Chapter Forty Four.
Out in the Storm.
Though clear and placid had been the sky when the two colonels stood by the Buckstone, in a few hours after it was all clouded. Night had descended, but in addition to its natural darkness, the white fleecy cumuli along the western horizon had turned black at the setting of the sun; then rolled upward, overspreading heaven’s whole canopy as with a pall. But the obscurity was not continuous. The extreme sultriness of the day had disturbed the electrical equilibrium of the atmosphere, resulting in a thunderstorm of unusual violence. At intervals vivid sheets of lightning illumined the firmament, while red zig-zagging bolts, like arrows on fire, pierced the opaque clouds, bringing down rain as at the Deluge.
Between the flashes all was darkness; so dense that a traveller on the Forest roads must needs stop till the blaze came again, else run the risk of straying from the track, possibly to bring up against the trunk of a tree. But it was a night on which no traveller would think of venturing forth, and one already on the road would make for the nearest shelter.
Yet were there traveller abroad, or at least men on horseback, who neither sought this nor seemed to regard the raging elements. About a mile from High Meadow House, on the Coleford Road, a party of four might be seen seated in the saddle under a spreading tree. That they were not sheltering from the rain could be told by its pouring down upon them through the leaves quickly as elsewhere, and their being already wet to the skin. Shadow, for concealment, was evidently their object, though at intervals the lightning interfered with it. But they were in such position as to command a view of the road, and any one coming along it, before being themselves observed. As now and then the blue electric light gleamed around them, it could be seen that they were in uniform—an officer and three common troopers, one with trumpet in hand—while their attitude of listening proclaimed them on picket duty. A vidette it was, stationed to watch the approaches and give warning to a larger force.
Another might have been found at no great distance off, in a sequestered glade of the forest, some hundreds of horsemen, who, as the party under the tree, were all in their saddles, and alike disregarding the rain. Silent as spectres were they, here and there only a muttered word, with the champing of bits, and occasionally the louder clink of scabbard against stirrup as some horse shied at the blinding flash.
They, too, seemed listening, as indeed were they—especially a group of officers near the outgoing of the glade—listening for a signal preconcerted, and expected to come from the trumpeter under the tree.
Nor were these the only soldiers abroad and voluntarily exposing themselves to that drenching storm. While it was at its worst, a party of Horse issued out of Monmouth, and, crossing the Wye bridge, took the route up Kymin Hill. A small body it was, about forty in all, with but two officers—he who commanded and a cornet, their arms and accoutrements, as the light caparison of their horses, proclaiming them on scout.
As the lightning flashed upon a banneret carried by the cornet, it could be seen to bear the emblem of a crown, while other specialities of uniform and equipment betokened the little troop as belonging to the army of the King, and therefore hostile to those halted in the forest glade, whose insignia told them to be of the opposite party.