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Page 15
He raised himself with difficulty from his stool, and moved his stiff
limbs to the threshold. As he did so, he noticed that the smoke was
within the room as well as without; it was festooning about the baby's
cradle, it was filling the place, there was scarcely air to breathe. His
first idea, as he smelt the soot, and saw the blacks showering on the
hearth, was that the chimney was on fire. He went straight to the baby
in its cradle, and, his limbs forgetting their stiffness, lifted her in
his arms to carry her to a place of safety; when that was done he would
take off the embers from the grate, and sprinkle salt on the hearth to
quench the fire.
Not till he reached the door did he notice a sound that filled the
valley. A strange, high-pitched note, like a hundred curry-fowl crying
at once--a wail, as of spirits in hell. Now from one direction, now from
another; now rising, now falling, the weird, unearthly shriek seemed
everywhere at once, increasing each moment in force and shrillness. As
the old man, holding the baby close to him, looked up and listened, fear
struck his lips with a sudden trembling. Opposite to him he saw a
strange sight. Halfway up the mountain, on the other side of the valley,
not a leaf on the trees was stirring: the lower slopes lay basking in
the sunshine, and the shadows of fleeting clouds only added to the
peaceful beauty of the scene; while the trees above were raging
bacchanals, whirling, swaying, tossing their long arms in futile agony,
as though possessed by some unseen demoniacal power.
In a moment the old man knew what had befallen him. The bewitched smoke,
the shrieking spirits of the air, the motionless valley, and the
maddened trees, of all these he had heard before, for he had listened to
tales of the tornado in the valley, and knew what it meant to the
defenceless dwellers on the upper slopes. The skirts of the fury were
touching him even now; a sudden gust swept by; to draw breath for the
moment was impossible, and his unsteady balance would soon have been
overthrown; he was forced to cling to the doorpost, still holding the
baby close. But the quiet, comprehending expression never left his face;
he knew what was to be done, and he meant to do it; there might be time.
He set down the baby in the cradle, took off his coat, grasped a spade
in his shaking hand, and hobbled across the patch of open ground to a
spot as far distant as possible both from the cottage and from the
borders of the wood; the maddened wind was wailing itself away in the
distance, and happily for a few minutes there was a lull in the air. He
could hear the baby crying, left alone in the cottage. He never looked
off from his work, but went on digging a hole in the form of a little
grave. The surface of the ground was hard, and the old man was
short-winded; he could hardly gather enough force to drive the spade in.
Before long, however, a few inches of the upper crust were removed from
a space about three feet in length. The digging in the softer earth
would now be easier and more rapid. As he worked on, a few heavy drops
of rain fell. He looked up and saw the whole sky, lately full of
sunlight, a mass of driving, ink-black clouds, while the shriek of the
hurricane was heard again in the distance. The baby's cry was drowned by
it. The hole was as yet only half a foot deep. At the next thrust the
spade struck on a slanting ledge of slaty rock. No further progress
could be made there; the trench must be dug in a different direction.
Once more the old man, panting heavily, drove the spade into the hard
ground, and in two or three minutes had so far altered the position of
the hole that the rock was avoided. The gale was increasing every
moment, and at times he could hardly keep his feet.
Suddenly, through the roar of the wind, was heard another sound, a
rattling and rushing, as of loosened stones and of earth. All his senses
on the alert, the old man glanced swiftly up, and saw a row of four tall
fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
to the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.
After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the _d�bris_ into
the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly
with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage--of
such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked
about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
had whirled it to some unknown limbo.
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