Then––like a monster let loose, there were broken all bonds of the tornado on the river hills. A blackness as of night covered the earth with wide spread wings. With the voice of thunder it came;––and with the strength of a god it came.
Earth and stone were hurled on the wind as if a rain of arrows or spears had been hurled by some spirit of annihilation.
Even breath had to be fought for there,––and the maid in terror reached out her hands to the man across the sacred barrier and moaned pitifully, and in the darkness the man drew her close until her head rested on his breast, and his own bent head, and his body, sheltered her.
CHAPTER XV
THE GIVING OF THE SUN SYMBOL
Two nights had passed over the world, and the day star was shining over the mountains of the east when the people of Povi-whah saw again Tahn-té the Po-Ahtun-ho.
It was the sentinel on the terrace who saw him, and he was at the ancient shrine at the mesa edge, and a flame was there to show that prayers were being made to greet the god of the new day.
And when he came down from the mesa, and looked at the corn of the fields torn and beaten low by the great storm, his face showed that he carried a sad heart, and that he had gone from Te-gat-ha somewhere into the hills for prayer.