Bevis and Mark went up into the bench-room, where it was very close and sultry, and sat by the open window with the swords for Pompey bound up in two bundles and the standards, but they were half afraid no one would come for them. Their shadows were perpetually cast upon the white wall opposite as the flashes came and went. The crossbow and lance, the boomerang and knobbed clubs were visible, and all the tools on the bench. Now and then, when the violet flashes came, the lightning seemed to linger in the room, to fill it with a blaze and stop there a moment. In the darkness that followed one of these they heard a voice call "Bevis" underneath the window, and saw Phil and Val Crassus, who had come for the swords. Mark lowered the bundles out of window by a cord, but when they had got them they still stood there.
"Lightning," said Val. "It's awful." It really was very powerful. The pears on the wall, and everything however minute stood out more distinctly defined than in daytime.
"It's a mile high," said Bevis. "It won't hurt you."
"Ted wouldn't come," said Phil. "He's gone to bed, and covered his head. You don't know how it looks out in the fields, all by yourself; it's all very well for you indoors."
"I'll come with you," said Bevis directly; up he jumped and went down to them, followed by Mark.
"He's afraid," said Phil, "and so was I till Val said he would come with me. Will lightning come to brass?" The flashes were reflected from the brass rings on the standards.
"I tell you it won't hurt," said Bevis, quite sure, because his governor had said so. But when they had walked up the field and were quite away from the house and the trees which partly obstructed the view, he was amazed at the spectacle, for all the meadow was lit up; and in the sky the streamers of flame rose in and out and over each other, till you could not tell which flash was which in the confusion of lightning. Bevis became silent and fell into one of his dream states, when, as Mark said, he was like a tree. He was lost--something seemed to take him out of himself. He walked on, and they went with him, till he came to the gate opening on the shore of the New Sea.
All the broad, still water, smooth as glass, shone and gleamed, reflecting back the bright light above; and far away they saw the wood (where Bevis and Mark once wandered) as plain as at noontide.