"Up from his nostrils came a smoke, And from his mouth there came Devouring fire; and coals by it Were turned into flame. "The Lord God also in the heavens Did thunder in his _ire_, And there the Highest gave his voice-- Hail-stones and coals of fire." Such was the subject of my meditation, as the muttering and seemingly subterraneous thunder boomed and quavered behind me. At last, one broad and whizzing flash passed over, around, beneath, and I could almost imagine, _through_ me. The clap followed instantly, and, by its deafening knell, drove me head foremost into the heathy moss. Had the earth now opened (as to Curtius of old) before me, I should certainly have dashed into the crater, in order to escape from that explosive omnipotence which seemed to overtake me. Peal after peal pitched, with a rending and tearing sound, upon the drum of my ear and the parapet of my brain; whilst the mist and the darkness were kindled up around me into an open glow. I could hear a strange rush upon the mountain, and along the glen, as if the Solway had overleaped all bounds, and was careering some thousand feet abreast over Criffel and Queenberry. Down it came at last, in a swirl and a roar, as if rocks and cairns and heath were commingled in its sweep. This terrible blast was only the immediate precursor of a hail-storm, which, descending at first in separate and distinct pieces, as if the powers of darkness and uproar had been pitching marbles, came on at last with a rush, as if Satan himself had been dumriddling the elements. The water in the moss-hag rose up, and boiled and sputtered in the face of heaven, and a rock, underneath the hollow corner of which I had now crept on hands and knees, rattled all over, as if assailed by musketry. I lay now altogether invisible to mortal eye, amidst the mighty movements of the elements--a thing of nought, endeavouring to crawl into nonentity--a tiny percipient amidst the blind urgency of nature. I lay in all the prostration of a bruised and subdued spirit, praying fervently and loudly unto God that He might be pleased to cover me with his hand till his wrath was overpast. And, to my persuasion at the time, my prayers were not altogether insufficient: the storm softened, rain succeeded hail, a pause followed the hurricane, and the thunder's voice had already travelled away over the brow of the onward mountain.