Algernon Blackwood

“ The peasants looked skywards and said no word, but barn doors were shut and the cattle came to water early in the nearer pastures. In spots the air grew colder, and suddenly, with dramatic abruptness, solitary puffs of heated wind came rushing up our valley from the south. Heralded by clouds of dust they passed and went their way, first having tossed the waiting trees, not twice, but once, rattled the windows, closed the open doors⁠—went their way upwards to bear word that all was ready for the main attack. ”

“ It was a wind that could blow a man from the securest foothold into space, mow down the older trees like matches, and even loosen rocks. It seemed the mountains stooped to heave their shoulders, driving it down with crushing power upon our village between the forests. ”

“ I observed, “and it’s blowing up the valley.”
“There’s hardly any wind at all, anyhow,” he said impatiently.
“But what there is is southerly. The wind has changed. You feel its dampness? That damp is evil. Why, man, you can smell it!” For a strong odour of earth and grass and growing things lay behind the exquisite morning freshness of the dawn, and the fragrance, though so pleasant, was suspicious. ”

“ Below the giddy ridge where our proposed night shelter perched⁠—the hut⁠—they gathered suddenly into a single line, and fifteen minutes later there was a barrier of dirty-looking cloud that was rising⁠—rising in places at considerable speed. On the edges it leaped and coiled with a kind of hurrying impatience. Yet all this time⁠—these twenty hours of interval⁠—the entire heavens had conspired together to produce no more than this thickening cloud that was the first visible sign a townsman need have noticed with anxiety. The peaks, however, were close enough now to touch ”

“ The wreaths and lines of vapour meanwhile spread and thickened, gaining ground, some rising, others sinking, new centres forming everywhere with a rapidity that argued admirable preparation. A coiling mist wrapped hurriedly about one summit after another, yet leaving the actual top in shining light. A ring was round the sun, immensely distant from it, with a diameter of many miles of sky. The heat in the valley, pressed down and running over, made breathing increasingly oppressive ”

“ He is a fortunate man who, in these sophisticated days, can find it in him to acknowledge this trace of the primitive spirit of worship. That faint, mysterious tremor that runs through Nature everywhere is divine in its first gentle yet calculated insignificance. ”

“ The animal and vegetable world at once respond to it: birds and fishes know, the insects know as well; trees note it and keep very still; all take instantly their best precautions; and only men, not aware of it until it is too late, disregard the delicate warning at their peril. Few humans can feel that the pressure of the air has altered. ”