Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/155

144 14<!:, THE LiODD TEMKESTUOUS ROAE. happen; There was a sulphurou* smell in the air, and up to this time it was very calm. Now there were coming from the southwest little vapory clouds with the speed of lightning toward the funnel and were absorbed by it. This wonderful traveling of clouds continued for about a minute, per- haps only half that time, for under such circum- stances a minute is an hour. And now the ear begins to hear a strange roaring sound, and the sulphurous fumes are more pronounced; Every nerve is strained to a tension known only to those who have gone through the ordeal. Louder and louder becomes the awful monster tornado, for that is what it is, and now the inlfy colored mass is coming nearer and nearer, the sound resembles that made in the forest during a storm, only many times louder; this black cloud is not traveling so very fast, perhaps forty or fifty miles an hour, but then it is whirling, and woe be to objects that get in its path. It has reached the big cotton- wood trees two feet through which it twists off as if they were reeds. And now the mighty force is pass- ing onr party. Some have instinctively clutched the grass, the only thing available. Others grasp in a grijj of iron what ever they have hold of, but no man reajly knows what has. taken place, for he is dazed by the awf ulness of his situation. All are prostrate on the ground, and in as low a place as possible, at the suggestion and example of the native of the plains. It is lucky they were able to secure a place where there was a depression in the earth, for had they not, in aU probability they would have been drawn into the miglJty maelstrom of wind, which, instead of being