A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air. It was the first arrow from the approaching storm, and it fell wide. The second peal was noisy, with comparatively little visible lightning.
Gabriel saw a candle shining in Bathsheba’s bedroom, and soon a shadow moved to and fro upon the blind. Then there came a third flash. Manœuvres of a most extraordinary kind were going on in the vast firmamental hollows overhead.
The lightning now was the colour of silver, and gleamed in the heavens like a mailed army. Rumbles became rattles. Gabriel from his elevated position could see over the landscape at least half-a-dozen miles in front. Every hedge, bush, and tree was distinct as in a line engraving.
In a paddock in the same direction was a herd of heifers, and the forms of these were visible at this moment in the act of galloping about in the wildest and maddest confusion, flinging their heels and tails high into the air, their heads to earth.
A poplar in the immediate foreground was like an ink stroke on burnished tin. Then the picture vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that Gabriel worked entirely by feeling with his hands.
He had stuck his ricking-rod, or poignard, as it was indifferently called—a long iron lance, sharp at the extremity and polished by handling—into the stack to support the sheaves.
A blue light appeared in the zenith, and in some indescribable manner flickered down near the top of the rod. It was the fourth of the larger flashes. A moment later and there was a smack—smart, clear, and short.
Gabriel felt his position to be anything but a safe one, and he resolved to descend. Not a drop of rain