He felt the wind it made strike cold upon his cheek, and then there was a deafening crash, and a cloud of fine black dust rose up.

It whirled and eddied about him like the smoke of a great gun, and the powder that settled thick upon him clogged his eyelashes and filled his nostrils.

The horse plunged viciously and came near dragging him off his feet.
After that there was for a few seconds a silence that seemed oppressive by contrast, until it was suddenly broken by another startling crash.

It was repeated here and there, as though when each tree fell the concussion brought down another, and the brulee was filled with shocks of sound that rang in tremendous reverberations along the steep rocks.

In the meanwhile the men stood fast with tense, blackened faces peering at the eddying dust out of half-blinded eyes, until the crashes grew less frequent and there was deep silence again.
Then Weston, who patted the trembling horse, sat down and pointed to the great, shapeless pile of half-burned wood and charcoal close in front of him.
"A near thing.