“We are caught,” declared Miss Harding, but there was no fear in her voice.

“Not yet!” I asserted, springing from the car and making a frenzied examination of the cause of our breakdown.  I knew it was not serious, and when I located it I joyously proclaimed it a mere trifle.  But automobile trifles demand minutes, and nature did not postpone the resistless march of its storm battalions.  As I toiled with wrench and screw-driver I cursed the folly which induced me to plunge into that desolate stretch of forest and marsh.

The roar of the tempest’s artillery became continuous.  The low scud clouds travelling with incredible velocity blotted out the blue sky to the east and darkness fell like a black shroud.  I could not see to work beneath the floor of the car, and lost another minute searching for and lighting a candle.

In the uncanny gloom I saw the fair face of the one whose safety now was menaced by my bold folly.  I saw her form silhouetted against the black of a fir tree in the almost blinding glare of a flame of lightning.

“Just one minute and I will have it fixed!” I said, and she smiled bravely but said nothing.

Still not a breath of air!  The spires of the pine trees stood rigid as if cast in bronze!

This is the time when a storm strikes terror to my soul.  With the first patter of the rain and the onrushing of the wind I experience a sensation of relief, but it is nerve-racking to stand in that frightful calm and await the mighty charge of unknown forces.

As I bolted the displaced part into its proper adjustment I reflected that had it not been for the ten minutes thus lost we would have been in Oak Cliff.  My calculations had been accurate, but again Fate had introduced an unexpected factor.  I started the engine and leaped into the car.

“Only a mile to shelter!” I exclaimed.  “I think we can make it.  Where are the storm aprons?”

“We forgot them,” she said.

“I forgot them, you mean,” I declared.  “Hold fast!  It is a rough road!”

The red car leaped forward.  I remembered that there was a farmhouse a mile or so ahead.

Never have I witnessed anything like the vivid continuity of that lightning.  With a crash which sounded as if the gods had shattered the vault of the heavens a bolt streamed into a tree not a hundred yards ahead, and one of its limbs fell to the roadway.  It was impossible to stop.  She saw it and crouched behind the shield.  With a lurch and a leap we passed over it.

I felt a drop of rain on my face.  The trees swayed with the first gust of the tempest.  We were going down hill with full speed on.  A few hundred yards ahead was a stone culvert spanning the bed of a creek whose waters years before had been diverted to a reservoir a mile or so to the east.  Save at rare intervals, the bed of this creek was dry.

As the recollection of this old culvert came to me I raised my eyes and saw something which drove the blood from my heart!  A quarter of a mile ahead was a gray wall of rain, and dim through it I saw huge trees mount into the air and twist and gyrate like leaves caught up in an air eddy.