A bellowing leaped upon us out of the north, a roar that instead of tailing away mounted higher and higher upon itself. The wind, which had been bustling, seemed to disintegrate while the darkness of sound swept through the Vale. Resonant, tremendous, devastating, the sheer undifferentiated noise bore down on us, oppressed us with its weight. Brimming the hills, it actually made the ground tremble. It was nothing like thunder, but as if something buried alive beneath the earth had awakened and vociferated horribly. Several of the women stopped their ears, and there was an awfulness in seeing their mouths open in screams when the sound was wholly lost in the roar up the Vale. It was as if they had all gone dumb and raving. Even when it had ceased at climax, the echoes of the roar bruited from crag to crag made the Vale alive with sound. And when the final reverberations had sunk to peace, we gaped at each other silenced for a little while, even the body of the man forgotten in the overwhelmingness of sound. When we spoke, it was in whispers.
“Could that be—thunder?”
“Thunder—like that?”
“It was like Judgment.”
“What was it, then?”
“I can tell you what it was,” I said.
They were round me in a moment, greedy.
“An earthquake?” asked Doctor Aire.
“A landslide—almost an avalanche—on one of the north-most hills.”
“But what could have caused it?”