I am not ashamed to acknowledge that a storm of this description always moves me; and although the rest of the party carried on in the inner hall at a game at whist, while Roderick and I were having a hit at backgammon in a corner, none of them appearing to care much about it; yet one explosion was so loud, go simultaneous with the blue blinding flash, and the reverberations immediately afterwards _thundered_--I can find no stronger word--so tremendously overhead, making the whole house shake, and the glasses ring on the sideboard, that both parties suddenly, and with one accord, stopped and started to their feet, in the middle of their amusement. Where I stood, I had a full view into the long vista of the natural wood already mentioned, festooned from tree to tree with a fantastic network of withes, which, between us and the lightning, looked like an enormous spider's web. Another bright flash again lit up the recesses of the forest, showing distinctly, although but for a moment, a long string of mules, loaded with coffee bags, with a dark figure mounted on every third animal, and blasting every object, the masses of green foliage on the trees especially, into a smoky and sulphurous blue. Before the rumbling of this thunder-clap had passed over our heads, the noise of the rain on the hollow wooden roof increased to a deafening roar, like the sound of a water-fall, or as if every drop had been a musket-bullet. "Tat's hail!" said Rory, in great amazement at such an unusual occurrence. "Small doubt of that," quoth Flamingo. Here one of the negro servants came running in. "Massa--massa--sugar-plum fall from de moon--sugar-plum fall from de moon--see, see," and opening his palms, where he had caught the hail, and thought he had it safe, and finding only drops of water, he drew back as if he had seen a spirit--"Gone! gone! and _burn_ my hand too; Obeah--most be Obeah!" and before another word could be said, it lightned again so vividly, even through the sparkling mist of hail, that I involuntarily put my hands to my eyes, and lay back in my chair, overcome with breathless awe. Unlike any lightning I had ever seen before, it was as if a dart of fire had struck the large tree next us right in the cleft, and then glanced like a ray of the most intense light shot down into the centre of the back yard, where it zigzagged along, and tore up the solid ground, that appeared covered with white smoke from the bounding and hopping of the rattling hailstones. I can compare the sharpness of the report that accompanied it to nothing more fittingly than that of a long eighteen-pounder fired close to the ear. Involuntarily I repeated to myself that magnificent passage of sacred writ--"And the Lord sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; so there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous."