Something scared the birds in the jungle and they flew shriekingly from tree to tree, all going in the same direction.
Submerged among the immense trees of the jungle the negroes could not tell what was happening in the heavens, but they noticed that the sun had changed, no longer spraying off of the tops of the trees like falling water, and the path at their feet had become almost invisible in the darkness.
A wind suddenly swept through the forest, cold as a breeze from the arctic icebergs. Every tree and shrub leaned away from that icy blast, and vines which trailed the ground for hundreds of feet slowly rose up and whirled and writhed in the air like long, slim snakes. In twenty seconds that one puff of wind had passed and there was no more, and the scalding heat rose from the ground like steam from the boiling caldrons of Tophet.
At any other time, Hitch Diamond would have known that a Southern rain-storm was coming and would have paid no attention to it except to seek a cleared spot in the forest, where the dead limbs falling from the trees could not impale him to the ground.
But now his fear was superstitious, and it became infectious to Vinegar Atts and the two raced before the storm like catboats on a wind-swept lake.
Then the rain fell--fell exactly as if some great Titan’s hands had lifted up the silver bowl of the Gulf of Mexico and emptied its contents on their heads. The first big drop felt like a bucketful and seemed to wet them all over.
From that moment they stumbled rather than ran, simply fell forward, caught themselves, and fell forward again--who could run under Niagara’s tumbling flood?
And thus they ran blindly into the august presence of Diada!
Just as another icy blast swept through the jungle, lasting for twenty seconds and stopping the rain, the two men looked up and beheld Diada, facing the breeze, standing in their path like a rooted tree. She still wore Mrs. Gaitskill’s light-blue, pink-flowered kimono, and that gaudy garment trailed out behind her and snapped in the breeze, resembling the variegated tail of some enormous tropic bird.
To the astounded men Diada looked as big as a skinned mule.
With a shriek Hitch Diamond dodged around her, leading Vinegar Atts in the flight by a nose, and the two men ran on toward the hog-camp--the falling rain thundering around them like the sound of a troop of cavalry crossing a wooden bridge.