As far as he could estimate by the interval between lightning and thunder- clap, the heart of the storm was still some distance off, so he felt no present concern for their safety.
The passing of the lightning left the sky again dark, but a blue flame fell downward from the tower, and, with inconceivable rapidity, running along the ground in the direction of Diana's Grove, reached the dark silent house, which in the instant burst into flame at a hundred different points.
So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.
Now and then came a gap in the lightning, and the night swallowed them up.
'No wonder,' said the man, 'with this lightning in one's eyes, by-the-by.
Sometimes one would look up to smile to another, or to snuff the feeble candle, or to glance at the lightning as it shot through the open window and fluttering curtain, or to listen to some louder peal of thunder than the rest, with a kind of momentary impatience, as if it put him out; but there they sat, with a calm indifference to everything but their cards, perfect philosophers in appearance, and with no greater show of passion or excitement than if they had been made of stone.
At the same moment the
lightning flashed into the room through the ill-closed shutters; the roar of the thunder burst over the house, and shook it to its foundation.
Within the next mile we counted six more hanging forms by the blaze of the
lightning, and altogether it was a grisly excursion.
The rain seemed now to extinguish the
lightning and the thunder, and the hall became almost dark.
As it does not appear probable that the tubes are produced by successive distinct shocks, we must believe that the
lightning, shortly before entering the ground, divides itself into separate branches.
Where is the
lightning to lick you with its tongue?
A heavy shower passed over him; distant
lightning played faintly against the fronts of the dumb houses with the shuttered shops all along the Rue de Carouge; and now and then, after the faint flash, there was a faint, sleepy rumble; but the main forces of the thunderstorm remained massed down the Rhone valley as if loath to attack the respectable and passionless abode of democratic liberty, the serious-minded town of dreary hotels, tendering the same indifferent, hospitality to tourists of all nations and to international conspirators of every shade.