IV

Another night, just after moonrise, a wind arose and drove in front

of it the whole night long a great thunderstorm, with lightnings and

rollings and grumblings and mutterings, but never a spot of rain. At

dawn, when I looked out to sea, I saw the whole dreadful array of the

storm standing to leeward like ships that had passed in the night, and

as though baulked in pursuit the roll of the thunder came across the

sky sullenly, though with a note of defeat.

The nights were often cold and wet, and it became necessary for me to

make my couch under bridges or in caves or holes of the earth. On the

skirts of the tobacco plantations and in the swampy malarial region

where the ground never gets dry I slept beside bonfires. I learned of

the natives to safeguard against fever by placing withered leaves on

bark or wilted bracken leaves between myself and the ground. At a

little settlement called Olginka I slept on an accumulation of logs

outside the village church. On this occasion I wrapped myself up in

all the clothes I possessed, and so saved myself from the damp. Next

morning, however, my blanket was so wet with dew that I could wring

it, though I had felt warm all night. I had always to guard against

the possibility of rain, and I generally made my couch in pleasant

proximity to some place of shelter--a bridge, a cave, or a house; and

more than once I had to abandon my grass bed in the very depth of the

night, and take up the alternative one in shelter.

V

A tremendous thunderstorm took place about a fortnight after I left

home. I had built a stick fire and was making tea for myself at the

end of a long cloudless summer day, and taking no care, when suddenly

I looked up to the sky and saw the evening turning swiftly to night

before my eyes. The sun was not due to set, but the western horizon

seemed as it were to have risen and gone forth to meet it. A great

black bank of cloud had come up out of the west and hidden away the

sun before his time.

I hastened to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for

it was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of an

hour it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were the

brightly lit lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street

lights, the fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by

hedgehogs.

I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep,

watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but

I had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of

lightning. Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had

overtaken the sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky.

A storm? Would it reach me? My wishes prompted comforting answers and

I lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance. I did not

feel inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously. I marked out

a bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow crept

past certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I would

take it as a sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house.

But the clouds came on and on. Slowly but surely the great army

advanced and the lightnings became more frequent. My sky-line was

passed. I rose sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, and

took the road once again.

The lightning rushed past on the road and, blazing over the forests,

lit up the wide night all around. Overhead the sky was cut across: in

the east was a perfectly clear sky except at the horizon where the

moon seemed to have left behind fiery vapours; in the west and

overhead lay the dense black mass of the storm cloud. The clouds came

forward in regular array like an army. Nothing could hold them back;

they came on--appallingly. And the moon looked at the steady advance

and her light gleamed upon the front ranks as if she were lighting

them with many lanterns.

I had lain down to sleep quite sober-hearted, but now as the

lightnings played around I began to feel as excited as if I were in

a theatre--my blood burned. I had tired feet, but I forgot them. I

walked swiftly. I felt ready to run, to dance. Very strangely there

was at the same time a presentiment that I might be struck by

lightning. But all Nature was madly excited with me and also shared my

presentiment of destruction. We lived together like the victim and the

accomplices in a Dionysian sacrifice and orgy.

And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind and

the clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried along

the deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a church,

a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench.

Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towards

it. I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through the

tall waving grain, the lightning playing like firelight among the

sheath-like leaves. I crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approached

the light on the hill, by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This led

right up to the doors of a farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing out

at me, but I clumped them off with my stick, and having much doubt in

my mind as to the sort of reception I should get, I knocked at the

windows and doors. I expected to be met by a man with a gun, for the

dogs had made such a rumpus that any one might have been alarmed.

The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant.

"May I spend the night here?" I asked.

The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me.

"Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside," he replied.

"I thought of sleeping in the open air," I added, "but the storm

coming up I saw I should be drenched."

"Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said the

peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your

brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You

shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up

with the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all

soft, you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you

and you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked

you came to me."

He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sons

slept on the maize; it was covered, and so, sheltered from the rain.

I could sleep in the house if I liked, but it was more comfortable on

the straw. His three sons slept there, but as it was a festival they

had not come home yet.

I agreed to the straw. My host led me to a sort of large open barn, a

barn without walls, a seven-feet depth of hay and straw surmounted by

a high roof on poles.

"If you feel cold, or if the rain comes in, just burrow down under the

straw," said the peasant. "Very glad I am that you have come to me,

that you have done me the honour. Much better to ask hospitality than

to sleep out."

I quite agreed it was much better to sleep with man on such a night.

The lightnings were now all about--never leaving a second's pure

darkness. The thunder grew more powerful and rolled forward from three

sides.

My host stood by me after I had lain down, a whole hour. He was most

hilarious, having partaken plentifully of festival fare. He warned me

repeatedly against sleeping on the ground, and advised me to find bark

or withered branches to lie upon if I would not seek shelter with man.

The increasing storm did not seem to impress him in the slightest. He

was all agog to tell me his family history and to compare the state of

agriculture in England with that in Russia. Only when his sons came

home and the heavy rain spots had begun to shower down upon him did he

finally shake my hand, wish me well, cross himself, and stump off back

to the house.

Three tall young men scrambled over me into the straw and buried

themselves: two laughed and talked, the other was silent and

frightened. There was no sleep. The thunder grew louder and louder,

and the lightning rushed over our faces like the sudden glare of a

searchlight. All four of us put our faces to the straw to shut out

the light, and we tried to sleep. But we knew that the tempest at its

worst had yet to break. Suddenly came a sharp premonitory crash just

above us, near, astonishing. One of the young men, who had just dozed

off, woke up and scratched his head, saying--

"The little bear has got into the maize. Eh, brothers, this is going

to be a big piece of work."

Then a great wind broke out of the sky and tore through the forests

like armies of wild beasts. The trees within our view bent down as

if they would break in two; the moon above them was overswept by the

cloud. When the moon's light had gone the night became darker and the

lightning brighter. The framework of our shelter rocked to and fro in

the gale and we felt as if upon the sea; the straw and the hay jumped

up as if alive, and great lumps of thatch were rent out of the roof,

showing the sky and letting in the rain. I looked for the ruin of our

shelter.

But the hurricane passed on. The rain came in its place. The great

forty-day flood re-accomplished itself in an hour. We heard the beat

of the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rain

on the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almost

continuously the close-packed, drenching rain.... The wet came in.

We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort of

animal.