in a moment to a terrible roar.

"A hurricane!" exclaimed Henry. As he spoke a huge compressed ball of
air which can be likened only to a thunderbolt struck them.

Strong as he was, Henry was thrown to the ground, and he saw the chief
go down beside him. Then everything was blotted out in pitchy blackness,
but his ears were filled with many sounds, all terrible, the fierce
screaming of the wind as if in wrath and pain, the whistling of boughs
and brushwood, swept over his head, and the crash of great oaks and
beeches as they fell, snapped through at the trunk by the immense force
of the hurricane.

Henry seized some of the bushes and held on for his life. How thankful
he was now that he had given his promise to the chief, and that his
hands were free! A shiver swept over him from head to foot. Any moment
one of the trees might fall upon him, but he was near the center of the
glade, the safest place, and he did not seek to move.

He was conscious, as he clung to the bushes, of two kinds of movement.
He was being pulled forward and he was being whirled about. The ball of
air as it shot from southwest to northeast revolved, also, with
incredible rapidity. The double motion was so violent that it required
all of Henry's great strength to keep from being wrenched loose from his
bushes.

The hurricane, in its full intensity, lasted scarcely a minute. Then
with a tremendous rush and scream it swept off to the northeast, tearing
a track through the forest like a tongue of flame in dry grass. Then the
rain, pouring from heavy black clouds, came in its wake, and the
lightning, which had ceased while the thunderbolt was passing, began to
flash fitfully.

Henry had seen hurricanes in the great Ohio Valley before, but never one
so fierce and violent as this, nor so tremendous in its manifestations.
Awe and weirdness followed in the trail of that cannon ball of wind. The
rumble of thunder, far and echoing, was almost perpetual. Blackest
darkness alternated with broad sheets of lightning so intense in tint
that the forest would swim for a moment in a reddish glare before the
blackness came. Meanwhile the rain poured as if the bottom had dropped
out of every cloud.

Henry struggled to his feet and stood erect. He could have easily darted
away in the confusion and darkness among the woods, but such a thought
did not occur to him. He had given his promise, and he would keep it
despite the unexpected opportunity that was offered.