The Sound of Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page A

the sound of it and it made him remember the wind on the hills of Zululand and the singing of the young girls in the fields at harvest-time. It made him glad he was going home.
    To Dirk it was the voice of the mother he had hardly known.
    A safe sound-and soon he slept.
    “Don’t stop,” whispered Sean.
    So she sang for him alone. A love-song from two thousand years ago, filled with all the suffering of her people, but with joy in it also. The wind died away while she sang and her voice died away with it into the vast silence of the night.
    The storm broke. The first thunder crashed and the lightning forked jagged-blue through the clouds. Dirk whimpered a little but slept on.
    In the stark, blue light Sean saw that Ruth’s cheeks were wet with tears and when the darkness closed around them again she started to tremble against him. He reached out for her and she clung to him, small and warm against his chest, and he could taste the salt of her tears on his lips.
    “Sean, we mustn’t.”
    But he lifted her and held her across his chest as he walked out into the night. The lightning blazed again and lit the land with startling brilliance so he could see the horses huddling heads down, and the crisp outline of the kopJe above them.
    The first raindrops splashed against his shoulders and into his face. The rain was warm and he walked on carrying Ruth. Then the air was filled with rain, an encompassing pearly mist of it in the next flash of lightning, and the night was filled with the odour of rain on dry earth-a clean warm smell.
    In a still morning, washed so clean by the rain that they could see the mountains, blue and sharp on the southern horizon, they stood together on the crest of the kopJe.
    “That’s the tail of the Drakensberg, we’ve cleared it by twenty miles. There’s very little chance of a Boer patrol this far out.
    We can ride by day now. Soon we’ll be able to work in again and meet the railway beyond the battle lines. ” Because of the beauty of the morning, of the land that dripped away into the great, grassy bowl that was Natal, and of the woman that stood beside him, Sean was gay.
    Because of the promise of an end to the journey and the promise of a new one with this woman as his companion, he was content.
    When he spoke she turned slowly to look at him, her chin lifting in acknowledgement of his superior height. For the first time Sean realized that his own mood was not reflected in her eyes.
    “You are very lovely,” he said, and still she remained silent, but now he could recognize the shadows in her eyes as sorrow or something even stronger.
    “Ruth, you’ll come with me?”
    “No. ” She shook her head slowly, regretfully. The fat black python of hair rolled across her shoulder and hung down against the honey chamois leather of her jacket.
    “You must.
    “I cannot. ” “But, last night.”
    “Last night was madness … the storm.
    “It was right. You know that.”
    “No. It was the storm.” She looked away from him towards the sky. “And now the storm is ended. ” “It was more than that. You know it. It was from the first moment of our meeting. ” “It was a madness based upon deceit. Something that I will have to cover with lies-the way we had to cover it with darkness at the time. ” “Ruth. My God, don’t talk about it like that.”
    “Very well, I won’t. I won’t talk about it again, ever.”
    “We can’t leave it now. You know we can’t. ” And in answer she held up her left hand so that the gold upon it caught the sun.
    “We’ll say good-bye here on a mountain in the sunlight, Though we’ll ride together a little further-it’s here we’ll say good-bye. ” “Ruth .
    he started, but she placed the hand across his mouth and he felt the metal of the ring on his lips and it seemed to him that the ring was as cold as his dread of the loss she was about to inflict upon him.
    “No,” she whispered. “Kiss me once more and then let me go.
    Mbejane saw it