Undazzled by the lightning’s frequent flare, unstaggered by the down-rushing wind, as if the mountain thunders were only the roll of an organ about his ears, Herb Heal sprang onward and upward, tugging his comrades one by one up many a precipitous ledge, and pulling them to their feet again when the tripping bushes brought their noses to the ground and their heels into the air.

“Hitch on to me, Dol!” he cried, suddenly turning on that youngster, who was trying to get his second breath.  “Tie on to me tight.  I’ll tow you up!  I wish we could ha’ reached that old log camp, boys.  ’Twould be a stunning shelter, for it has a wall of rock to the back.  But it’s higher up, and off to the right.  There!  I see the den I’m aiming for.”

A few energetic bounds brought Herb, with Dol in tow, to a platform of rock, which rose above a bed of blueberry bushes.  It narrowed into a sort of cave, roofed by an overhanging bowlder.

“We’ll be snug enough under this rock!” he exclaimed, pointing to the canopy.  “Creep in, boys.  We’ll have tubs of rain, and a pelting of hail.  The rumpus is only beginning.”

So it was.  The storm had been creeping from its cradle.  Now it swept down with an awful whirl and commingling of elements.

The boys, peering out from their rocky nest, saw a magnificent panorama beneath them.  The regiments of the air were at war.  Lightning chains encircled the heavens, lighting up the forests below.  Winds charged down the mountain-side, sweeping stones and bushes before them.  Hail-bullets rattled in volleys.  Thunder-artillery boomed until the very rocks seemed ’to shake.

“It’s fine!” exclaimed Cyrus.  “It’s super-fine!”

Then a curtain of thick rain partly hid the warfare, the lightning still rioting through it like a beacon of battle.

“The stones up above will have to be pretty firmly fixed to keep their places,” said Herb.  “Boys, I hope there ain’t a-going to be slides on the mountain after this.”

“Slides?” echoed Dol questioningly.

“Landslides, kid.  Say! if you want to be scared until your bones feel limp, you’ve got to hear a great big block of granite come ploughing down from the top ’o the mountain, bringing earth and bushes along with it, and smashing even the rocks to splinters as it pounds along.”

“I guess that’s a sensation we’d rather be spared,” said Cyrus gravely.

And under the quieting spell of the airy warfare there was silence for a while.

“Do you think it’s lightening up, Herb?” asked Neal, after the storm had raged for three-quarters of an hour.

“I guess it is.  The rain is stopping too.  But we’ll have an awful slushy time of it getting back to camp.  To plough through them soaked forests below would be enough to give you city fellows a shaking ague.”

“Couldn’t we climb on to your old log camp?” suggested Garst.  “If we have the luck to find the old shanty holding together, we can light a fire there after things dry out a bit, and eat our snack.  Then we needn’t be in a hurry to get down.  We’ll risk it, anyhow.”