tles, food, and blankets were brought up to this camp, and
then the canoes were carried to a sheltered spot and turned over and
fastened down with heavy logs and stones.

Very busily were the men employed, and yet more rapid were the changes
that were taking place in the heavens above and around them. One by one
the circles with the mock suns disappeared. Dark clouds began to arise
up in the north-west horizon, and rapidly they came up in the heavens.
Vivid flashes of lightning were seen and the rumbling thunder was heard
from the rapidly darkening clouds all around. The birds that had been
singing now seemed to fly off to dense coverts, and uttered only
frightened cries. A dense, stuffy sensation seemed to be in the air,
and there for a few moments every sound was hushed, and a calm, the most
profound and ominous, seemed to fall upon the whole face of nature. Not
a blade of grass or a tall reed in the marshy places near the shore made
the slightest movement. Nature was absolutely still. It was the dead,
weird quiet before the awful hurricane; the quietude of death before the
elemental war.

Only for a short time did it last, and to judge by the feverish haste
with which the Indians, under Mr Ross's stern orders, worked, it was
evident they knew the danger of this ominous calm, and what would
speedily follow. Large logs were piled up as a barrier behind the
improvised tent, while every rope available was used to tie down the
poles which held up the roof of canvas and oilcloth. Poles were lashed
across the top, and tied down with the fishing nets, which had to do as
substitutes for something better. Guns were well wrapped up in the
oilcloth covers, and, with the axes, were placed at a distance from the
camp.

"Get under cover, and hold on to something fixed and strong!" shouted
Mustagan, who had been on the lookout, and saw that the storm was close
at hand.

And it _was_ a storm! A strange greenish appearance came into the
north-west sky, and then suddenly there was heard and seen the oncoming
tornado. The clouds that during the calm had apparently become
motionless in the heavens for a time suddenly became strangely broken
and twisted, and then, as though impelled by some irresistible impulse,
started with a speed that seemed incredible on their wild career. There
seemed to roll up before them the strange green colour in the sky, which
now appeared like a great monster on the crest of the coming clouds.