Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/205

 Suddenly the grazing goats stopped browsing and began to bleat uneasily, standing with their heads seawards.

'There will be a storm,' said Zefferino. 'We cannot see it coming, but they can.'

'If I were out at sea, I should know,' said Musa. She was not so familiar with the portents of the land.

In less than ten minutes the storm broke, sudden, violent, terrible as only a rainless storm can be. The sky was a sheet of lightning; the wind rose in fury; the thunder pealed as if heaven and earth were meeting; clouds of dust were driven before the wind over the moor; and herds of buffaloes with their horns sloped downward, rushed, like a whirlwind themselves, over the ground towards the shelter of the thickets.

The goats massed together, with stern outward, resisted the force of the hurricane as best they could, trembling and staggering as the wind struck them like a scourge. Musa, who stood erect, though she was shaken like a young tree, seized the boy, who had fallen prone upon his face.

'Get up; bring the beasts into shelter or they will perish!' she cried to him as she