Presently lightning began to flash and the thunder to roar, while the rain came down in sheets, seeming to transform the open country into a vast lake. Oh, those dreadful African thunderstorms! We thought We should never see worse storms than those of our Western prairies, but they were infants in strength compared to those in Africa.
The storm grew fiercer and fiercer, and the lightning seemed to come from the heavens in all directions in molten streams of fire. The road was full of ironstone, a peculiarity of the uplands of Africa; this seemed to attract the lightning, and the air appeared to be full of fire, accompanied by an ear-piercing crackling and booming that shook the earth. The atmosphere was black, and the darkness was intensified by the continual flashes, when suddenly there was a crash and a deafening roar that made us think the heavens had fallen. Stunned for a moment we each looked at the other, expecting that the wagon had been struck, and a great stir and lowing among the trembling oxen increased our fears.
We sat for half an hour listening to the thunder muttering fainter and fainter as it rolled away in the distance. The voice of A— summoned us from the tent. To our surprise we found the sky clear and no trace of the storm in the heavens, but an inky cloud disappearing far away on the horizon. About fifty yards ahead of the wagon was a large hole in the road that had been torn up by the fury of that thunderbolt which had so terrified us.
Chapter Twenty Four.
These African thunderstorms occur at different seasons in different localities, and everywhere they are terrible. They do more harm by their violence than the rain which accompanies them does good. During their continuance (fortunately they never last long) the water comes down in veritable sheets, rushing down slopes and mountain-sides in a resistless flood, swelling rivers in a few moments from ditches into torrents.
A storm in the mountains at times fills the streams leading out from them to such an extent that with scarcely any warning the waters come tumbling down in cataracts, the rivers rising to a height of forty feet in as many minutes. A friend of ours with his partner had been trading for years in the Zambesi country, and was bringing down a large quantity of furs, feathers, and ivory to the colonial market. On reaching the banks of a little river, remarking that it was running somewhat swifter than usual, they entered it with their wagon, without any thought of danger.