When the vivid gleams lit up the air, enormous trees could be seen bending under the fierceness of the blast, and great white sheets of water burst out of the clouds, as if intent on deluging the world. Every element in nature united in terrific warfare, and the security of earth seemed denied to me while I clung to its flooded bosom, and, blinded by lightning and shocked by the incessant roaring of the thunder and the wild ravaging of the ungovernable wind, felt myself but a tossed atom in the great confusion, and could only cling to God’s remembering pity in silent prayer. Huge trees were bent to the earth and broken; others, snapped off like twigs, were carried through the frenzied air. Some forest monarchs were left bare of leaves or boughs, like desolate old age stripped of its honors. The rain had already swelled the little creek into a mighty stream, that rolled its dark, angry waters with fury, and added its sullen roar to the howlings of the storm. I screamed, but my voice was lost even to myself in the mightier ones of the furious elements. Three hours—three long, never-to-be-forgotten hours—did the storm rage thus in fury, and in those hours I thought I lived a life-time! Then, to my joy, it began to abate, and soon I beheld the twinkling stars through rents in the driving clouds, while the flashing lightning and the roaring thunders gradually becoming less and less distinct to the eye and ear, told me the devastating storm was speeding on toward the east; and when, at dawn of day, the waters were assuaged, the thunder died away, and the lightnings were chained in their cell, the scene was one of indescribable desolation. The wind had gone home; daylight had cowed him from a raging giant into a meek prisoner, and led him moaning to his cavern in the eastern hills. A strangely-solemn calm seemed to take the place of the wild conflict; but the track of destruction was there, and the swollen water and felled trees, the scattered boughs and uprooted saplings, told the story of the havoc of the storm. It was a night of horror to pass through, and I thankfully greeted the returning day, that once more gave me the comfort of light, now almost my only solace, for my position grew more bitter, as the chief’s savage-like exultation in my capture and safe abduction increased as we neared the village where their families were, and where I feared my fate would be decided by bloodshed or the fearful stake.