followed, so that I was almost blinded and deafened, for I had never seen or heard such terrible thunder or lightning; and then, at the recommendation of Nicky, who said that the storm would probably clear up with a squall, which we were ill prepared to face in the open lagoon, we paddled into a little opening in the amphibious forest, and made the canoe fast amid the trees. Here we abode for more than half-an-hour, the thunder and lightning continuing to be fearful; and the effect of each flash, gleaming down through the thick leaves and branches of the network of boughs above us, and lighting up with a grim glare the unwholesome marsh, with its slimy stake-like boles of trees, its long twisting withes, and its black oily pools and channels,—the effect of all this was, I say, very fearfully grand. But at length the rain began to fall; the gloom deepened, so that under the mangroves it was as murk as midnight; but gazing from beneath them to the opposite side of the lagoon, we saw dimly a sort of moving and rending of the vapoury clouds, and then a sudden and perpendicular descent upon the hills of what appeared to be countless streaks of mist or vapour, binding, as it were, the green earth by webs of watery thread to the firmament. This, Nicky said, was the rain, and truly we found it so; for the misty appearance spread fast and far, and we heard a mighty rustling sound, which became louder and louder, until the windows of heaven above us were opened, and down, not in mere drops, as it appeared to me, but in opaque sheets and masses of falling water, tumbled that blinding rain, lashing the sea as though it were smitten by rods into churning foam, and beating with a continuous assault our leafy canopy, until it poured through the drenched branches in tiny waterfalls. Meanwhile we cowered in the canoe dripping from every limb, and watching the weather over the lagoon. Before long, there was a sudden rift or opening torn through the veiling fog, and the perpendicular lines of the rain became slanting, or were broken and dispersed. At the same moment, we saw distant ridges which were hid and lost before in the vapour, now standing out clearly and rigidly in the thinning air, and Nicky whispered to me to note how the feathery palms were bending and shaking, as though great airy hands were seeking to drag them up by the roots. It was the clearing squall, and a few moments only passed away ere heavy dank puffs sighed through the mangroves with a wet, warm, unwholesome savour, as the steams of a caldron where masses of putrid vegetation were simmering, and then, driving before it a broad belt of tumbling foam, and whistling and hurtling through the air with a sound as of rushing wings and blowing trumpets, the blast came down from the far-off mountains and fell upon the sea. I have often seen more violent squalls since, I have also been afloat and ashore during a hurricane or tornado, but this was the first West Indian