CHAPTER X
THE THUNDERSTORM
Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est.
—Petronius Arbiter.
If you consider well the events of life, shipwreck is
everywhere.
After luncheon the doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling of distant thunder made him pause. They reascended the Tower, to reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged as to afford a panoramic view.
The thunder muttered far off, but there was neither rain nor visible lightning.
'The storm is at a great distance,' said the doctor, 'and it seems to be passing away on the verge of the sky.'
But on the opposite horizon appeared a mass of dark-blue cloud, which rose rapidly, and advanced in the direct line of the Tower. Before it rolled a lighter but still lurid volume of vapour, which curled and wreathed like eddying smoke before the denser blackness of the unbroken cloud.
Simultaneously followed the flashing of lightning, the rolling of thunder, and a deluge of rain like the bursting of a waterspout.
They sate some time in silence, watching the storm as it swept along, with wind, and driving rain, and whirling hail, bringing for a time almost the darkness of night, through which the forked lightning poured a scarcely interrupted blaze.