Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

BULLER.

I felt a drop of rain on the back of my hand.

SEWARD.

It must have been, then, from your nose. There will be no rain this week. But a breath of air there is somewhere – for the mirror is dimmed, and the vision gone.

NORTH.

The drop was not from his nose, Seward, for here are three – and clear, pure drops too – on my Milton. I should not be at all surprised if we were to have a little rain.

SEWARD.

Odd enough. I cannot conjecture where it comes from. It must be dew.

BULLER.

Who ever heard of dew dropping in large fat globules at meridian on a summer's day? It is getting very close and sultry. The interior must be, as Wordsworth says, "Like a Lion's den." Did you whisper, sir?

NORTH.

No. But something did. Look at the quicksilver, Buller.

BULLER.

Thermometer 85. Barometer I can say nothing about – but that it is very low indeed. A long way below Stormy.

NORTH.

What colour would you call that Glare about the Crown of Cruachan? Yellow?

SEWARD.

You may just as well call it yellow as not. I never saw such a colour before – and don't care though I never see such again – for it is horrid. That is a – Glare.

NORTH.

Cowper says grandly,

He is speaking of tempests in the moral world. You know the passage – it is a fine one – so indeed is the whole Epistle – Table-Talk. I am a bit of a Poet myself in smelling thunder. Early this morning I set it down for mid-day – and it is mid-day now.

BULLER.

Liker Evening.

NORTH.

Dimmish and darkish, certainly – but unlike Evening. I pray you look at the Sun.

BULLER.

What about him?

NORTH.

Though unclouded – he seems shrouded in his own solemn light – expecting thunder.

BULLER.

There is not much motion among the clouds.

NORTH.

Not yet. Merely what in Scotland we call a carry – yet that great central mass is double the size it was ten minutes ago – the City Churches are crowding round the Cathedral – and the whole assemblage lies under the shadow of the Citadel – with battlements and colonnades at once Fort and Temple.

BULLER.

Still some blue sky. Not very much. But some.

NORTH.

Cruachan! you are changing colour.

BULLER.

Grim – very.

NORTH.

The Loch's like ink. I could dip my pen in it.

SEWARD.

We are about to have thunder.

NORTH.

Weather-wise wizard – we are. That mutter was thunder. In five seconds you will hear some more. One – two – three – four – there; that was a growl. I call that good growling – sulky, sullen, savage growling, that makes the heart of Silence quake.

SEWARD.

And mine.

NORTH.

What? Dying away! Some incomprehensible cause is turning the thunderous masses round towards Appin.

SEWARD.

And I wish them a safe journey.

NORTH.

All right. They are coming this way – all at once – the whole Thunderstorm. Flash – roar.

Who but Willy could have said that ?

SEWARD.

Who said what?

NORTH.

How ghastly all the trees!

SEWARD.

I see no trees – nor anything else.

NORTH.

How can you, with that Flying Dutchman over your eyes?

BULLER.

I gave him my handkerchief – for at this moment I know his head is like to rend. I wish I had kept it to myself; but no use – the lightning is seen through lids and hands, and would be through stone walls.

NORTH.

Each flash has, of course, a thunder-clap of its own – if we knew where to look for it; but, to our senses, all connexion between cause and effect is lost – such incessant flashings – and such multitudinous outbreaks – and such a continuous roll of outrageous echoes!

BULLER.

Coruscation – explosion – are but feeble words.

NORTH.

The Cathedral's on Fire.

BULLER.

I don't mind so much those wide flarings among the piled clouds, as these gleams – oh!

NORTH.

Where art thou, Cruachan! Ay – methinks I see thee – methinks I do not – thy Three Peaks may not pierce the masses that now oppress thee – but behind the broken midway clouds, those black purple breadths of solid earth are thine – thine those unmistakeable Cliffs – thine the assured beauty of that fearless Forest – and may the lightning scathe not one single tree!

BULLER.

Nor man.

NORTH.

This is your true total Eclipse of the Sun. Day, not night, is the time for thunder and lightning. Night can be dark of itself – nay, cannot help it; but when Day grows black, then is the blackness of darkness in the Bright One terrible; – and terror – Burke said well – is at the heart of the sublime. The Light, such as it is, sets off the power of the lightning – it pales to that flashing – and is forgotten in Fire. It smells of hell.

SEWARD.

It is constitutional in the Sewards. North, I am sick.

NORTH.

Give way to gasping – and lie down – nothing can be done for you. The danger is not —

SEWARD.

I am not afraid – I am faint.

NORTH.

You must speak louder, if you expect to be heard by ears of clay. Peals is not the word. "Peals on peals redoubled" is worse. There never was – and never will be a word in any language – for all that .

BULLER.

Unreasonable to expect it. Try twenty – in twenty languages.

NORTH.

Buller, you may count ten individual deluges – besides the descent of three at hand – conspicuous in the general Rain, which without them would be Rain sufficient for a Flood. Now the Camp has it – and let us enter the Pavilion. I don't think there is much wind here – yet far down the black Loch is silently whitening with waves like breakers; for here the Rain alone rules, and its rushing deadens the retiring thunder. The ebbing thunder! Still louder than any sea on any shore – but a diminishing loudness, though really vast, seems quelled; and, losing its power over the present, imagination follows it not into the distant region where it may be raging as bad as ever. Buller?

BULLER.

What?

NORTH.

How's Seward?

SEWARD.

Much better. It was very, very kind of you, my dear sir, to carry me in your arms, and place me in your own Swing-chair. The change of atmosphere has revived me – but the Boys!

NORTH.

The Boys – why, they went to the Black Mount to shoot an eagle, and see a thunder-storm, and long before this they have had their heart's desire. There are caves, Seward, in Buachail-Mor; and one recess I know – not a cave – but grander far than any cave – near the Fall of Eas-a-Bhrogich – far down below the bottom of the Fall, which in its long descent whitens the sable cliffs. Thither leads a winding access no storm can shake. In that recess you sit rock-surrounded – but with elbow-room for five hundred men – and all the light you have – and you would not wish for more – comes down upon you from a cupola far nearer heaven than that hung by Michael Angelo.

SEWARD.

The Boys are safe.

NORTH.

Or the lone House of Dalness has received them – hospitable now as of yore – or the Huntsman's hut – or the Shepherd's shieling – that word I love, and shall use it now – though shieling it is not, but a comfortable cottage – and the dwellers there fear not the thunder and the lightning – for they know they are in His hands – and talk cheerfully in the storm.