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You can form but a faint conception of the clear azure of an Indian sky, and never had I seen it more beautiful than on the day to which I refer, though some of the weather-prophets about Bombay were predicting a storm. We were about the middle of the avenue I have described, when we overtook the funeral of an officer who had held a commission in a corps of Sepoys.
For among the Indians the lives of the weather-prophets were not safe from the aggrieved agriculturists, and there are authentic cases in which the cheera-taghe suffered death by tribal law as false conjurers.
Just as before the war the appearance of peace was deceptive, so the clouds of a storm that was passed obscured the clearing sky, and filled the weather-prophets of the platform and the press with a gloom which the people declined instinctively to share. There were indeed symptoms that we, like our forefathers a century ago, were destined to tread the downward path from Waterloo to Peter-loo.
Young when we were within a minute or two of the top. It is hard to fail in reaching a mountain-top that one starts for, let the cause be what it may. This time I had no companion to care for, but the sky was threatening. I was assured by the local weather-prophets that the day would be rainy or snowy because the peaks in sight were muffled in clouds that seemed to be getting ready for work.
The last day of February was clear, cloudless, and cold, the evening serene and still. Winter's tempestuous course was run, its icy breath apparently had ceased, and darkness closed on its quiet, pallid face. "March came in like a lamb" an ominous circumstance for the future record of this month of most uncertain weather, according to the traditions of the old weather-prophets.
Through the dash of rain, and under the promise of a magnificent rainbow, rainbows don't mean anything in Switzerland, and have no office as weather-prophets, except to assure you, that, as it rains to-day, so it will rain tomorrow, we skirted the lower bend of the lake, and at twilight sailed into the little harbor of Lindau, through the narrow entrance between the piers, on one of which is a small lighthouse, and on the other sits upright a gigantic stone lion, a fine enough figure of a Bavarian lion, but with a comical, wide-awake, and expectant expression of countenance, as if he might bark right out at any minute, and become a dog.
"I likes that dog; well, I've allus liked un. Train un to sheep? I believe as I could, were I to be so minded: I do believe as I could." The two had to part then. It was dusk, and looked like wet; moreover, some wether sheep in the fold, far down in the valley, were "howling" for rain: they were true weather-prophets always. So he might be trained to sheep.
"There'll be no rain to-day," said Almira Jane as Master Sunshine slipped off gayly to school next morning. "Your geese are sure to be good weather-prophets, and I notice that they are dressing their feathers and diving comfortably in the little duck-pond." "And what would they be doing if it were going to rain?" inquired Master Sunshine.
With one of those freakish turns of the weather that takes the conceit out of all weather-prophets, the snow had now ceased to fall, the sun was struggling out of the clouds, and the wind was swinging around to the west.
The terms of this singular match had been arranged a month previously, but no storm worthy of the occasion had arisen. Now the local weather-prophets believed it to be brewing. I inquired what would happen if neither of the men were struck, and was told that they must then wait for another storm.
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