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250 whirled about, and in whistling columns circled over the ponds, stirring the waters in the ponds to their depths; they fell upon the meadows and whistled through the willows and the grass. The willow branches snapped, the swaths of grass were borne on the wind like hair torn out by handfuls, mixed with ringlets from the sheaves. The winds howled; they fell upon the field, wallowed, dug into the earth, snatched up clods, and made an opening for a third wind, which tore itself from the field like a pillar of black earth, and rose and whirled like a moving pyramid, boring into the ground with its brow and from its feet sprinkling sand in the eyes of the stars; it broadened at every step and opened out at the summit, and with its immense trumpet it proclaimed the storm. At last with all this chaos of water and dust, of straw, leaves, branches, and torn-up sod, the winds smote on the forest and roared through the depths of the thicket like bears.

And now the rain poured as from a sieve, in great, swift drops; then the thunder roared and the drops united; now like straight strings they bound the sky to the earth with long tresses, now, as from buckets, they poured down in great masses. Now the sky and the earth were quite hidden; the night, and the storm more black than night, shrouded them. At times the horizon cracked from side to side, and the angel of the storm, like an immense sun, showed his glittering face; and again, wrapped in a shroud, he fled into the sky and the doors of the clouds crashed together with a thunder-clap. Again the gale increased and the driving rain, and the dense, thick, almost impenetrable darkness. Again the drops murmured more gently, the thunder for a moment subsided; again it awoke and roared and water once more gushed forth. At last all became calm;