The storm.

Two days after the events of the last chapter, the brigade was making one of the traverses which have already been noticed as of frequent occurrence in the great lakes. The morning was calm and sultry. A deep stillness pervaded² nature, which tended to produce a corresponding quiescence³ in the mind, and to fill it with those indescribably solemn feelings that frequently arise before a thunderstorm. Dark, lurid⁴ clouds hung overhead in gigantic masses, piled above each other like the battlements of a dark fortress⁵, from whose ragged⁶ embrasures the artillery⁷ of heaven was about to play.

“Shall we get over in time, Louis?” asked Mr Park, as he turned to the guide, who sat holding the tiller with a firm grasp; while the men, aware of the necessity of reaching shelter ere the storm burst upon them, were bending to the oars⁸ with steady and sustained energy.

“Perhaps,” replied Louis, laconically⁹.—“Pull, lads, pull! else you’ll have to sleep in wet skins to-night.”

A low growl¹⁰ of distant thunder followed the guide’s words, and the men pulled with additional energy; while the slow, measured hiss¹² of the water, and the clank of oars, as they cut swiftly through the lake’s clear surface, alone interrupted the dead silence that ensued.

Charley and his friend conversed¹³ in low whispers; for there is a strange power in a thunderstorm, whether raging or about to break, that overawes the heart of man,—as if Nature’s God were nearer then than at other times; as if He—whose voice indeed, if listened to, speaks even in the slightest evolution of natural phenomena—were about to tread the visible earth with more than usual

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