arth. He made a few hurried
steps up the courtyard and was arrested by an immense sheet of water
that fell all at once on him, fell sudden and overwhelming from the
clouds, cutting his respiration, streaming over his head, clinging to
him, running down his body, off his arms, off his legs. He stood gasping
while the water beat him in a vertical downpour, drove on him slanting
in squalls, and he felt the drops striking him from above, from
everywhere; drops thick, pressed and dashing at him as if flung from all
sides by a mob of infuriated hands. From under his feet a great vapour
of broken water floated up, he felt the ground become soft--melt under
him--and saw the water spring out from the dry earth to meet the water
that fell from the sombre heaven. An insane dread took possession of
him, the dread of all that water around him, of the water that ran down
the courtyard towards him, of the water that pressed him on every side,
of the slanting water that drove across his face in wavering sheets
which gleamed pale red with the flicker of lightning streaming through
them, as if fire and water were falling together, monstrously mixed,
upon the stunned earth.

He wanted to run away, but when he moved it was to slide about painfully
and slowly upon that earth which had become mud so suddenly under his
feet. He fought his way up the courtyard like a man pushing through
a crowd, his head down, one shoulder forward, stopping often, and
sometimes carried back a pace or two in the rush of water which his
heart was not stout enough to face. Aissa followed him step by step,
stopping when he stopped, recoiling with him, moving forward with him
in his toilsome way up the slippery declivity of the courtyard, of that
courtyard, from which everything seemed to have been swept away by the
first rush of the mighty downpour. They could see nothing. The tree, the
bushes, the house, and the fences--all had disappeared in the thickness
of the falling rain. Their hair stuck, streaming, to their heads; their
clothing clung to them, beaten close to their bodies; water ran off
them, off their heads over their shoulders. They moved, patient,
upright, slow and dark, in the gleam clear or fiery of the falling
drops, under the roll of unceasing thunder, like two wandering ghosts
of the drowned that, condemned to haunt the water for ever, had come up
from the river to look at the world under a deluge.

On the left the tree seemed to step out to meet