A Midnight Adventure

It was a stormy night at the Lake End. Fierce thunder clouds hung overhead, full of incessant fire, blazing out into long streamers on the midnight sky: radiant in eccentric picturings, gloomy and grand, as is ever a war of the elements. Far to the east the horizon hung clear and bright as a silver line on the surface of the Lake; but to the west there sprung and flashed, as to the music of a restless dance, the play of the summer lightnings. Beautiful and vivid in gleams of fire the electric currents followed like animated things, sometimes leaping to the zenith, and then sinking down with a sort of caress to the ruffled waters, as if hushing the moan of the miniature sea. But in the southeast, away from the airy strife, higher and wider was the semi-circle of blue; it rose to the arch of the bow-like sky, veiling the moon that peeped from rifts of clouds. Motionless, like the scared face of a lady, it hung between the storm and the bright sky in the east. Like Artemis watching the battle of the [Titans] looked the moon in this revel of lightnings, and the gleam of the billows flashing in flame. The tremulous waters gave out a moan like a spirit in distress, and the heart felt chill as the ear took in the mournful sound. The storm rose fiercer, and the lightnings flashed in wilder desolation. Vivid and red they shot up in the sky, and the wind rose up and lashed the billows to foam—a foam that sparkled and shimmered in the red light of the sky-like molten gold.

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