Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 24)( Page 6 ) The Last Trek

It was past noon that day when everything grew still; the birds and insects hushed their sound; the dry leaves did not give a whisper. There was the warning in the air that one knows but cannot explain; and it struck me and the boys together that it was time to spread and tie down the buck-sails which we had not unfolded for months. While we were busy at this there came an unheralded flash and crash; then a few drops as big as florins; and then the flood-gates were opened and the reservoir of the long months of drought was turned loose on us. Crouching under the waggon where I had crept to lash down the sail, I looked out at the deluge, hesitating whether to make a dash for my tent-waggon or remain there. All along the surface of the earth there lay for a minute or so a two-feet screen of mingled dust and splash: long spikes of rain drove down and dashed into spray, each bursting its little column of dust from the powdery earth.  There was an indescribable and unforgettable progression in sounds and smells and sights--a growth and change--rapid yet steady, inevitable, breathless, overwhelming.  Little enough could one realise in those first few minutes and in the few square yards around; yet there are details, unnoticed at the time, which come back quite vividly when the bewildering rush is over, and there are impressions which it is not possible to forget. There were the sounds and the smells and the sights!  The sounds that began with the sudden crash of thunder; the dead silence that followed it; the first great drops that fell with such pats on the dust; then more and faster--yet still so big and separate as to make one look round to see where they fell; the sound on the waggon-sai --at first as of bouncing marbles, then the `devil's tattoo,' and then the roar! And outside there was the muffled puff and patter in the dust; the rustle as the drops struck dead leaves and grass and sticks; the blend of many notes that made one great sound, always growing, changing and moving on--full of weird significance--until there came the steady swish and hiss of water upon water, when the earth had ceased to stand up against the rain and was swamped.  But even that did not last; for then the fallen rain raised its voice against the rest, and little sounds of trickling scurrying waters came to tone the ceaseless hiss, and grew and grew until from every side the chorus of rushing tumbling waters filled the air with the steady roar of the flood. And the smells!  The smell of the baked drought-bound earth; the faint clearing and purifying by the first few drops; the mingled dust and damp; the rinsed air; the clean sense of water, water everywhere; and in the end the bracing sensation in nostrils and head, of, not wind exactly, but of swirling air thrust out to make room for the falling rain; and, when all was over, the sense of glorious clarified air and scoured earth--the smell of a new-washed world! And the things that one saw went with the rest, marking the stages of the storm's short vivid life.  The first puffs of dust, where drops struck like bullets; the cloud that rose to meet them; the drops themselves that streaked slanting down like a flight of steel ramrods; the dust dissolved in a dado of splash.  I had seen the yellow-brown ground change colour; in a few seconds it was damp; then mud; then all asheen.  A minute more, and busy little trickles started everywhere-- tiny things a few inches long; and while one watched them they joined and merged, hurrying on with twist and turn, but ever onward to a given point--to meet like the veins in a leaf.  Each tuft of grass became a fountain-head: each space between, a little rivulet: swelling rapidly, racing away with its burden of leaf and twig and dust and foam until in a few minutes all were lost in one sheet of moving water.