"They creaked and sawed as if the fingers of a giant hand were tightening to collapse them" (Simile)
Paul enjoys the calm of his stable as he tends to his horses. However, the wind soon encroaches on his respite as it violently shakes the flimsy shelter walls. Through simile, the wind is compared to a giant hand physically pinching the stable. The image evokes the hand of a wrathful God reaching down from the heavens to meddle with Paul just as he has found some peace.
"Beaten and mounded smooth with dust as if a sea in gentle swell had turned to stone" (Simile)
After the windstorm dies, Paul looks upon his fields to see them buried in sand. Illustrated with the comparative language of a simile, the wind-sculpted mounds on the field resemble a swelling sea whose motion was suddenly stopped, its waves turned to stone.
"The darkness round him now was as a slate on which her lonely terror limned itself" (Simile)
Alone in his dark stable, Paul tends to his horses and reconsiders how despairing his wife is. He sees an image of her face as illuminated by the table lamp she had lit. The darkness of the stable is compared to a slate—the dark, smooth rock used for chalkboards. Against this slate, the only thing he can see is the image of Ellen's terrified face.
