shoulder to it, closing it and securing the latch, then she ran to do
the same to the other windows and bumped into one of the house servants.
Between them they battened down all the doors and windows. Madam, the
rain will come now. Very much rain. 'Go to your families now, 'Debra
told them. The dinner, madam? Don't worry, I'll make that, and
thankfully they streamed away through the swirling dust to their
hutments beyond the kopje.
The wind blew for fifteen minutes, and Debra stood by the wire screen
and felt it tugging and whipping her body. Its wildness was infectious,
and she laughed aloud, elated and excited.
Then suddenly the wind was passed, as swiftly as it had come, and she
heard it tearing and clawing its way over the hills above the pools.
In the utter silence that followed the whole world waited, tensed for
the next onslaught of the elements.
Debra felt the cold, the sudden fall in temperature as though the door
to a great ice-box had opened and she hugged her arms and shivered; she
could not see the dark cloud banks that rolled across Jabulani, but
somehow she sensed their menace and their majesty in the coldness that
swamped her.
The first lightning bolt struck with a crackling electric explosion that
seemed to singe the air about her, and Debra was taken so unawares that
she cried out aloud. The thunder broke, and seemed to shake the sky and
rock the earth's very foundations.
Debra turned and groped her way back into the house, locking herself
into her room, but walls could not diminish the fury of the rain when it
came. It drummed and roared and deafened, battering the window panes,
and striking the walls and doors, pouring through the screen to flood
the veranda.
As overpowering as was the rainstorm, yet it was the lightning and the
thunder that racked Debra's nerves.
She could not steel herself for each mighty crack and roar. Each one
caught her off balance, and it seemed that they were aimed directly at
her.
She crouched on her day bed, clinging to the soft warm body of the dog
for a little comfort. She wished she had not allowed the servants to
leave, and she thought that her nerve might crack altogether under the
bombardment.
Finally she could stand it no longer. She groped her way into the
living-room. In her distress she had almost lost her way about her own
home, but she found the telephone and lifted it to her ear.
Immediately she knew that it was dead, there was no tone to it but she
cranked the handle wildly, calling desperately into the mouthpiece,
until finally she let it fall and dangle on its cord.
She began to sob as she stumbled back to her workroom, hugging the child
in her big belly, and she fell upon the day bed and covered her ears
with both hands.
Stop it, she screamed. Stop it, oh please God, make it stop.
The new national highway as far as the coal-mining town of Witbank was
broad and smooth, six lanes of traffic, and David eased the hired
