And the darts of lightning hissed and crossed like a blue and red web over me.

So I laid hold of a little bent of weed, and twisted it round my dabbled wrist, and tried to pray to the Virgin, although I had often been told it was vanity.
Then suddenly wiping my eyes, I beheld a thing which entirely changed me.

A vast, broad wall of brown water, nearly as high as the mill itself, rushed down with a crest of foam from the mountains.

It seemed to fill up all the valley and to swallow up all the trees; a whole host of animals fled before it, and birds, like a volley of bullets, flew by.
I lost not a moment in running away, and climbing a rock and hiding.
It was base, ungrateful, and a nasty thing to do; but I did it almost without thinking.

And if I had staid to cry out, what good could I have done--only to be swept away?
Now, as far as I can remember any thing out of so much horror, I must have peeped over the summit of my rock when the head of the deluge struck the mill.