“Black as a bar!” muttered Rube in reply; and then, as if not satisfied with the simile, he added, “Black as the inside o’ a buffler bull’s belly on a burnt paraira!”
The old trapper laughed heartily at the ludicrous conceit, and Garey and I could not refrain from joining in the laugh. The guerrilleros must have heard us; they must have deemed us mad!
Rube’s prognostication proved correct: the night came down dark and lowering. The leaden layer broke up into black cumulus clouds, that slowly careered across the canopy of the sky. A storm portended; and already some big drops, that shot vertically downward, could be heard plashing heavily upon our saddles. All this was to our satisfaction; but at that moment a flash of lightning illumined the whole arch of the heavens, lighting the prairie as with a thousand torches. It was none of the pale lavender-coloured light, seen in northern climes, but a brilliant blaze, that appeared to pervade all space, and almost rivalled the brightness of day.
Its sudden and unexpected appearance filled us with dismay: we recognised in it an obstacle to our designs.
“Durn the tarnal thing!” exclaimed Rube peevishly. “It ur wuss than a moon, durn it!”
“Is it going to be the quick-forky, or the long-blazey?” inquired Garey, with a reference to two distinct modes in which upon these southern prairies, the electric fluid exhibits itself.
In the former the flashes are quick and short-lived, and the intervals of darkness also of short duration. Bolts pierce the clouds in straight, lance-like shafts, or forking and zig-zag, followed by thunder in loud unequal bursts, and dashes of intermittent rain.
The other is very distinct from this; there are no shafts or bolts, but a steady blaze which fills the whole firmament with a white quivering light, lasting many seconds of time, and followed by long intervals of amorphous darkness. Such lightning is rarely accompanied by thunder, and rain is not always its concomitant, though it was this sort we now witnessed, and rain-drops were falling.
“Quick-forky!” echoed Rube, in reply to his comrade’s interrogatory; “no—dod rot it! not so bad as thet. It ur the blazey. Thur’s no thunder, don’t ’ee see? Wal! we must grope our way up atween the glimps.”
I understood why Rube preferred the “blazey;” the long intervals of darkness between the flashes might enable us to carry out our plan.