thousand tongues of fire. Nothing stirred, not even an insect; every
creature that drew breath had hidden itself away until the coming terror
was overpast.

The atmosphere was full of electricity struggling to be free. Although she
knew not what it was, Rachel felt it in her blood and brain. In some
strange way it affected her mind, opening windows there through which the
eyes of her soul looked out. She became aware of some new influence
drawing near to her life; of a sudden her budding womanhood burst into
flower in her breast, shone on by an unseen sun; she was no more a child.
Her being quickened and acknowledged the kinship of all things that are.
That brooding, flame-threaded sky--she was a part of it, the earth she
trod, it was a part of her; the Mind that caused the stars to roll and her
to live, dwelt in her bosom, and like a babe she nestled within the arm of
its almighty will.

Now, as in a dream, Rachel descended the steep, rock-strewn banks of the
dry branch of the river-bed, wending her way between the boulders and
noting that rotten weeds and peeled brushwood rested against the stems of
the mimosa thorns which grew--there, tokens which told her that here in
times of flood the water flowed. Well, there was little enough of it now,
only a pool or two to form a mirror for the lightning. In front of her lay
the island where grew the Cape gooseberries, or winter cherries as they
are sometimes called, which she came to seek. It was a low piece of
ground, a quarter of a mile long, perhaps, but in the centre of it were
some great rocks and growing among the rocks, trees, one of them higher
than the rest. Beyond it ran the true river, even now at the end of the
dry season three or four hundred yards in breadth, though so shallow that
it could be forded by an ox-drawn waggon.