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drenching rain poured down and the rising hurricane drove it in sheets
along the ground. The boys cried out to each other, but the roaring
wind and the booming thunder-blasts drowned their voices utterly.
However, one by one they straggled in at last and took shelter under
the tent, cold, scared, and streaming with water; but to have company
in misery seemed something to be grateful for. They could not talk, the
old sail flapped so furiously, even if the other noises would have
allowed them. The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the
sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast.
The boys seized each others' hands and fled, with many tumblings and
bruises, to the shelter of a great oak that stood upon the river-bank.
Now the battle was at its highest. Under the ceaseless conflagration of
lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in
clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy
river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim
outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the
drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while
some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger
growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting
explosive bursts, keen and sharp, and unspeakably appalling. The storm
culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island
to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and
deafen every creature in it, all at one and the same moment. It was a
wild night for homeless young heads to be out in.
But at last the battle was done, and the forces retired with weaker
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