AN INTERLUDE--A DUST STORM IN SUMMER
The day had been intolerably hot. A copper haze hung over the
landscape, weighing upon it with the solemnity of a funeral pall. All
life was weary. The leaves of the blue gum tree drooped in a manner
unusual for them. The flowers hung their heads upon their stalks as if
the oppression of the atmosphere was insupportable, and the day for
the shattering of the fragile floral vase had arrived. Men returned
home from their labour, and after the evening meal refused to stir out
either to concert, lecture, theatre, or entertainment of any kind.
It was a north wind day of a peculiarly unpleasant type, followed
by a still more unpleasant evening. Then came a lull. A deathly
silence reigned over the city and suburbs. A curious veil of murky
cloud overspread the face of the sky. In the bedroom the thermometer
registered over 90 degrees. We glanced at the glass and thanked God
that our beds were outside in the open air. But even there the heat was
oppressive. The little lad, always so careful to cover up his body, had
flung off all the coverings from his bed, and lay exposed to the air of
the night. It was a night when to woo the goddess of sleep was next to
impossible. The hours passed by--eleven, twelve, one. Still no sleep.
Still that terrible oppression. Still that suffocating heat.
And then, in a moment of time, without the least warning or premonitory
sign, there came a change such as Englishmen never experience in their
own country. It was a sudden roar, a descending blast, a tempest
unchained. The storm literally burst upon us. It was an explosion,
instantaneous and complete. The great trees around us were suddenly
seized by the mysterious and invisible power of the storm, and bent
and rocked and shaken and twisted in a manner terrifying to behold.
The wind travelled, so we learned the next day, at the mad speed of
sixty-five miles an hour.
The entire neighbourhood appeared to be seized in the grip of a storm
fiend which wreaked its vengeance upon everything that lay in its path.
Balconies upon which men slept were shaken as if some malign power
determined to wreck them. Out into that storm I stepped, clad only in
pyjamas. The terror of it fascinated me, held me spellbound, compelled
me to share it. It was a _tourmente_ of the Alps repeated in the
streets of a Southern city, but with clouds of dust in place of clouds
of snow. The cold air from the South encountering the hot air of the
languishing city created an aerial funnel which sucked up the _débris_
of the streets into its enormous mouth. That dust! Can I ever forget
it? It blotted out from my vision the brilliant light of the electric
lamps. It obscured the houses across the wide streets. It blackened
the country beyond, and made the dark night a scene of terror. Steadily
the temperature dropped until within half an hour the glass registered
twenty-five degrees less than it did at midnight. Then the heavens
began to blaze and the thunder to roar. From a dozen points at once the
lightning broke forth. Crash after crash of thunder shook the house.
And still the choking dust mounted high into the air. Would the rain
never descend and give us once more a clear atmosphere? One short,
sharp, tropical storm of rain, one welcome deluge, and this dust fiend
would be laid for the time. The inky clouds could not promise so much
benediction and after all mock us!
The lightning ceased as suddenly as it commenced. The last peal of
thunder sounded, and still no drop of rain fell. Meanwhile the storm of
wind and dust recommenced, this time with increased fury. It drove all
outdoor sleepers within doors. Beds were hastily dragged from balconies
into bedrooms. Lights were seen in nearly every room within the line
of vision. The cries of startled children mingled with the furious
screaming of the wind. It was a night of horror and of fear. For three
hours the tempest raged, and then, in a moment of time, it ceased with
dramatic suddenness. The dust gradually fell again to the ground from
which it had been drawn. The face of the sky cleared, and the stars
shone out. The atmosphere became chilly, and discarded blankets were
once more drawn over shivering persons, half asleep and half awake. The
_tourmente_ had spent itself.
From out of a brazen sky the sun shone down next morning upon a scene
of wreckage. Trees were uprooted, fences torn down, shrubs destroyed,
flowers broken from their stalks and left dead upon the ground. Gardens
looked as if some demon had wrought his evil will upon them during the
night. Poor broken lilies, prostrate roses, crushed herbs, wounded
by that cruel storm! The house within was enveloped in a mantle of
fine dust. Nothing had escaped. It was but yesterday that the entire
establishment was clean and attractive; this morning it is a scene of
desolation, a place over which a woman can only shed tears. The rain
had not descended: we must set to work and clean up the house and hope
for the merciful showers from heaven to come and wash the face of that
Nature which the storm has so begrimed.
A storm so bad as this may not occur again for weeks or months. Once in
a lifetime is sufficient. It represents the unpleasant side of Nature
in a sub-tropical country. Seasoned Colonials, while they dislike these
terrible outbursts of Nature in the South, console themselves that
these dust storms are nothing in comparison with the dust storms of the
north. “You should go to Broken Hill to know what dust can do,” said
one of them; “a dust storm there is terrible.” But that of this awful
night is quite bad enough for me.