There was no interval at all between the rip of the lightning and the crash of thunder as it rolled down on the clustered wagons.

The electricity at times came not in a sheet or a ragged bolt, but in a ball of fire, low down, close to the ground, exploding with giant detonations.
Then came the rain, with a blanketing rush of level wind, sweeping away the last vestige of the wastrel fires of the emigrant encampment.

An instant and every human being in the train, most of them ill defended by their clothing, was drenched by the icy flood.

One moment and the battering of hail made climax of it all.

The groaning animals plunged and fell at their picket ropes, or broke and fled into the open.