As I began my flight once more I was conscious that my limbs were stiff, but in a few moments, as movement began to warm me, the stiffness disappeared. On a trackless moor it is ever a hard thing for a man unacquainted with the country-side to make much speed, and I had to go warily lest I should stumble, as once before, into some treacherous bog. The wind had risen and was bringing with it an army of clouds that swept, a dark host, across the sky. Suddenly the darkness was rent by a flashing blade of light which shook like a sword of molten metal held by some giant in the skies, and then, as though a thousand iron doors were flung against their doorposts, the heavens crashed round me. The wild peal of thunder rolled through the night air. Caught by every trembling hill-top, it reverberated and reverberated again till it pulsed into silence. My ears ached. The lightning and the thunder had brought me to a standstill, when again the sky was torn by a blaze of fire. Hard on its heels came another thunderclap and with it a deluge of rain. Every drop was a missile, stinging my face like a whip-lash. Startled, I made haste to seek cover from the storm, but I had left the hills behind me and there was no friendly boulder near at hand. I turned to look to the hill-side, when, again, a shaft of lightning like a mighty javelin hurtled earthward from the sky. The whole hill-side was lit up by its blaze, and I saw its point strike a great rock of granite that stood on the slope and cleave it in twain. The darkness closed like a door and ere the following peal hammered upon my ears I heard the crash of the shattered boulder as headlong it roared down the hillside. The air was heavy with the smell of sulphur; the earth was sodden beneath my feet. My clothes hung heavily upon me and at every step the water oozed from my shoes. Remembering a trick of the moor men I dropped on my knees and tore up a piece of turf and scooped away some of the underlying earth with my hands. Quickly the water oozed into the bowl from the ground round about it, and when I had given it a moment to settle, I bent and drank deeply. Then I rose and hurried on and, in the hope of discovering some shelter ere long, I broke into a run. It was a foolish thing to do, for save when a lightning flash lit up the ground I could not see more than a yard or two ahead. Suddenly, as though a red-hot knife had struck me, I felt a stab of pain in my right ankle, and I fell upon my face. The fall winded me, and as I lay while the pitiless rain beat upon me, I tried to realise what had happened. I had trodden upon a stone which had betrayed my foot; my foot had slipped on its edge, and I knew from the pain that I had done myself an injury.