The night had “a haggard look like a sick thing, and there came finally an utter expiration of air from the whole heaven in the form of a slow breeze, which might have been likened to a death,” writes Thomas Hardy in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874).
A storm is on the way, and farmer Gabriel Oak is securing the harvest. “A light flapped over the scene, as if reflected from phosphorescent wings crossing the sky, and a rumble filled the air.”
A second peal was noisy. “Then there came a third flash. Manoeuvres 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 as distinct as 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.”
A fourth flash delivered 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 had fallen as yet.”
