The whole country around, with all its terrified population running about in confusion and dismay, were for the moment made as clear and distinct to the eye as if it were noonday, with this difference, that the scene borrowed from the red and sheeted flashes a wild and spectral character which the light of day never gives.

In fact, the human figures, as they ran hurriedly to and fro, resembled those images which present themselves to the imagination in some frightful dream.

Nay, the very cattle in the fields could be seen, in those flashing glimpses, huddled up together in some sheltered corner, and cowering with terror at this awful uproar of the elements.

It is a very strange, but still a well-known fact, that neither man nor beast wishes to be alone during a thunder-storm.

Contiguity to one's fellow creatures seems, by some unaccountable instinct, to lessen the apprehension of danger to one individual when it is likely to be shared by many, a feeling which makes the coward in the field of battle fight as courageously as the man who is naturally brave.
The tempest had not yet diminished any of its power; so far from that, it seemed as if a night-battle of artillery was going on, and raging still with more violence in the clouds.