The air seemed filled with their flying leaves, any one of which, stem-on could brain a man.

Then came the rain, a deluge, a straight, horizontal sheet that poured along like a river, defying gravitation.

The black, with Sheldon mounted on him, plunged ahead into the thick of it, stooping far forward and low to the ground to avoid being toppled over backward.
"'He's sleeping out and far to-night,'" Sheldon quoted, as he thought of the dead man in the sand and the rainwater trickling down upon the cold clay.
So they fought their way back up the beach.

The other blacks caught hold of the man-horse and pulled and tugged.

There were among them those whose fondest desire was to drag the rider in the sand and spring upon him and mash him into repulsive nothingness.