Read "The Hillyars and the Burtons" by Henry Kingsley online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
ON the sixth day after the departure of the steamer, the dull, close, brooding weather came to an end. Arkwright was wrong. It was the dread pause before the hurricane.
At eleven o'clock in the morning we were standing together at the fence at the lower end of my garden, looking across the bay, when our attention was attracted to a vivid green cloud approaching with horrible rapidity from over the sea; and at the same time became aware of a dull roar which grew upon the ear each moment. Before we had at all appreciated the dreadful disaster which had fallen upon the unfortunate town, I saw the first house struck by the wind fall crashing over after half a minute's resistance, and an utter ruin, the shingles and weather-boards, which had composed it, flying before the blast like chips of cardboard. Instantly, or it seemed to us instantly, we were thrown headlong down, bruised and terrified; and the wind seizing the earth, raised an atmosphere of flying stones and sand to a height of some six feet from the ground, which followed its course, as it seemed to us, with the rapidity of a projectile, and lacerated our hands and faces until the blood ran from them.