TRANSCRIPT

Before the swiftly rolling blackness, there appeared a long rolling white cloud, shaped like a gigantic cigar and from out of the blackness darted sharp forks of lightning, and rumblings of distant thunder came muttering on the air. The rolling blackness, like the chariot of Satan, rolled swiftly onward and now covered the face of the sun. While we gazed at the white rotating cigar, the advance patrol, suddenly there came from the white cloud into the sweltering heat, a blast as if from the Arctic regions, a blast as swift as it was cold, lifting papers, rubbish and boards high into the air and chilling us right to the bone. We all sought shelter in the shack, while horses turned their tails to the oncoming storm. The little chicks ran under their mother's wingin the little hencoop.

Onward came the white rolling infernal cigar-cloud, and it seemed to touch the ground and the blackness grew blacker until the whole sky was blackness when out from the heaven there came a blinding flash, followed immediately by a crash like a battery of artillery at close range. The velocity of the wind increased to a hurricane, the rain came down in torrents, and the second crash brought hail as large as marbles in sheets, the next crash brought devastating hail as large as walnuts, wind-driven with the force of grape - shot out of a cannon, cutting to pieces every living plant in sight and breaking windows wherever it came against them. Again and yet again this terrific bombardment, accompanied by blinding flashes of forked lightning and deafening crashes of thunder, flailed the ground to a pulp, and continued for over half an hour until the ground was white with the hail to a depth of over four inches. The crashes grew less in force and number by degrees, and at last the warm sun came out again and the storm passed on to continue its terrific devastation to other fields, cutting a strip about a mile wide and ten to twelve miles long. Then we ventured out to see what was left.

A dramatized reading of H. B. Adshead's story published in Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories. 1922