But perhaps its most awful circumstance was the preternatural silence.

The distant boom and muttering of thunder had died away, and now the great storm swept on in voiceless majesty, like the passage of a ghostly host, from which there arose no sound of feet or of rolling wheels.

Only before it sped the swift angels of the wind, and behind it swung the curtain of the rain.
Even as Muller spoke a gust of icy air caught the cart and tilted it, and the lightning needles began to ply more dreadfully than ever.

The tempest was breaking upon them.
"Come, drive on, drive on!" he shouted, "you will be killed here; the lightning always strikes along the water;" and as he said it he struck one of the wheelers sharply with his whip.
"Climb over the back of the seat, Mouti, and stand by to help me with the reins!" called out John to the Zulu, who obeyed, scrambling between him and Jess.
"Now, Jess, hold on and say your prayers, for it strikes me that we shall have need of them.

So, horses, so!" The horses backed and plunged, but Muller on the one side and the smooth-faced Boer on the other lashed them without mercy, and at last they went into the river with a rush.