around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful
reverberation. The lightning flashed all night, playing with its livid
glare upon the neighboring trees, revealing the vast expanse of the
plain, and then leaving us shut in as by a palpable wall of darkness.

It did not disturb us much. Now and then a peal awakened us, and made us
conscious of the electric battle that was raging, and of the floods that
dashed upon the stanch canvas over our heads. We lay upon india-rubber
cloths, placed between our blankets and the soil. For a while they
excluded the water to admiration; but when at length it accumulated and
began to run over the edges, they served equally well to retain it, so
that toward the end of the night we were unconsciously reposing in small
pools of rain.

On finally awaking in the morning the prospect was not a cheerful one.
The rain no longer poured in torrents; but it pattered with a quiet
pertinacity upon the strained and saturated canvas. We disengaged
ourselves from our blankets, every fiber of which glistened with little
beadlike drops of water, and looked out in vain hope of discovering some
token of fair weather. The clouds, in lead-colored volumes, rested upon
the dismal verge of the prairie, or hung sluggishly overhead, while the
earth wore an aspect no more attractive than the heavens, exhibiting
nothing but pools of water, grass beaten down, and mud well trampled by
our mules and horses. Our companions' tent, with an air of forlorn
and passive misery, and their wagons in like manner, drenched and
woe-begone, stood not far off. The captain was just returning from his
morning's inspection of the horses. He stalked through the mist and
rain, with his plaid around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an
antiquarian relic, projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother
Jack at his heels.