A shower of rain drove down upon us, each drop stinging like a
hailstone. As it passed, Wolf Larsen began to speak, the bare-headed men swaying in unison, to the heave and lunge of the deck.
The weather had become worse than ever towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Levin was all right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted
hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the stripped elm-tree.
Oaths flew like
hailstones, and every now and then there came forth such an explosion as I thought was sure to end in blows.
The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted
hailstones piled along their courses.
In the meantime, there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was down, the
hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if I had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot, that I could not go abroad in ten days.
It was a heavy fire which overwhelmed these wretches with a thousand
hailstones.
The leader of the Wheelers hesitated to give this order, so Tiktok shook him as a terrier dog does a rat, until the Wheeler's teeth rattled together with a noise like
hailstones on a window pane.
I was the butt of a hundred arrows; they rattled on mine armour like
hailstones against a latticed casement, and the only use I made of my shield was for her protection.
A man's life being to be taken and the price of it got, the
hailstones to arrest the purpose must lie larger and deeper than those.
These
hailstones were flat, and one was ten inches in circumference, and another weighed two ounces.
All these came pelting down, like a shower of many- colored
hailstones, upon the heads of grown people and children, who forthwith gathered them up, and carried them back to the palace.
"I was walking to the car when it started and had one
hailstone ping off the top of my head.