"Good, my father, good!" said the induna, presently. "It shall be done
to-night, if the lightning does not do it first."

"A bad look-out for old Indaba-zimbi," I said to myself. "They mean to
kill him." Then I thought no more of the matter for a while, the scene
before me was too tremendous.

The two storms were rapidly rushing together. Between them was a gulf of
blue sky, and from time to time flashes of blinding light passed across
this gulf, leaping from cloud to cloud. I remember that they reminded
me of the story of the heathen god Jove and his thunderbolts. The storm
that was shaped like a giant and ringed with the glory of the sinking
sun made an excellent Jove, and I am sure that the bolts which leapt
from it could not have been surpassed even in mythological times.
Oddly enough, as yet the flashes were not followed by thunder. A deadly
stillness lay upon the place, the cattle stood silently on the hillside,
even the natives were awed to silence. Dark shadows crept along the
bosom of the hills, the river to the right and left was hidden in
wreaths of cloud, but before us and beyond the combatants it shone
like a line of silver beneath the narrowing space of open sky. Now the
western tempest was scrawled all over with lines of intolerable light,
while the inky head of the cloud-giant to the east was continually
suffused with a white and deadly glow that came and went in pulses, as
though a blood of flame was being pumped into it from the heart of the
storm.

The silence deepened and deepened, the shadows grew blacker and blacker,
then suddenly all nature began to moan beneath the breath of an icy
wind. On sped the wind; the smooth surface of the river was ruffled by
it into little waves, the tall grass bowed low before it, and in its