And so it rushed out of
sight beneath the cliff. But would it wash over the top?
The first answer was an impact that shook the ground under him, and
then he heard a noise like a huge ripping explosion. A dozen lofty
geysers of snow streamed up into the air, dazzling against the sun,
misty at the edges of each column, whose center was solid tons and
tons of snow. Old pines and spruces, their branches shaved away in the
tumult of the slide, were picked up and hurled like javelins over the
cliff; a shower of fragments beat on the body of Bull; and then the
main mass of snow washed up over the edge of the cliff in a great
mound, and the slide was ended.
He crawled slowly back to his feet. Far up the mountainside, beginning
in a point, the track of the slide swept down in a broadening scar,
black and raw, across forest and snow. Far down the valley the last
echoes of thunder were passing away to a murmur, and the valley floor,
beneath the cliff, was a mass of snow and tree trunks.
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