled, except one which crawled along the upturned roots and advanced with open jaws; but Mulready, seizing a large brand, struck the creature so powerful a blow that he broke its back. The vanquished animal sank in the eddies of the torrent, still lashing his formidable tail with terrible violence.
Glenarvan and his companions, delivered from these voracious creatures, took refuge on the branches to leeward of the fire, while the tree, wrapped by the blast of the hurricane in glowing sheets of flame, floated on like a burning ship in the darkness of the night.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
THE RETURN ON BOARD.
For two hours the tree floated on the immense lake without reaching terra firma. The flames had gradually died out, and thus the principal danger of this terrible voyage had vanished. The current, still keeping its original direction, flowed from southwest to northeast; the darkness, though illumined now and then by flashes, had become profound, and Paganel sought in vain for his bearings. But the storm was abating, the large drops of rain gave place to light spray that was scattered by the wind, while the huge distended clouds were crossed by light bands.