To those musing weather-beaten West-country folk who pass the greater part of their days and nights out of doors,Nature seems to have moods in other than a poetical sense:predilections for certain deeds at certain times,without any apparent law to govern or season to account for them.She is read as a person with a curious temper;as one who does not scatter kindnesses and cruelties alternately,impartially,and in order,but heartless severities or overwhelming generosities in lawless caprice.Mans case is always that of the prodigals favourite or the misers pensioner.In her unfriendly moments there seems a feline fun in her tricks,begotten by a foretaste of her pleasure in swallowing the victim.
Such a way of thinking had been absurd to Knight,but he began to adopt it now.He was first spitted on to a rock.New tortures followed.The rain increased,and persecuted him with an exceptional persistency which he was moved to believe owed its cause to the fact that he was in such a wretched state already.
An entirely new order of things could be observed in this introduction of rain upon the scene.It rained upwards instead of down.The strong ascending air carried the rain-drops with it in its race up the escarpment,coming to him with such velocity that they stuck into his flesh like cold needles.Each drop was virtually a shaft,and it pierced him to his skin.The water-shafts seemed to lift him on their points:no downward rain ever had such a torturing effect.In a brief space he was drenched,except in two places.These were on the top of his shoulders and on the crown of his hat.
The wind,though not intense in other situations was strong here.
It tugged at his coat and lifted it.We are mostly accustomed to look upon all opposition which is not animate,as that of the stolid,inexorable hand of indifference,which wears out the patience more than the strength.Here,at any rate,hostility did not assume that slow and sickening form.It was a cosmic agency,active,lashing,eager for conquest:determination;not an insensate standing in the way.