[A Storm] by Mark Twain
(from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Chapter IX, "The House of Death Floats By")
The door of the cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one
side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit and was flat and a good place to build
a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.
We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. We
put all the other things handy at the back of the cavern. Pretty soon it darkened up
and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun
to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one
of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black
outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a
little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that
would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a
perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their
arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and
blackest—fst! it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops
a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you
could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let
go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky
towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where
it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.
"Jim, this is nice," I says. "I wouldn't want to be nowhere else but here.
Pass me along another hunk of fish and some hot corn-bread.
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