All at once a dead silence fell upon the scene. The wind ceased as if by the command of some fell magician. This quiet was, however, even more awful than the preceding turmoil. It was, indeed, as if all things had come to their last gasp, and earth wanted but the word to dissolve forever. Suddenly this ominous stillness was broken by a terrific clap of thunder bursting almost overhead. Simultaneously a vivid streak of lightning, that filled the whole room with dazzling light, and blinded Major Gordon for a moment, shot to the ground just in front of the garden fence; the earth opened, ploughed up for yards on either side by the red bolt, and then, while a dense smoke rose, or seemed to the dizzy eyesight to rise from the spot, the house apparently rocked to its foundations, and the firmament shook, while peal on peal reverberated into the distance, as if thousands of artillery wagons were jolting at full gallop down the pavement of heaven.
Involuntarily Major Gordon sprang back from the window, while the servant girl, who had been waiting on him, ran screaming from the room, crying that the end of the world had come. Then a rushing sound was heard, and a burst of rain followed, as if the windows of the sky had been opened, the rain dancing on the road in huge drops, and hissing as though it fell on a furnace. Hail was soon mixed with the descending water, which now poured down in sheeted cataracts, and with the roar of an avalanche. The icy particles, as big as hazel-nuts, rattled on the roof like buckshot, cracked the frail glass of the window-panes, and heaped themselves up in the ruts, like pebbles left by a mountain torrent. The trees once more bent in the driving gale, and the rain, swept almost horizontally along, smoked over the fast land and vanished in clouds of gray mist across the distant marshes.
For more than an hour, the rain continued to fall. The fury of the tempest, however, began to subside long before that period had elapsed. At last Major Gordon ventured out. The storm had crossed the country diagonally, and was now moving towards the Atlantic, its gloomy mass extending along the eastern horizon and far up towards the zenith, black as a funeral hearse and procession. No sable pall could have descended more wall-like, over the salt marshes and river below the Neck, than did the ebon clouds of the tempest. Continually, down this inky curtain, crinkled the zig-zag lightning, its white-heat blaze irradiating all around for an instant, and then leaving it seemingly duskier than before. Wherever the storm came down, in this way, on the river, a murky glare fringed its lower edge, diffusing a ghostly reflection on the troubled waves in front of it. Every few minutes the thunder boomed from out of this black ominous mass, sounding fainter as the storm receded, however, until at last it subsided into a low, sullen growl, as when a baffled lion retires reluctantly into the night before the hunters.
Suddenly, around the nearest bend of the river, a fleet of boats was seen advancing towards the Neck. The rowers were evidently men-of-wars men; while intermingled among them were the red coats of British soldiers and the caps of British marines. The whole number of the boats was not less than thirty, and Major Gordon, at a hasty glance, estimated the entire force of the assailants at nearly a thousand.
The enemy had approached undetected, under cover of the tempest, and in consequence of having no sails; and was now within a quarter of a mile. Not a minute was to be lost in preparing for defence. Our hero, therefore, hurriedly ordered the alarm to be sounded, and began to marshal his men, eager to do the best he could to avert the consequences of this surprise.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE PURSUIT
“White as a white sail on a dusky sea,
When half the horizon’s clouded and half free,
Fluttering between the dim wave and the sky,
Is hope’s last gleam in man’s extremity.” —Byron.
“Hope, for a time,
Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
And it looks flourishing—a little while—
Til passed.” —Miss London.
It will be remembered that we left Kate a few chapters back, about to be embarked on the river.
Clouds had been hovering, all the latter part of the morning, around the horizon; and about noon these had collected into the thunder-storm, which we have seen pass over Chestnut Neck. Kate and her captors, however, escaped the tempest, it being almost an hour in advance of them.