few seconds
the air was filled with a steady and continuous rumbling sound, like the
noise of a distant cataract. Pursuers and fugitives drew rein
instinctively, and came to a dead stand, while the rumbling increased to
a roar, and evidently approached them rapidly, though as yet nothing to
cause it could be seen, except that there was a dense, dark cloud
overspreading the sky to the southward. The air was oppressively still
and hot.

"What can't be?" inquired Dick, looking at Joe, who was gazing with an
expression of wonder, not unmixed with concern, at the southern sky.

"Dunno, boy. I've bin more in the woods than in the clearin' in my day,
but I niver heerd the likes o' that."

"It am like t'ondre," said Henri; "mais it nevair do stop."

This was true. The sound was similar to continuous, uninterrupted
thunder. On it came with a magnificent roar that shook the very earth,
and revealed itself at last in the shape of a mighty whirlwind. In a
moment the distant woods bent before it, and fell like grass before the
scythe. It was a whirling hurricane, accompanied by a deluge of rain
such as none of the party had ever before witnessed. Steadily,
fiercely, irresistibly, it bore down upon them, while the crash of
falling, snapping, and uprooting trees mingled with the dire artillery
of that sweeping storm like the musketry on a battle-field.

"Follow me, lads!" shouted Joe, turning his horse and dashing at full
speed towards a rocky eminence that offered shelter. But shelter was
not needed. The storm was clearly defined. Its limits were as
distinctly marked by its Creator as if it had been a living intelligence
sent forth to put a belt of desolation round the world; and, although
the edge of devastation was not five hundred yards from the rock behind
which the hunters were stationed, only a few drops of ice-cold rain fell
upon them.

It passed directly between the Camanchee Indians and their intended
victims, placing between them a barrier which it would have taken days
to cut through. The storm blew for an hour, then it travelled onward in
its might, and was lost in distance. Whence it came and whither it went
none could tell; but, far as the eye could see on either hand, an avenue
a quarter of a mile wide was cut through the forest. It had levelled
everything with the dust; the very grass was beaten flat, the trees were
torn, shivered, snapped across, and crushed; and the earth itself in
many places w