linding light passed across
this gulf, leaping from cloud to cloud. I remember that they reminded
me of the story of the heathen god Jove and his thunderbolts. The storm
that was shaped like a giant and ringed with the glory of the sinking
sun made an excellent Jove, and I am sure that the bolts which leapt
from it could not have been surpassed even in mythological times.
Oddly enough, as yet the flashes were not followed by thunder. A deadly
stillness lay upon the place, the cattle stood silently on the hillside,
even the natives were awed to silence. Dark shadows crept along the
bosom of the hills, the river to the right and left was hidden in
wreaths of cloud, but before us and beyond the combatants it shone
like a line of silver beneath the narrowing space of open sky. Now the
western tempest was scrawled all over with lines of intolerable light,
while the inky head of the cloud-giant to the east was continually
suffused with a white and deadly glow that came and went in pulses, as
though a blood of flame was being pumped into it from the heart of the
storm.

The silence deepened and deepened, the shadows grew blacker and blacker,
then suddenly all nature began to moan beneath the breath of an icy
wind. On sped the wind; the smooth surface of the river was ruffled by
it into little waves, the tall grass bowed low before it, and in its
wake came the hissing sound of furious rain.

Ah! the storms had met. From each there burst an awful blaze of dazzling
flame, and now the hill on which we sat rocked at the noise of the
following thunder. The light went out of the sky, darkness fell suddenly
on the land, but not for long. Presently the whole landscape grew vivid
in the flashes, it appeared and disappeared, now everything was visible
for miles, now even the men at my side vanished in the blackness. The
thunder rolled and cracked and pealed like the trump of doom, whirlwinds
tore round, lifting dust and even stones high into the air, and in a
low, continuous undertone rose the hiss of the rushing rain.

I put my hand before my eyes to shield them from the terrible glare,
and looked beneath it towards the lists of iron-stone. As flash followed
flash, from time to time I caught sight of the two wizards. They were
slowly advancing towards one another, each pointing at his foe with the
assegai in his hand. I could see their every movement, and it seemed to
me that the chain lightning was striking the iron-stone all round t