h. The air was
filled with a tumult of uncertain wind and a hiss as of distant rain.
Then the batteries of thunder were opened, and the world shook with
their volume. Down from on high the flashes fell blinding and incessant,
and by the light of them the fire-doctors could be seen running to and
fro, pointing now here and now there with their wands of human bones,
and pouring the medicines from their gourds upon the ground and upon
each other. Owen and his two companions could be seen also, standing
quietly with clasped hands, while above them towered the tall white
cross.

At length the storm was straight over head. Slowly it advanced in
its awe-inspiring might as flash after flash, each more fantastic and
horrible than the last, smote upon the floor of ironstone. It played
about the shapes of the doctors, who in the midst of it looked like
devils in an inferno. It crept onwards towards the station of the cross,
but--_it never reached the cross_.

One flash struck indeed within fifty paces of where Owen stood. Then of
a sudden a marvel happened, or something which to this day the People of
Fire talk of as a marvel, for in an instant the rain began to pour like
a wall of water stretching from earth to heaven, and the wind changed.
It had been blowing from the west, now it blew from the east with the
force of a gale.

It blew and rolled the tempest back upon itself, causing it to return
to the regions whence it had gathered. At the very foot of the cross
its march was stayed; there was the water-line, as straight as if it had
been drawn with a rule. The thunder-clouds that were pressed forward met
the clouds that were pressed back, and together they seemed to come
to earth, filling the air with a gloom so dense that the eye could not
pierce it. To the west was a wall of blackness towering to the heavens;
to the east, light, blue and unholy, gleamed upon the white cross and
the figures of its watchers.

For some seconds--twenty or more--there was a lull, and then it
seemed as though all hell had broken loose upon the world. The wall of
blackness became a wall of flame, in which strange and ardent shapes
appeared ascending and descending; the thunder bellowed till the
mountains rocked, and in one last blaze, awful and indescribable, the
skies melted into a deluge of fire. In the flare of it Owen thought that
he saw the figures of men falling this way and that, then he staggered
against the cross for support and his se