At the hour of luncheon there came a slight stir in the bungalow.  Mary Ann thrust her amazing visage round the door and rolled her eyes in frightened wonder at what she saw.  The big baas was lying across the table, a prone, stricken figure, with his head upon his arms.

For a few seconds she stood in open-mouthed dismay, thinking him dead; for she had never seen him thus in life.  Then she saw his shoulders heave convulsively, and promptly she turned and fled.

Again the bungalow was empty and still, the hours dragged on unheeded.  Lower and lower pressed the threatening clouds.  But the man who sat alone in the darkening room was blind to all outward things.  He did not feel the pitiless, storm-laden heat of the day.  He was consumed by the agony of his soul.

It was evening before the end came suddenly; a dancing flash that lighted the heavens from east to west and, crashing upon it, an explosion that seemed to rend the earth.  It was a cataclysm of sound, drowning the faculties, stunning the senses, brimming up the void with awful tumult.

A great start ran through the man’s bowed figure.  He sat up dazed, stiffly opening his clenched hands.  The world without seemed to be running with fire.  The storm shrieked over the veldt.  It was pandemonium.

Stiffly he straightened his cramped muscles.  His heart was thumping in heavy, uneven strokes, obstructing his breathing.  He fought for a few seconds to fill his lungs.  The atmosphere was dense with sand.  It came swirling in upon him, suffocating him.  He stood up, and was astounded to feel his own weakness against that terrific onslaught.  Grimly he forced his way to the open window.  The veldt was alight with lurid, leaping flame.  The far-off hills stood up like ramparts in the amazing glare, stabbed here and there with molten swords of an unendurable brightness.  He had seen many a raging storm before, but never a storm like this.

The sand blinded him and he dragged the window shut, using all his strength.  It beat upon the glass with baffled fury.  The thunder rolled and echoed overhead like the chariot-wheels of God, shaking the world.  The clouds above the lightning were black as night.

Suddenly far across the blazing veldt he saw a sight that tightened every muscle, sending a wild thrill through every nerve.  It came from the hills, a black, swift-moving pillar, seeming to trail just above the ground, travelling straight forward through the storm.  Over rocks and past kopjes it travelled, propelled by a force unseen, and ever as it drew nearer it loomed more black and terrible.

He watched it with a grim elation, drawn irresistibly by its immensity, its awfulness.  Straight towards him it came, and the lightning was dulled by its nearness and the thunder hushed.  He heard a swishing, whistling sound like the shriek of a shell, and instinctively he gathered himself together for the last great shock which no human power could withstand, the shattering asunder of soul and body, the swift amazing release of the spirit.