the same conviction. Electric currents seemed to snap from one
consciousness to another. We dropped our books, and turned our eyes
toward the western windows, to look upon a changed world. It was as if we
peered through yellow glass. In the sky soft-looking, tawny clouds came
tumbling along like playful cats—or tigers. A moment later we saw that they
were not playful, but angry; they stretched out claws, and snarled as they
did so. One claw reached the tall chimneys of the schoolhouse, another
tapped at the cupola, one was thrust through the wall near where I sat.
Then it grew black, and there was a bellowing all about us, so that the
commands of the teacher and the screams of the children barely could be
heard. I knew little or nothing. My shoulder was stinging, something had hit
me on the side of the head, my eyes were full of dust and mortar, and my
feet were carrying me with the others along the corridor, down the two
flights of wide stairs. I do not think we pushed each other or were reckless.
My recollection is only of many shadowy figures flying on with sure feet out
of the building that seemed to be falling in upon us.
Presently we were out on the landing before the door, with one more flight of
steps before us, that reached to the street. Something so strong that it might
not be denied gathered me up in invisible arms, whirled me round once or
twice and dropped me, not ungently, in the middle of the road. And then, as
I struggled to my knees and, wiping the dust from my eyes, looked up, I saw
dozens of others being lifted in the same way, and blown off into the yard or
the street. The larger ones were trying to hold on to the smaller, and the
teachers were endeavouring to keep the children from going out of the
building, but their efforts were of no avail. The children came on, and were
blown about like leaves.
Then I saw what looked like a high yellow wall advancing upon me—a
roaring and fearsome mass of driven dust, sticks, debris. It came over me
that my own home might be there, in strips and fragments, to beat me down
and kill me; and with the thought came a swift little vision out of my
geography of the Arabs in a sand-storm on the desert. I gathered up my
fluttering dress skirt, held it tight about my head, and lay flat upon the
ground.
It seemed as if a long time passed, a time in which I knew very little except
that I was fighting for my breath as I never had fought for anything. There
were more hurts and bruises now, but they did not matter. Just to draw my own breath in my own way seemed to be the only thing in the world that
was of any account. And then there was a shaft of flame, an earsplitting
roar, and the rain was upon us in sheets, in streams, in visible rivers.
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