All at once there was a squall of wind, so violent that it almost snatched away Yegorushka’s bundle and mat; the mat fluttered in all directions and flapped on the bale and on Yegorushka’s face.  The wind dashed whistling over the steppe, whirled round in disorder and raised such an uproar from the grass that neither the thunder nor the creaking of the wheels could be heard; it blew from the black storm-cloud, carrying with it clouds of dust and the scent of rain and wet earth.  The moonlight grew mistier, as it were dirtier; the stars were even more overcast; and clouds of dust could be seen hurrying along the edge of the road, followed by their shadows.  By now, most likely, the whirlwind eddying round and lifting from the earth dust, dry grass and feathers, was mounting to the very sky; uprooted plants must have been flying by that very black storm-cloud, and how frightened they must have been!  But through the dust that clogged the eyes nothing could be seen but the flash of lightning.

Yegorushka, thinking it would pour with rain in a minute, knelt up and covered himself with the mat.

“Panteley-ey!” someone shouted in the front.  “A. . . a. . . va!”

“I can’t!” Panteley answered in a loud high voice.  “A . . . a . . . va!  Arya . . . a!”

There was an angry clap of thunder, which rolled across the sky from right to left, then back again, and died away near the foremost waggon.

“Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth,” whispered Yegorushka, crossing himself.  “Fill heaven and earth with Thy glory.”

The blackness in the sky yawned wide and breathed white fire.  At once there was another clap of thunder.  It had scarcely ceased when there was a flash of lightning so broad that Yegorushka suddenly saw through a slit in the mat the whole highroad to the very horizon, all the waggoners and even Kiruha’s waistcoat.  The black shreds had by now moved upwards from the left, and one of them, a coarse, clumsy monster like a claw with fingers, stretched to the moon.  Yegorushka made up his mind to shut his eyes tight, to pay no attention to it, and to wait till it was all over.

The rain was for some reason long in coming.  Yegorushka peeped out from the mat in the hope that perhaps the storm-cloud was passing over.  It was fearfully dark.  Yegorushka could see neither Panteley, nor the bale of wool, nor himself; he looked sideways towards the place where the moon had lately been, but there was the same black darkness there as over the waggons.  And in the darkness the flashes of lightning seemed more violent and blinding, so that they hurt his eyes.

“Panteley!” called Yegorushka.

No answer followed.  But now a gust of wind for the last time flung up the mat and hurried away.  A quiet regular sound was heard.  A big cold drop fell on Yegorushka’s knee, another trickled over his hand.  He noticed that his knees were not covered, and tried to rearrange the mat, but at that moment something began pattering on the road, then on the shafts and the bales.  It was the rain.  As though they understood one another, the rain and the mat began prattling of something rapidly, gaily and most annoyingly like two magpies.