More than once there were intervals of sudden clearness in the air. For minutes at a time they could see, even after the blinding flash of a javelin of lightning, every object outside their sheltering place; then suddenly all would be blotted out. At such moments it seemed as if the blackness above them was solid--a vast mountain of unhewn marble falling down upon them. They had the impression of feeling the awful weight of its mass beginning to crush them. They became breathless--gasping.
Once a flash fell close to them, and there was a noise of splintering wood and the hiss of water into which a red-hot bar has been dipped. A second afterward a blazing brand was flung in front of them, and the smoke hung dense in the heavy air. By the light that was cast around they saw that one of the trees growing on the little mound close to them had been struck and hurled where it lay.
It blazed high for a few minutes, and then the girl cried out. She had got upon her feet, though forced to keep her head bent. He thought that she was pointing out to him the thing that had happened; but in a moment he perceived that her eyes were fixed upon some object beyond the mound that had been struck. It was, however, only when the next flash came that he saw out there the figure of a man--he recognised him: it was Pritchard.
He stood bareheaded with his sackcloth garment clinging to him--the lightning was reflected from it as if it had been made of steel, for the water was streaming down its folds--on the summit of the rocks that were piled together on the slope of the bank not twenty yards away. He was gesticulating, but his bare arms were above his head.
So much Wesley saw in the single glimpse that was allowed to him. After the flash the darkness swallowed him up once more; but even before the next flash came he was visible, though faintly, by the light of the blazing tree, for the trunk had not fallen directly between where he was standing and the shelter. The red light flickered over his body, and showed his attitude--his hands were now clasped over his head, and he was facing the quarter whence the storm was coming. Then there fell another torrent of rain and hail, and he was hidden by that watery sheet for some minutes. Suddenly, as before, the rain ceased, and there was another interval of clearness, that showed him standing with his arms extended. And when the thunder peal rolled away his voice was heard calling out passionately, though his words were indistinct; they were smothered in the noise of the thousand torrents of the Tor.