The occasion was a harassing but bracing one, for as the fine bands of rain beat upon our faces, our bodies felt filled with a heady vigour of a kind to fit us to run indefinitely—at all events to run until this storm of rain and thunder should be outpaced, and clear weather be reached again.
Suddenly Kalinin shouted: "Stop! Look!"
This was because the fitful illumination of a flash had just shown up in front of us the trunk of an oak tree which had a large black hollow let into it like a doorway. So into that hollow we crawled as two mice might have done—laughing aloud in our glee as we did so.
"Here there is room for THREE persons," my companion remarked. "Evidently it is a hollow that has been burnt out—though rascals indeed must the burners have been to kindle a fire in a living tree!"
However, the space within the hollow was both confined and redolent of smoke and dead leaves. Also, heavy drops of rain still bespattered our heads and shoulders, and at every peal of thunder the tree quivered and creaked until the strident din around us gave one the illusion of being afloat in a narrow caique. Meanwhile at every flash of the lightning's glare, we could see slanting ribands of rain cutting the air with a network of blue, glistening, vitreous lines.
Presently, the wind began to whistle less loudly, as though now it felt satisfied at having driven so much productive rain into the ground, and washed clean the mountain tops, and loosened the stony soil.
"U-oh! U-oh!" hooted a grey mountain owl just over our heads.
"Why, surely it believes the time to be night!" Kalinin commented in a whisper.
"U-oh! U-u-u-oh!" hooted the bird again, and in response my companion shouted:
"You have made a mistake, my brother!"