Part 32 (2/2)

”We are caught,” declared Miss Harding, but there was no fear in her voice.

”Not yet!” I a.s.serted, springing from the car and making a frenzied examination of the cause of our breakdown. I knew it was not serious, and when I located it I joyously proclaimed it a mere trifle. But automobile trifles demand minutes, and nature did not postpone the resistless march of its storm battalions. As I toiled with wrench and screw-driver I cursed the folly which induced me to plunge into that desolate stretch of forest and marsh.

The roar of the tempest's artillery became continuous. The low scud clouds travelling with incredible velocity blotted out the blue sky to the east and darkness fell like a black shroud. I could not see to work beneath the floor of the car, and lost another minute searching for and lighting a candle.

In the uncanny gloom I saw the fair face of the one whose safety now was menaced by my bold folly. I saw her form silhouetted against the black of a fir tree in the almost blinding glare of a flame of lightning.

”Just one minute and I will have it fixed!” I said, and she smiled bravely but said nothing.

Still not a breath of air! The spires of the pine trees stood rigid as if cast in bronze!

This is the time when a storm strikes terror to my soul. With the first patter of the rain and the onrus.h.i.+ng of the wind I experience a sensation of relief, but it is nerve-racking to stand in that frightful calm and await the mighty charge of unknown forces.

As I bolted the displaced part into its proper adjustment I reflected that had it not been for the ten minutes thus lost we would have been in Oak Cliff. My calculations had been accurate, but again Fate had introduced an unexpected factor. I started the engine and leaped into the car.

”Only a mile to shelter!” I exclaimed. ”I think we can make it. Where are the storm ap.r.o.ns?”

”We forgot them,” she said.

”I forgot them, you mean,” I declared. ”Hold fast! It is a rough road!”

The red car leaped forward. I remembered that there was a farmhouse a mile or so ahead.

Never have I witnessed anything like the vivid continuity of that lightning. With a crash which sounded as if the G.o.ds had shattered the vault of the heavens a bolt streamed into a tree not a hundred yards ahead, and one of its limbs fell to the roadway. It was impossible to stop. She saw it and crouched behind the s.h.i.+eld. With a lurch and a leap we pa.s.sed over it.

I felt a drop of rain on my face. The trees swayed with the first gust of the tempest. We were going down hill with full speed on. A few hundred yards ahead was a stone culvert spanning the bed of a creek whose waters years before had been diverted to a reservoir a mile or so to the east. Save at rare intervals, the bed of this creek was dry.

As the recollection of this old culvert came to me I raised my eyes and saw something which drove the blood from my heart! A quarter of a mile ahead was a gray wall of rain, and dim through it I saw huge trees mount into the air and twist and gyrate like leaves caught up in an air eddy.

Holding our speed for a few seconds, which seemed like minutes, we surged toward the old culvert. Jamming on the brakes, I swung to one side of the embankment and stopped almost on the edge of the dry bed of the creek.

Miss Harding leaped to the ground and stood for an instant dazed. I stumbled as I jumped, but was on my feet like a flash. The arch of the culvert was not thirty feet away, but had we not been protected by the embankment we should have been beaten down and killed ere we reached its shelter.

The stones and gravel from the roadway above were dashed into our faces by the outer circle of the tornado. Grasping Miss Harding by the arm I dragged or carried her, I know not which, to the yawning but welcome opening of the old stone archway.

I cannot describe what followed. It was as if the earth were in its death throes. We were tossed back and forth in this tunnel, a resistless suction pulling us first toward one entrance and then to the other, only to be hurled back by buffeting blows.

There was a sense of suffocation as if the lightning had burned the air.

Our nostrils were filled with the fumes of sulphur, and we looked into each other's frightened eyes only when some near flash penetrated the awful blackness of what seemed our living tomb.

A tree fell across the west opening, one twisted limb projecting well into the tunnel of the culvert. We could not distinguish the crashes of thunder from that of hurtling trees or the demoniac roar of the tornado.

All of our senses were a.s.sailed by the unleashed furies of the tempest; crazed with rage that we were just beyond their reach.

I cannot say how long this lasted. Observers of the tornado in other places state that it was not more than three minutes in pa.s.sing. Its path was less than half a mile in width, but I am convinced that its onward speed was comparatively slow else we would not have reached the culvert from the time I first saw it until its edge struck us.

Then came a moment of appalling silence. The tornado had pa.s.sed. With this strange calm the darkness lifted and we knew that the crisis was over.

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