CHAPTER XXII

AN INTERLUDE--A DUST STORM IN SUMMER

The day had been intolerably hot. A copper haze hung over the landscape, weighing upon it with the solemnity of a funeral pall. All life was weary. The leaves of the blue gum tree drooped in a manner unusual for them. The flowers hung their heads upon their stalks as if the oppression of the atmosphere was insupportable, and the day for the shattering of the fragile floral vase had arrived. Men returned home from their labour, and after the evening meal refused to stir out either to concert, lecture, theatre, or entertainment of any kind. It was a north wind day of a peculiarly unpleasant type, followed by a still more unpleasant evening. Then came a lull. A deathly silence reigned over the city and suburbs. A curious veil of murky cloud overspread the face of the sky. In the bedroom the thermometer registered over 90 degrees. We glanced at the glass and thanked God that our beds were outside in the open air. But even there the heat was oppressive. The little lad, always so careful to cover up his body, had flung off all the coverings from his bed, and lay exposed to the air of the night. It was a night when to woo the goddess of sleep was next to impossible. The hours passed by--eleven, twelve, one. Still no sleep. Still that terrible oppression. Still that suffocating heat.

And then, in a moment of time, without the least warning or premonitory sign, there came a change such as Englishmen never experience in their own country. It was a sudden roar, a descending blast, a tempest unchained. The storm literally burst upon us. It was an explosion, instantaneous and complete. The great trees around us were suddenly seized by the mysterious and invisible power of the storm, and bent and rocked and shaken and twisted in a manner terrifying to behold. The wind travelled, so we learned the next day, at the mad speed of sixty-five miles an hour.

The entire neighbourhood appeared to be seized in the grip of a storm fiend which wreaked its vengeance upon everything that lay in its path. Balconies upon which men slept were shaken as if some malign power determined to wreck them. Out into that storm I stepped, clad only in pyjamas. The terror of it fascinated me, held me spellbound, compelled me to share it. It was a _tourmente_ of the Alps repeated in the streets of a Southern city, but with clouds of dust in place of clouds of snow. The cold air from the South encountering the hot air of the languishing city created an aerial funnel which sucked up the _débris_ of the streets into its enormous mouth. That dust! Can I ever forget it? It blotted out from my vision the brilliant light of the electric lamps. It obscured the houses across the wide streets. It blackened the country beyond, and made the dark night a scene of terror. Steadily the temperature dropped until within half an hour the glass registered twenty-five degrees less than it did at midnight. Then the heavens began to blaze and the thunder to roar. From a dozen points at once the lightning broke forth. Crash after crash of thunder shook the house. And still the choking dust mounted high into the air. Would the rain never descend and give us once more a clear atmosphere? One short, sharp, tropical storm of rain, one welcome deluge, and this dust fiend would be laid for the time. The inky clouds could not promise so much benediction and after all mock us!

The lightning ceased as suddenly as it commenced. The last peal of thunder sounded, and still no drop of rain fell. Meanwhile the storm of wind and dust recommenced, this time with increased fury. It drove all outdoor sleepers within doors. Beds were hastily dragged from balconies into bedrooms. Lights were seen in nearly every room within the line of vision. The cries of startled children mingled with the furious screaming of the wind. It was a night of horror and of fear. For three hours the tempest raged, and then, in a moment of time, it ceased with dramatic suddenness. The dust gradually fell again to the ground from which it had been drawn. The face of the sky cleared, and the stars shone out. The atmosphere became chilly, and discarded blankets were once more drawn over shivering persons, half asleep and half awake. The _tourmente_ had spent itself.

From out of a brazen sky the sun shone down next morning upon a scene of wreckage. Trees were uprooted, fences torn down, shrubs destroyed, flowers broken from their stalks and left dead upon the ground. Gardens looked as if some demon had wrought his evil will upon them during the night. Poor broken lilies, prostrate roses, crushed herbs, wounded by that cruel storm! The house within was enveloped in a mantle of fine dust. Nothing had escaped. It was but yesterday that the entire establishment was clean and attractive; this morning it is a scene of desolation, a place over which a woman can only shed tears. The rain had not descended: we must set to work and clean up the house and hope for the merciful showers from heaven to come and wash the face of that Nature which the storm has so begrimed.

A storm so bad as this may not occur again for weeks or months. Once in a lifetime is sufficient. It represents the unpleasant side of Nature in a sub-tropical country. Seasoned Colonials, while they dislike these terrible outbursts of Nature in the South, console themselves that these dust storms are nothing in comparison with the dust storms of the north. “You should go to Broken Hill to know what dust can do,” said one of them; “a dust storm there is terrible.” But that of this awful night is quite bad enough for me.