‘Come along, will you; come along, Bindy!’ he called.

The answer filled him with amazement.

‘All right, all right. I’ll follow in a moment. I like this.’

The tutor went back a few steps towards him. The tone startled him.

‘Like what?’ he asked.

And Lord Ernie turned towards him with another face. There was fighting in it. There was resolution.

‘This, of course,’ the boy answered steadily, but with excitement shut down behind, as he waved one arm towards the mountains. ‘I’ve dreamed this sort of thing; I’ve known it somewhere. We’ve seen nothing like it all our stupid trip.’ The flash in his brown eyes passed then, as he added more quietly, but with firmness: ‘Don’t wait for me; I’ll follow.’

Hendricks stood still in his tracks. There was a decision in the voice and manner that arrested him. The confidence, the positive statement, the eager desire, the hint of energy—all this was new. He had never encouraged the boy’s habit of vivid dreaming, deeming the narration unwise. It flashed across him suddenly now that the ‘deficiency’ might be only on the surface. Energy and life hid, perhaps, subconsciously in him. Did the dreams betray an activity he knew not how to carry through and correlate with his everyday, external world? And were these dreams evidence of deep, hidden desire—a clue, possibly, to the energy he sought and needed, the exact kind of energy that might set the inert machinery in motion and drive it?

He hesitated an instant, waiting in the road. He was on the verge of understanding something that yet just evaded him. Bindy’s childish, instinctive love of fire, his passion for air, for rushing wind, for oceans of limitless——

There came at that moment a deep roaring in the mountains. Far away, but rapidly approaching, the ominous booming of it filled the air. The westerly wind descended by the deep gorges, shaking the forests, shouting as it came. Clouds of white dust spiralled into the sky off the upper roads, spread into sheets like snow, and swept downwards with incredible velocity. The air turned suddenly cooler. More big drops of rain splashed and thudded on the roofs and road. There was a feeling of something violent and instantaneous about to happen, a sense almost of attack. The joran tore headlong down into the valley.

‘Come on, man,’ he cried at the top of his voice. ‘That’s the joran! I know it of old! It’s terrific. Run!’ And he caught the lad, still lingering, by the arm.

But Lord Ernie shook himself free with an excitement almost violent.

‘I’ve been up there with those great fires,’ he shouted. ‘I know the whole blessed thing. But where was it? Where?’ His face was white, eyes shining, manner strangely agitated. ‘Big, naked fellows who dance like wind, and rushing women of fire, and——’

Two things happened then, interrupting the boy’s wild language. The joran reached the village and struck it; the houses shook, the trees bent double, and the cloud of limestone dust, painting the darkness white, swept on between Hendricks and the boy with extraordinary force, even separating them. There was a clatter of falling tiles, of banging doors and windows, and then a burst of icy rain that fell like iron shot on everything, raising actual spray.