Meanwhile the air was one vast volume of awful sound, and thick with the clouds of dust, and tufts of grass, and leaves, and hurtling branches which were being whirled furiously along upon the wings of the tornado, so that the inmates of the pilot-house could neither hear each other speak nor see any object beyond a quarter of a mile away on either side. This lasted for perhaps three minutes, when the wind suddenly lulled, and the ship at once began to forge rapidly ahead. The lull lasted perhaps half a minute, and then ensued a repetition of all that had gone before, excepting that perhaps the wind was not _quite_ so strong as at the first outburst. But it was of longer duration, the second instalment of the gale lasting fully half an hour, after which the wind gradually dropped to a gentle breeze, the sky cleared, the sun reappeared in all his wonted splendour, and the air resumed its usual transparency. But what a sight was now presented to the view of the travellers; what a scene of devastation was that which lay outspread around them! The long grass was pressed so flat to the ground that it would scarcely have afforded cover to the smallest animal; stately trees were lying prostrate, either uprooted altogether, or their massive trunks snapped short off, whilst others still retained their upright position indeed, but stood denuded of every branch. Other trees again, whilst less mutilated as to their branches, retained only a few straggling leaves here and there, and the same thing applied to those dense patches of creeper-like tangled growth known as "bush," the upper portions of which presented merely a bristling array of leafless twigs. And in some spots could be seen huge clumps of "bush" which had been torn bodily out of the ground and swept remorselessly along for perhaps miles of distance.