"It means a
machine for measuring the force of the wind."
"Oh, indeed," said Falcon; but did not believe a word of it.
One sultry day Christopher had a violent headache, and complained
to Ucatella. She told Phoebe, and they bound his brows with a wet
handkerchief, and advised him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the
coolest part of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it
seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments.
All in a moment the sky was overcast with angry clouds, whirling this
way and that. Huge drops of hail pattered down, and the next minute came
a tremendous flash of lightning, accompanied, rather than followed, by a
crash of thunder close over their heads.
This was the opening. Down came a deluge out of clouds that looked
mountains of pitch, and made the day night but for the fast and furious
strokes of lightning that fired the air. The scream of wind and awful
peals of thunder completed the horrors of the scene.
In the midst of this, by what agency I know no more than science or
a sheep does, something went off inside Christopher's head, like a
pistol-shot. He gave a sort of scream, and dashed out into the weather.
Phoebe heard his scream and his flying footstep, and uttered an
ejaculation of fear.
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