Allen Howard Godbey

“ And naught can present so sombre and terrifying an aspect as those phantoms of the air, when mailed with the lightning and flying with the storm.
Yet, upon the cloud the welfare of the human race is dependent, as much as upon any other force in nature: for rain or drouth, famine or plenty, snow or flood, all follow in its path. More than once has rain or storm decided the destiny of nations. ”

“ In all directions might be seen heaps of ruins, houses tottering, cracked, twisted—in all stages of destruction. Ever and anon a fresh shock brought down some crumbling edifice with a sullen roar, and a cloud of stifling dust{555} veiled it from view. The night resounded with the screams of terrified fugitives, the tread of hurrying feet, and the groans and cries of the wounded. The parks swarmed with those in search of a place of safety. Hundreds were bruised or maimed by falling stones and timbers; not a few were killed outright; others, crushed in the wrecks, died a lingering death. ”

“ The ocean presents a different spectacle, for the ocean has no swift current, and its waves are greater. The foaming mountain torrent can not compare with it, for the mountain torrent is at best but a few yards in breadth. But in the swollen river is found an apparently illimitable expanse of water, heaving restlessly under the swift foot of the wind, or foaming and dashing at the roar of the storm, hurling itself in billows upon the toilers on the levee, and striking them into the ditch beyond, yet, with all the fury expended laterally, rushing seaward almost with the speed of a train. ”

“ There a forlorn squatter is punting a rude raft with his few belongings slowly athwart the restless flood. Yonder a band of negroes, unaware of the break in time to reach the river, have congregated in an old gin house, and swarm upon its roof, yelling and gesticulating wildly in their terror, for aid, which they fear will never reach them; and, as the water rises higher, roofs, barns, hen-coops, and carcasses go floating past or lodge against their frail support, increasing their peril every moment. Some moan and cry; others pray vigorously, confessing their misdeeds with voluble freedom ”

“ The feelings of the Americans on the beach were indescribable. The power of the music vied with the howling of the storm.
Men who during that awful day had exhausted every means of rendering some assistance to their comrades, now seemed inspired to greater effort. They dashed at the surf like wild creatures; but they were powerless. There was nothing left for them to do but wait; and, if they dared, to hope.
The Trenton proved the Vandalia’s salvation. She bore lightly against her without a shock, and swung around in the sand broadside to the sunken ship. ”

“ How can too great importance be attached to the part the winds perform in the economy of nature? Without them the land would become a Sahara; the seas would be covered with a London fog. In the rustle of the breeze, as well as in the roar of hurricane, there is purpose and energy. The hand that guides one, controls the other. “He holdeth the wind in his fists.”
In every age man’s imagination has been strongly influenced by the mysterious or unknown. There is little play for poetic sentiment in the cold practicality of science. That which is clearly comprehended, loses half its charm. ”

“ In a moment she collided with the Nipsic, her bow carrying away a boat and several feet of the post-quarter rail. Falling back, she fouled with the Olga, and her rudder was carried away. This left her helpless. Swinging broadside to the wind, she lay a few moments rolling heavily in the trough of the sea. Over her deck the surf foamed and roared.
At length, a gigantic wave lifted her up and hurled her with awful force upon the reef. Striking fairly on her keel, she heeled over toward the sea. No further trace of her was seen. Every timber must have been shattered. ”

“ THE SIMOOM.
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noses into the sand, against each other, into a pack of goods—anywhere to avoid breathing that poisonous blast. The men throw themselves upon the ground behind the camels, and muffle their heads in their garments. The storm is at hand; perchance attended by whirling columns of sand. You raise your head: a thick, dun-colored cloud flies at you; a heat as of red-hot iron, it seems, holds you in its choking grasp. You find your way to your water bottle, and drink deeply. The lurid sun turns the sweeping columns of sand to pillars of fire. ”

“ Not a single agent of nature can equal it in sudden destruction. It comes and it goes in a few seconds; almost ere you are aware of its presence it has claimed its thousands. There is no escape; no ruin so absolute; no desolation so pitiful; no death so remorseless. You stand chatting with a friend, the earth shakes, gapes, and the friend at your side finds a grave in the foundations of the earth. “Two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left.” ”

“ In a few moments it blew from the other direction, roaring and rolling black clouds before it, raising up immense sea-waves, covering the island with intense gloom. Six hours it blew, ever increasing. Tiles and slates whizzed through the air, to be shattered on the rocks or driven into timbers: great trees were whirled about, often dashing away houses that seemed about to weather the storm, while the terrible roar of the wind was such that even the crash of the thunder could hardly be distinguished. ”

“ So they are wandering past us, the air-mothers, to weep the leaves into their graves: to weep the seeds into their seed-beds, and to weep the soil into the plains: to get the rich earth ready for the winter, and then creep northward and die there. But will they live again, those chilled air-mothers? Yes; they must live again. For all things move forever: and not even ghosts can rest. ”

“ The last unfortunates have straggled to the levee. The rest must wait for relief. Here and there a few cattle stand lowing in water half over their sides; a restless, snorting horse plunges impatiently about. A floating tree-trunk strikes them from their hillock, to swim aimlessly about till other drifting masses ride them down. A hen-coop floats past, on which a hungry chanticleer is perched, occasionally challenging the flood, and in the meantime, with sidelong glance eyeing the confusion and in undertones discussing the case with his half-starved, feathered harem. ”

“ So they live, and so they die, those beautiful air-mothers—for life is evermore fed by death. And in their wayward course they bring the early and the latter rain: that so long as time shall be, seed-time and harvest and summer and winter shall not fail. And men love them, and welcome each in their turn, whether laden with the pure white snow, or the cooling moisture of the distant sea; for man is a fickle creature, and remains constant to none. ”

“ The famine in Asia does not weigh upon you so heavily as the death of the woman who starved in the garret across the street. A fire that burns Chicago is easier forgotten that the one which destroys the little home that represents the savings of years of your life. The cholera in India has no such terrors for you as the diphtheria or scarlet fever in your own village. The Czar of Russia is blown to pieces in his carriage; but he has no remembrance at the bedside of your sick friend. Ten thousand dead victims of a distant earthquake are hidden by the coffin in your own home. ”

“ Such are the phenomena presented in the atmosphere by this most mysterious power. Dreadful in the lightning’s leap, strange and uncanny in the aureole’s glow, wildly and weirdly beautiful in the flickering flash and flow of the Northern Light, we have seen that, though it has played an important part in the history of the world because of its appeal to man’s superstition, it is notwithstanding the occasional bolt of death, to be considered, while one of the most powerful and universal, one of the least to be feared of all the forces of nature ”

“ The fear of the tempest belongs to every age. The ancient Greeks, from whom the Romans borrowed and modified the myth, told how Hephaistos toiled in his volcanic forge to form the bolts of Zeus, great father of gods and men. These flaming weapons could none oppose. By them rebellious giants were overturned. And the bold Goth, rugged and vigorous, heard the voice of the war-god, Thor, shout to him:
“Mine eyes are the lightning,
The wheels of my chariot
Roll in the thunder!” ”

“ If the scene upon the levee is exciting when efforts are made to avoid breaks, still more so is it when a small break is being closed. The scurrying to and fro; the hoarse shouting of orders; the wild cries for aid from threatened points; men plunging up to their necks in the rushing flood, driving stakes, dragging sacks of earth, heaving in boulders and rubble stone; others bringing timbers and planks from hundreds of yards away ”

“ Why men should think to chip off pieces of the Washington Monument, or from Lincoln’s coffin, or from the granite sarcophagus in the great pyramid, and carry them home and put them in a cabinet, and call people to admire them, without thereby simply advertising themselves as vandals, passes comprehension. Why a chip from Johnstown should be better than the same kind of a chip from any other place, no man can tell. ”

“ In the Hindoo cosmogony successive ages of the world are separated by periods of chaos; and no wilder image of unreined destruction has fancy ever dreamed. The earth is to be eternal. There is one eternal, invisible spirit, Brahm, from whom springs Brahma, who creates a race of gods. These frame the earth into orderly condition, and rule it for four hundred thousand years. At the end of that{482} time, the land and sea and sky meet in gigantic ruin; the gods are no more, save only Vishnu, the preserver. The sea covers all things and eternal night is accompanied by eternal tempest. ”

“ Higher enjoyments are exchanged for such as are brutish and vile,—so to speak, the life of a humming-bird, flitting through all sunny climes and scenes and feeding on nectar, is exchanged for the life of a swine, feeding on offal, and wallowing in the mire. And never once is a wound made by the lash of law healed without a scar; in other words, transgression leaves its permanent impress on the soul, and the transgressor, despite the incantations of priest or prophet, finds himself poorer forever. ”

“ Only in the red man’s tales do we find the idea of the Christian world, of one Great Spirit who rules all nature. In the Persian mythology, lightning and gloom represent the contest between the forces of Ahriman, prince of evil, and Ormuzd, the great creator and preserver of good. And among the old Etruscans, from whom the Romans borrowed many rites and ceremonies, the lightning was one of the chief objects in their system of augury and divination. A favorable flash of lightning outweighed all portents of ill. The thunder was the voice of the gods, communicating their will to men. ”

“ Fearful and crafty the smile that darkened the face of the willing murderer who was leading the horse with the false light as he heard the crash of the vessel and the shrieks of the drowning crew! Fearful the smile that darkened the faces of the men and women waiting on the beach as they came out from their places, ready to struggle and fight among themselves for any spoil that might come ashore! ”

“ There a tiny, fussing tug is engaged in trying to float a mat of brushwood against the broken bank, while a score of anxious men are watching an opportunity to peg it down. Others endeavor to weave pliant branches among the driven piles to afford a better hold for the guano sacks of earth that are being thrown into the break. From these moist earth is often washed out by the powerful current as though it were melting sugar; while now and then some timber, undermined by the steadily deepening current, leaps upward as though endowed with a life of its own, and dashes away on the foaming stream. ”

“ As far inland as the eye can reach there is nothing but flood to be seen, the currents opening out and racing away in every direction. At some distance away may be seen a flooded settlement, the water washing the windows of fifteen or twenty abandoned cottages. On a huge mound some five or six feet out of the outflow, is a group of disconsolate horses and mules who have taken refuge from the rising flood, and other hungry-looking brutes wander over the levee. ”

“ As the cooling progresses, a sheet of snow and ice, from north and south, will descend from the mountains upon the table-lands and valleys, driving before it life and civilization, and covering forever the cities and nations that it meets on its passage. All life and human activity will press insensibly toward the inter-tropical zone. The great cities of the world will fall asleep in succession under their eternal shroud. During very many ages, equatorial humanity will undertake arctic expeditions to find again under the ice the place of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilles. ”

“ The Vandalia and the Calliope were drifting toward the wreck of the Adler. As the Vandalia endeavored to steam away, the iron prow of the Englishman arose high in the air and fell with full force upon the Vandalia’s port-quarter. The Calliope lost her jib-boom, and the heavy timbers of the Vandalia were shivered. Every man near the point of the collision was thrown from his feet by the shock. ”