Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/179



Paquita came rushing down to the claim, pale and excited. She lifted her two hands above her head as she stood on the bank, and called to us to come up from the mine. u Come, she cried, "there will be a storm. The trees will blow and break against each other. There will be a flood, a sea, a river in the mountains. Come !" She swayed her body to and fro, and the trees began to sway above her on the hills, but not a breath had touched the mines.

Then it grew almost dark ; we fairly had to feel our way up the ladder. A big drop sank in the water close at hand, splashing audibly; the trees surged above us and began to snap like reeds.

There was a roar like the sea loud, louder. Nearer now the trees began to bend and turn and lick their limbs and trunks, interweave and smite and crush, until their tops were like one black and boiling sea.

Fast, faster, the rain in great warm drops began to strike us in the face, as we miners hastened up the hill to the shelter of the cabin. At the door we turned to look. The darkness of death was upon us ; we could hear the groans and the battling of the trees, the howling of the tempest, but all was dark ness, blackness, desolation. Lightning cleft the heavens.

A sheet of flame as if the hand of God had thrust out through the dark and smote the mountain side with a sword of fire.

And then the thunder shook the earth till it trembled, as if Shasta had been shaken