“Yonder!” said the father, as he pointed to the tall dark pinnacle of rock, known by the country people as “the Pulpit”—“yonder!”
Sybella strained her eye to see through the dense beating rain, and at last caught sight of the huge mass, around whose summit the charged clouds were flying.
“We must cross the river in this place,” said the old man, as he suddenly checked his horse, and looked with terrified gaze on the swollen stream that came boiling and foaming over to where they stood, with branches of trees and fragments of rock rolling onward in the tide. “The youth told us of this spot.”
“Let us not hesitate, father,” cried the young girl, with a tone of firm, resolute daring she had not used before—“remember what he said, a minute may save or ruin us. Great heaven! what is that?”
A terrific shriek followed her words, and she fell with her head upon her horse's mane; a broad flash of lightning had burst from a dark cloud, and came with vivid force upon her eyeballs.
“Father, dear father, my sight is gone,” she screamed aloud, as lifting up her head she rubbed the orbs now paralyzed by the shock.
“My child, my child!” cried the old man, with the piercing shriek of a breaking heart; “look on me, look towards me. Oh, say that you can see me, now—my brain is turning.”
“Oh God, I thank thee!” said the terrified girl, as once more her vision was restored, and, dimly, objects began to form themselves before her.
With bare head and upturned eyes, the aged man looked up, and poured forth his prayer of thankfulness to heaven. The raging storm beat on his brow unfelt; his thoughts were soaring to the Throne of Mercies, and knew not earth, nor all its sorrows.
A clap of thunder at the moment broke from the dense cloud above them, and then, in quick succession, like the pealing of artillery, came several more, while the forked lightning shot to and fro, and at last, as if the very earth was riven to its centre, a low booming sound was heard amid the clouds; the darkness grew thicker, and a crash followed that shook the ground beneath them, and splashed the wild waves on every side. The spray sprung madly up, while the roaring of the stream grew louder; the clouds swept past, and the tall Pulpit rock was gone! Struck by lightning, it had rolled from its centre, and fallen across the river, the gushing waters of which poured over it in floods, and fell in white sheets of foam and spray beyond it.