KALININ

Whistling from off the sea, the wind was charged with moist, salt

spray, and dashing foaming billows ashore with their white manes full

of snakelike, gleaming black ribands of seaweed, and causing the rocks

to rumble angrily in response, and the trees to rustle with a dry,

agitated sound as their tops swayed to and fro, and their trunks bent

earthwards as though they would fain reeve up their roots, and betake

them whither the mountains stood veiled in a toga of heavy, dark mist.

Over the sea the clouds were hurrying towards the land as ever and anon

they rent themselves into strips, and revealed fathomless abysses of

blue wherein the autumn sun burned uneasily, and sent cloud-shadows

gliding over the puckered waste of waters, until, the shore reached,

the wind further harried the masses of vapour towards the sharp flanks

of the mountains, and, after drawing them up and down the slopes,

relegated them to clefts, and left them steaming there.

There was about the whole scene a louring appearance, an appearance as

though everything were contending with everything, as now all things

turned sullenly dark, and now all things emitted a dull sheen which

almost blinded the eyes. Along the narrow road, a road protected from

the sea by a line of wave-washed dykes, some withered leaves of oak and

wild cherry were scudding in mutual chase of one another; with the

general result that the combined sounds of splashing and rustling and

howling came to merge themselves into a single din which issued as a

song with a rhythm marked by the measured blows of the waves as they

struck the rocks.

"Zmiulan, the King of the Ocean, is abroad!" shouted my fellow

traveller in my ear. He was a tall, round-shouldered man of childishly

chubby features and boyishly bright, transparent eyes.

"WHO do you say is abroad?" I queried.

"King Zmiulan."

Never having heard of the monarch, I made no reply.

The extent to which the wind buffeted us might have led one to suppose

that its primary objective was to deflect our steps, and turn them in

the direction of the mountains. Indeed, at times its pressure was so

strong that we had no choice but to halt, to turn our backs to the sea,

and, with feet planted apart, to prise ourselves against our sticks,

and so remain, poised on three legs, until we were past any risk of

being overwhelmed with the soft incubus of the tempest, and having our

coats torn from our shoulders.

At intervals such gasps would come from my companion that he might well

have been standing on the drying-board of a bath. Nor, as they did so,

was his appearance aught but comical, seeing that his ears, appendages

large and shaggy like a dog's, and indifferently shielded with a shabby

old cap, kept being pushed forward by the wind until his small head

bore an absurd resemblance to a china bowl. And that, to complete the

resemblance, his long and massive nose, a feature grossly

disproportionate to the rest of his diminutive face, might equally well

have passed for the spout of the receptacle indicated.

Yet a face out of the common it was, like the whole of his personality.

And this was the fact which had captivated me from the moment when I

had beheld him participating in a vigil service held in the

neighbouring church of the monastery of New Athos. There, spare, but

with his withered form erect, and his head slightly tilted, he had been

gazing at the Crucifix with a radiant smile, and moving his thin lips

in a sort of whispered, confidential, friendly conversation with the

Saviour. Indeed, so much had the man's smooth, round features (features

as beardless as those of a Skopetz [A member of the Skoptzi, a

non-Orthodox sect the members of which "do make of themselves eunuchs

for the Lord's sake."], save for two bright tufts at the corners of the

mouth) been instinct with intimacy, with a consciousness of actually

being in the presence of the Son of God, that the spectacle,

transcending anything of the kind that my eyes had before beheld, had

led me, with its total absence of the customary laboured, servile,

pusillanimous attitude towards the Almighty which I had generally found

to be the rule, to accord the man my whole interest, and, as long as

the service had lasted, to keep an eye upon one who could thus converse

with God without rendering Him constant obeisance, or again and again

making the sign of the cross, or invariably making it to the

accompaniment of groans and tears which had always hitherto obtruded

itself upon my notice.

Again had I encountered the man when I had had supper at the workmen's

barraque, and then proceeded to the monastery's guest-chamber. Seated

at a table under a circle of light falling from a lamp suspended from

the ceiling, he had gathered around him a knot of pilgrims and their

women, and was holding forth in low, cheerful tones that yet had in

them the telling, incisive note of the preacher, of the man who

frequently converses with his fellow men.

"One thing it may be best always to disclose," he was saying, "and

another thing to conceal. If aught in ourselves seems harmful or

senseless, let us put to ourselves the question: 'Why is this so?'

Contrariwise ought a prudent man never to thrust himself forward and

say: 'How discreet am I!' while he who makes a parade of his hard lot,

and says, 'Good folk, see ye and hear how bitter my life is,' also does

wrong."

Here a pilgrim with a black beard, a brigand's dark eyes, and the

wasted features of an ascetic rose from the further side of the table,

straightened his virile frame, and said in a dull voice:

"My wife and one of my children were burnt to death through the falling

of an oil lamp. On THAT ought I to keep silence?"

No answer followed. Only someone muttered to himself:

"What? Again?": until the first speaker, the speaker seated near the

corner of the table, launched into the oppressive lull the unhesitating

reply:

"That of which you speak may be taken to have been a punishment by God

for sin."

"What? For a sin committed by one three years of age (for, indeed, my

little son was no more)? The accident happened of his pulling down a

lamp upon himself, and of my wife seizing him, and herself being burnt

to death. She was weak, too, for but eleven days had passed since her

confinement."

"No. What I mean is that in that accident you see a punishment for sins

committed by the child's father and mother."

This reply from the corner came with perfect confidence. The

black-bearded man, however, pretended not to hear it, but spread out

his hands as though parting the air before him, and proceeded

hurriedly, breathlessly to detail the manner in which his wife and

little one had met their deaths. And all the time that he was doing so

one had an inkling that often before had he recounted his narrative of

horror, and that often again would he repeat it. His shaggy black

eyebrows, as he delivered his speech, met in a single strip, while the

whites of his eyes grew bloodshot, and their dull, black pupils never

ceased their nervous twitching.

Presently the gloomy recital was once more roughly, unceremoniously

broken in upon by the cheerful voice of the Christ-loving pilgrim.

"It is not right, brother," the voice said, "to blame God for untoward

accidents, or for mistakes and follies committed by ourselves."

"But if God be God, He is responsible for all things."

"Not so. Concede to yourself the faculty of reason."

"Pah! What avails reason if it cannot make me understand?"

"Cannot make you understand WHAT?"

"The main point, the point why MY wife had to be burnt rather than my

neighbour's?"

Somewhere an old woman commented in spitefully distinct tones:

"Oh ho, ho! This man comes to a monastery, and starts railing as soon

as he gets there!"

Flashing his eyes angrily, the black-bearded man lowered his head like

a bull. Then, thinking better of his position, and contenting himself

with a gesture, he strode swiftly, heavily towards the door. Upon this

the Christ-loving pilgrim rose with a swaying motion, bowed to everyone

present, and set about following his late interlocutor.

"It has all come of a broken heart," he said with a smile as he passed

me. Yet somehow the smile seemed to lack sympathy.

With a disapproving air someone else remarked:

"That fellow's one thought is to enlarge and to enlarge upon his tale."

"Yes, and to no purpose does he do so," added the Christ-loving pilgrim

as he halted in the doorway. "All that he accomplishes by it is to

weary himself and others alike. Such experiences are far better put

behind one."

Presently I followed the pair into the forecourt, and near the

entrance-gates heard a voice say quietly:

"Do not disturb yourself, good father."

"Nevertheless" (the second voice was that of the porter of the

monastery, Father Seraphim, a strapping Vetlugan) "a spectre walks here

nightly."

"Never mind if it does. As regards myself, no spectre would touch me."

Here I moved in the direction of the gates.

"Who comes there?" Seraphim inquired as he thrust a hairy and uncouth,

but infinitely kindly, face close to mine. "Oh, it is the young fellow

from Nizhni Novgorod! You are wasting your time, my good sir, for the

women have all gone to bed."

With which he laughed and chuckled like a bear.

Beyond the wall of the forecourt the stillness of the autumn night was

the languid inertia of a world exhausted by summer, and the withered

grass and other objects of the season were exhaling a sweet and bracing

odour, and the trees looking like fragments of cloud where motionless

they hung in the moist, sultry air. Also, in the darkness the

half-slumbering sea could be heard soughing as it crept towards the

shore while over the sky lay a canopy of mist, save at the point where

the moon's opal-like blur could be descried over the spot where that

blur's counterfeit image glittered and rocked on the surface of the

dark waters.

Under the trees there was set a bench whereon I could discern there to

be resting a human figure. Approaching the figure, I seated myself

beside it.

"Whence, comrade?" was my inquiry.

"From Voronezh. And you?"

A Russian is never adverse to talking about himself. It would seem as

though he is never sure of his personality, as though he is ever

yearning to have that personality confirmed from some source other

than, extraneous to, his own ego. The reason for this must be that we

Russians live diffused over a land of such vastness that, the more we

grasp the immensity of the same, the smaller do we come to appear in

our own eyes; wherefore, traversing, as we do, roads of a length of a

thousand versts, and constantly losing our way, we come to let slip no

opportunity of restating ourselves, and setting forth all that we have

seen and thought and done.

Hence, too, must it be that in conversations one seems to hear less of

the note of "I am I" than of the note of "Am I really and truly myself?"

"What may be your name?" next I inquired of the figure on the bench.

"A name of absolute simplicity--the name of Alexei Kalinin."

"You are a namesake of mine, then."

"Indeed? Is that so?"

With which, tapping me on the knee, the figure added:

"Come, then, namesake. 'I have mortar, and you have water, so together

let us paint the town.'"

Murmuring amid the silence could be heard small, light waves that were

no more than ripples. Behind us the busy clamour of the monastery had

died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed subdued by the

influence of the night--it seemed to have in it less of the note of

self-confidence.

"My mother was a wet-nurse," he went on to volunteer, "and I her only

child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my height,

converted into a footman. It happened thus. One day, on General Stepan

(my mother's then employer) happening to catch sight of me, he

exclaimed: 'Evgenia, go and tell Fedor' (the ex-soldier who was then

serving the General as footman) 'that he is to teach your son to wait

at table! The boy is at least tall enough for the work.' And for nine

years I served the General in this capacity. And then, and then--oh,

THEN I was seized with an illness.... Next, I obtained a post under

a merchant who was then mayor of our town, and stayed with him

twenty-one months. And next I obtained a situation in an hotel at

Kharkov, and held it for a year. And after that I kept changing my

places, for, steady and sober though I was, I was beginning to lack

taste for my profession, and to develop a spirit of the kind which

deemed all work to be beneath me, and considered that I had been

created to serve only myself, not others."

Along the high road to Sukhum which lay behind us there were proceeding

some invisible travellers whose scraping of feet as they walked

proclaimed the fact that they were not over-used to journeying on foot.

Just as the party drew level with us, a musical voice hummed out softly

the line "Alone will I set forth upon the road," with the word "alone"

plaintively stressed. Next, a resonant bass voice said with a sort of

indolent incisiveness:

"Aphon or aphonia means loss of speech to the extent of, to the extent

of--oh, to WHAT extent, most learned Vera Vasilievna?"

"To the extent of total loss of power of articulation," replied a voice

feminine and youthful of timbre.

Just at that moment we saw two dark, blurred figures, with a paler

figure between them, come gliding into view.

"Strange indeed is it that, that--"

"That what?"

"That so many names proper to these parts should also be so suggestive.

Take, for instance, Mount Nakopioba. Certainly folk hereabouts seem to

have "amassed" things, and to have known how to do so." [The verb

nakopit means to amass, to heap up.]

"For my part, I always fail to remember the name of Simon the

Canaanite. Constantly I find myself calling him 'the Cainite.'"

"Look here," interrupted the musical voice in a tone of chastened

enthusiasm. "As I contemplate all this beauty, and inhale this

restfulness, I find myself reflecting: 'How would it be if I were to

let everything go to the devil, and take up my abode here for ever?'"

At this point all further speech became drowned by the sound of the

monastery's bell as it struck the hour. The only utterance that came

borne to my ears was the mournful fragment:

Oh, if into a single word

I could pour my inmost thoughts!

To the foregoing dialogue my companion had listened with his head

tilted to one side, much as though the dialogue had deflected it in

that direction: and now, as the voices died away into the distance, he

sighed, straightened himself, and said:

"Clearly those people were educated folk. And see too how, as they

talked of one thing and another, there cropped up the old and

ever-persistent point."

"To what point are you referring?"

My companion paused a moment before he replied. Then he said:

"Can it be that you did not hear it? Did you not hear one of those

people remark: 'I have a mind to surrender everything '?"

Whereafter, bending forward, and peering at me as a blind man would do,

Kalinin added in a half-whisper:

"More and more are folk coming to think to themselves: 'Now must I

forsake everything.' In the end I myself came to think it. For many a

year did I increasingly reflect: 'Why should I be a servant? What will

it ever profit me? Even if I should earn twelve, or twenty, or fifty

roubles a month, to what will such earnings lead, and where will the

man in me come in? Surely it would be better to do nothing at all, but

just to gaze into space (as I am doing now), and let my eyes stare

straight before me?'"

"By the way, what were you talking to those people about?"

"Which people do you mean?"

"The bearded man and the rest, the company in the guest-chamber?"

"Ah, THAT man I did not like--I have no fancy at all for fellows who

strew their grief about the world, and leave it to be trampled upon by

every chance-comer. For how can the tears of my neighbour benefit me?

True, every man has his troubles; but also has every man such a

predilection for his particular woe that he ends by deeming it the most

bitter and remarkable grief in the universe--you may take my word for

that."

Suddenly the speaker rose to his feet, a tall, lean figure.

"Now I must seek my bed," he remarked. "You see, I shall have to leave

here very early tomorrow."

"And for what point?"

"For Novorossisk."

Now, the day being a Saturday, I had drawn my week's earnings from the

monastery's pay-office just before the vigil service. Also, Novorossisk

did not really lie in my direction. Thirdly, I had no particular wish

to exchange the monastery for any other lodging. Nevertheless, despite

all this, the man interested me to such an extent (of persons who

genuinely interest one there never exist but two, and, of them, oneself

is always one) that straightway I observed:

"I too shall be leaving here tomorrow."

"Then let us travel together."

* * * * *

At dawn, therefore, we set forth to foot the road in company. At times

I mentally soared aloft, and viewed the scene from that vantage-point.

Whenever I did so, I beheld two tall men traversing a narrow track by a

seashore--the one clad in a grey military overcoat and a hat with a

broken crown, and the other in a drab kaftan and a plush cap. At their

feet the boundless sea was splashing white foam, salt-dried ribands of

seaweed were strewing the path, golden leaves were dancing hither and

thither, and the wind was howling at, and buffeting, the travellers as

clouds sailed over their heads. Also, to their right there lay

stretched a chain of mountains towards which the clouds kept wearily,

nervelessly tending, while to their left there lay spread a white-laced

expanse over the surface of which a roaring wind kept ceaselessly

driving transparent columns of spray.

On such stormy days in autumn everything near a seashore looks

particularly cheerful and vigorous, seeing that, despite the soughing

of wind and wave, and the swift onrush of cloud, and the fact that the

sun is only occasionally to be seen suspended in abysses of blue, and

resembles a drooping flower, one feels that the apparent chaos has

lurking in it a secret harmony of mundane, but imperishable, forces--so

much so that in time even one's puny human heart comes to imbibe the

prevalent spirit of revolt, and, catching fire, to cry to all the

universe: "I love you!"

Yes, at such times one desires to taste life to the full, and so to

live that the ancient rocks shall smile, and the sea's white horses

prance the higher, as one's mouth acclaims the earth in such a paean

that, intoxicated with the laudation, it shall unfold its riches with

added bountifulness and display more and more manifest beauty under the

spur of the love expressed by one of its creatures, expressed by a

human being who feels for the earth what he would feel for a woman, and

yearns to fertilise the same to ever-increasing splendour.

Nevertheless, words are as heavy as stones, and after felling fancy to

the ground, serve but to heap her grey coffin-lid, and cause one, as

one stands contemplating the tomb, to laugh in sheer self-derision...

.

Suddenly, plunged in dreams as I walked along, I heard through the

plash of the waves and the sizzle of the foam the unfamiliar words:

"Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan. Good devils are these, not bad."

"How does Christ get on with them?" I asked.

"Christ? He does not enter into the matter."

"Is He hostile to them?"

"Is He HOSTILE to them? How could He be? Devils of that kind are devils

to themselves-devils of a decent sort. Besides, to no one is Christ

hostile" .............................. . . . . .

[In the Russian this hiatus occurs as marked.]

As though unable any longer to brave the assault of the billows, the

path suddenly swerved towards the bushes on our right, and, in doing

so, caused the cloud-wrapped mountains to shift correspondingly to our

immediate front, where the masses of vapour were darkening as though

rain were probable.

Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time

to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.

"The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked. "For

hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of

Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he

was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory."

So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows that

it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked in the

funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay lashed with

foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept gliding towards it.

"Tell me more about those devils," I said at length.

"Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about them?"

"All that you may happen to know."

"Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them."

To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued:

"I say that I know everything about those devils for the reason that

for my mother I had a most remarkable woman, a woman cognisant of each

and every species of proverb, anathema, and item of hagiology. You must

know that, after spreading my bed beside the kitchen stove each night,

and her own bed on the top of the stove (for, after her wet-nursing of

three of the General's children, she lived a life of absolute ease, and

did no work at all)--"

Here Kalinin halted, and, driving his stick into the ground, glanced

back along the path before resuming his way with firm, lengthy strides.

"I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina

Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."

"Remarkable for what?"

"Remarkable for EVERYTHING."

At this moment there came floating over our heads through the

damp-saturated air a cormorant--one of those voracious birds which so

markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its powerful

pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.

"Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.

"And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never did I

climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat of one), it

was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the top,

and tell me stories. And though the room would be too dark for me to

see her face, I could yet see the things of which she would be

speaking. And at times, as these tales came floating down to me, I

would find them so horrible as to be forced to cry out, 'Oh, Mamka,

Mamka, DON'T!...' To this hour I have no love for the bizarre, and

am but a poor hand at remembering it. And as strange as her stories was

my mother. Eventually she died of an attack of blood-poisoning and,

though but forty, had become grey-headed. Yes, and so terribly did she

smell after her death that everyone in the kitchen was constrained to

exclaim at the odour."

"Yes, but what of the devils?"

"You must wait a minute or two."

Ever as we proceeded, clinging, fantastic branches kept closing in upon

the path, so that we appeared to be walking through a sea of murmuring

verdure. And from time to time a bough would flick us as though to say:

"Speed, speed, or the rain will be upon you!"

If anything, however, my companion slackened his pace as in measured,

sing-song accents he continued:

"When Jesus Christ, God's Son, went forth into the wilderness to

collect His thoughts, Satan sent devils to subject Him to temptation.

Christ was then young; and as He sat on the burning sand in the middle

of the desert, He pondered upon one thing and another, and played with

a handful of pebbles which He had collected. Until presently from afar,

there descried Him the devils Hymen, Demon, Igamon, and Zmiulan--devils

of equal age with the Saviour.

"Drawing near unto Him, they said, 'Pray suffer us to sport with Thee.'

Whereupon Christ answered with a smile: 'Pray be seated.' Then all of

them did sit down in a circle, and proceed to business, which business

was to see whether or not any member of the party could so throw a

stone into the air as to prevent it from falling back upon the burning

sand.

.............................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

[In the original Russian this hiatus occurs as given.]

"Christ Himself was the first to throw a stone; whereupon His stone

became changed into a six-winged dove, and fluttered away towards the

Temple of Jerusalem. And, next, the impotent devils strove to do the

same; until at length, when they saw that Christ could not in any wise

be tempted, Zmiulan, the senior of the devils, cried:

"'Oh Lord, we will tempt Thee no more; for of a surety do we avail not,

and, though we be devils, never shall do so!'

"'Aye, never shall ye!' Christ did agree. 'And, therefore, I will now

fulfil that which from the first I did conceive. That ye be devils I

know right well. And that, while yet afar off, ye did, on beholding me,

have compassion upon me I know right well. While also ye did not in any

wise seek to conceal from me the truth as concerning yourselves. Hence

shall ye, for the remainder of your lives, be GOOD devils; so that at

the last shall matters be rendered easier for you. Do thou, Zmiulan,

become King of the Ocean, and send the winds of the sea to cleanse the

land of foul air. And do thou, Demon, see to it that the cattle shall

eat of no poisonous herb, but that all herbs of the sort be covered

with prickles. Do thou, Igamon, comfort, by night, all comfortless

widows who shall be blaming God for the death of their husbands? And do

thou, Hymen, as the youngest devil of the band, choose for thyself

wherein shall lie thy charge.'

"'Oh Lord,' replied Hymen, 'I do love but to laugh.'

"And the Saviour replied:

"'Then cause thou folk to laugh. Only, mark thou, see to it that they

laugh not IN CHURCH.'

"'Yet even in church would I laugh, Oh Lord,' the devil objected.

"'Jesus Christ Himself laughed.

"'God go with you!' at length He said. 'Then let folk laugh even in

church--but QUIETLY.'

"In such wise did Christ convert those four evil devils into devils of

goodness."

Soaring over the green, bushy sea were a number of old oaks. On them

the yellow leaves were trembling as though chilled; here and there a

sturdy hazel was doffing its withered garments, and elsewhere a wild

cherry was quivering, and elsewhere an almost naked chestnut was

politely rendering obeisance to the earth.

"Did you find that story of mine a good one?" my companion inquired.

"I did, for Christ was so good in it."

"Always and everywhere He is so," Kalinin proudly rejoined. "But do you

also know what an old woman of Smolensk used to sing concerning Him?"

"I do not."

Halting, my strange traveller chanted in a feignedly senile and

tremulous voice, as he beat time with his foot:

In the heavens a flow'r doth blow,

It is the Son of God.

From it all our joys do flow,

It is the Son of God.

In the sun's red rays He dwells

He, the Son of God.

His light our every ill dispels.

Praised be the Son of God!

Each successive line seemed to inspire Kalinin's voice with added

youthfulness, until, indeed, the concluding words--"The One and Only

God"--issued in a high, agreeable tenor.

Suddenly a flash of lightning blazed before us, while dull thunder

crashed among the mountains, and sent its hundred-voiced echoes rolling

over land and sea. In his consternation, Kalinin opened his mouth until

a set of fine, even teeth became bared to view. Then, with repeated

crossings of himself, he muttered.

"Oh dread God, Oh beneficent God, Oh God who sittest on high, and on a

golden throne, and under a gilded canopy, do Thou now punish Satan,

lest he overwhelm me in the midst of my sins!"

Whereafter, turning a small and terrified face in my direction, and

blinking his bright eyes, he added with hurried diction:

"Come, brother! Come! Let us run on ahead, for thunderstorms are my

bane. Yes, let us run with all possible speed, run ANYWHERE, for soon

the rain will be pouring down, and these parts are full of lurking

fever."

Off, therefore, we started, with the wind smiting us behind, and our

kettles and teapots jangling, and my wallet, in particular, thumping me

about the middle of the body as though it had been wielding a large,

soft fist. Yet a far cry would it be to the mountains, nor was any

dwelling in sight, while ever and anon branches caught at our clothes,

and stones leapt aloft under our tread, and the air grew steadily

darker, and the mountains seemed to begin gliding towards us.

Once more from the black cloud-masses, heaven belched a fiery dart

which caused the sea to scintillate with blue sapphires in response,

and, seemingly, to recoil from the shore as the earth shook, and the

mountain defiles emitted a gigantic scrunching sound of their rock-hewn

jaws.

"Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One! Oh Holy One!" screamed Kalinin as he dived

into the bushes.

In the rear, the waves lashed us as though they had a mind to arrest

our progress; from the gloom to our front came a sort of scraping and

rasping; long black hands seemed to wave over our heads; just at the

point where the mountain crests lay swathed in their dense coverlet of

cloud, there rumbled once more the deafening iron chariot of the

thunder-god; more and more frequently flashed the lightning as the

earth rang, and rifts cleft by the blue glare disclosed, amid the

obscurity, great trees that were rustling and rocking and, to all

appearances, racing headlong before the scourge of a cold, slanting

rain.

The occasion was a harassing but bracing one, for as the fine bands of

rain beat upon our faces, our bodies felt filled with a heady vigour of

a kind to fit us to run indefinitely--at all events to run until this

storm of rain and thunder should be outpaced, and clear weather be

reached again.