Conseltine looked round, and made no reply. At that moment a strange sound, like the faint shock of an earthquake, came from the distant hills. Both men instinctively glanced thither, and saw, stretching from the black mass or pile of cloud behind the hill-tops, a silhouette of solid black, in the form of an enormous waterspout, its apex in the clouds, its base hidden somewhere in the unseen ocean. Even as they gazed it burst, and for a moment it seemed as if night had come, the whole skies being wrapt in blackness, and the rain falling in a deluge, lashing the ground. ‘Powers of heaven!’ cried Feagus, clinging to the lintel of the open door, and feeling, almost for the first time in his life, a ghastly sense of fear. Before he could realize his own dread, Conseltine stood by him, panting for breath. ‘Look yonder!’ Conseltine gasped, gripping his companion by the arm, and pointing up the mountains. Light now broke from the clouds--gloomy light with livid rays; and it fell full on a great green stretch of bogland covering the mountain side. The mountain itself seemed rocking as if with earthquake, and simultaneously the bog itself, like thick and slimy lava, seemed to be moving downward! ‘Holy saints defend us!’ cried Feagus. As he spoke, the sound of human cries came from the distance, and figures were seen wildly moving to and fro. A white cottage of stone rocked, crumbled like sugar in water, and disappeared from sight, washed over by the moving earth. Tempest on sea and earthquake are dreadful enough, but there is no phenomenon more portentous than that of the moving bog, when the very earth seems to become liquid lava, shifting and changing, obliterating landmarks, and swallowing up whatever stands in the way of its fatal course. Such was the phenomenon the two men were now contemplating--a whole hillside shifting from its place and moving downward like a great slow, ever-broadening stream, engulfing rocks, trees, and human dwellings, bearing fragments of these in its course, urging stones and rocks along like a river in full flood, now halting and pausing to destroy obstacles, again rolling relentlessly on. In the present case, it was fed with the rain of a thousand torrents, which gushed along with it and hastened it along. Louder and shriller cries soon broke upon the air, and groups of men, women, and children were seen flying down the valley, some driving before them cattle as terror-stricken as themselves, many bearing blankets, bedding, and domestic utensils, all moaning and shrieking in fear. Very slowly, but surely and terribly, the bog crept behind them, devouring and destroying, yet now and then, as if in caprice, leaving some dwelling or clump of trees untouched, like an island in a slimy, moving pool.