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I am sorry to treat you to a court-martial, John, but I must hold one after tea." Christabel pitied the children for having to speak before this formidable uncle; but there could be no help for it, since no other sitting-room was habitable, and there were torrents of rain out-of- doors.

One of the features of the terraces is that the rains are saved by the walls that sustain the soil, and the gutters that guide the water conserve it, because paved with pebbles and carried down by easy stages, irrigating one shelf after another of rice or vegetables, whatever is grown, until the whole slope not irreclaimable is made to blossom and the mountain torrents saved in their descent, not tearing away the made ground, out of which the means of living grows, but percolating through scores of narrow beds, gardens suspended like extended ribbons of verdure on volcanic steeps, refreshing the crops to be at last ripened by the sunshine.

The aero, luckily, was one of the best type, and well covered, so that they were protected from the terrible force of the rain, but in the tumult there could be no more thought of descending. It would have been impossible to make a landing in the midst of the storm and the pouring water, which rushed in torrents down the mountainside.

"Hard a-port! flatten in forward! brail up the trysail, my men! Be smart!" cried Kloots, as from the wind's chopping round to the northward and westward, the ship was taken aback, and careened low before it. The rain now came down in torrents, and it was so dark that it was with difficulty they could perceive each other on the deck.

On the 9th of June we were at an altitude of ten thousand feet above sea-level, with all the wilderness of canyons, cliffs, and buttes between us and the Colorado spreading below like a map, or rather like some kaleidoscopic phantasm. The slopes we were crossing were full of leaping torrents and clear lakes. They were so covered with these that the plateau afterwards was given the name Aquarius.

Out of that thunderous cauldron, filled with huge tramplings and the shriek of tortured torrents, rose a white curtain of spray, which every now and then swayed upward and drenched the green birches which grew about the rim of the pot. For the break in the rim, which caught at the passing current and sucked it into the slow swirls of Blackwater Pot, was not a dozen feet from the lip of the falls.

Then the two front lines clashed, shield against shield, and the noise was like the roaring of many flooded torrents among the hills. When a man fell he who had slain him tried to strip off his armour, and his friends fought over his body to save the dead from this dishonour.

After supper, crouching about a dull fire of fossil wood, they became still more doleful, and talked in tones that accorded well with the wind and waters and growling torrents about us, telling sad old stories of crushed canoes, drowned Indians, and hunters frozen in snowstorms.

Struck and clung, grinding, boring in, while from the raging inferno that marked the circle of contact of cylinder and shield the pirates' screen radiated scintillating torrents of cracking, streaming sparks, lightning-like in length and in intensity. Deeper and deeper the gigantic drill was driven. It was through! Pierced Roger's polycyclic screen; exposed the bare metal of Roger's walls!

The blood gushed in torrents from his mouth, and from the wound itself, when again the remorseless knife descended, but only to become entangled in the sleeve of the Duc d'Epernon; while with one thick and choking sob Henri IV fell back a corpse.