Slowly it advanced in its awe-inspiring might as flash after flash, each more fantastic and horrible than the last, smote upon the floor of ironstone.

It played about the shapes of the doctors, who in the midst of it looked like devils in an inferno.

It crept onwards towards the station of the cross, but--_it never reached the cross_.
One flash struck indeed within fifty paces of where Owen stood.

Then of a sudden a marvel happened, or something which to this day the People of Fire talk of as a marvel, for in an instant the rain began to pour like a wall of water stretching from earth to heaven, and the wind changed.
It had been blowing from the west, now it blew from the east with the force of a gale.
It blew and rolled the tempest back upon itself, causing it to return to the regions whence it had gathered.

At the very foot of the cross its march was stayed; there was the water-line, as straight as if it had been drawn with a rule.