. The
action barred the road and fields before Stafford. He watched it a
moment, then turned aside and mounted the rise of ground to Pelham's
guns. A great lightning-flash lit them, ranged above him. All their wet
metal gleamed; about them moved the gunners; a man with a lifted sponge
staff looked an unearthly figure against the fantastic castles and
battlements, the peaks and abysses of the boiling clouds. The light
vanished; Stafford came level with the guns in the dusk.

Pelham welcomed him. "'Trust in God and keep your powder dry,' eh,
major? It's the kind of storm you read about--Hello! they've brought up
another battery--"

Stafford dismounted. One of the guns had the vent so burned and enlarged
that it was useless. It rested cold and silent beside its bellowing
fellows. Stafford seated himself on the limber, and watched the double
storm. It raged above the little hill, with its chain lightnings, with
wind, with reverberations of thunder; and it raged below, between some
thousands of grey and blue figures, small, small, in the dusk, shadowy
manikins sending from metal tubes glow-worm flashes! He sat, with his
chin in his hand, pondering the scene.

Pelham came heavily into action. There was a blue battery on the
opposite hill. The two spoke in whispers beneath the storm. The gunners,
now in darkness, now in the vivid lightning, moved about the guns. Now
they bent low, now they stood upright. The officer gestured to them and
they to each other. Several were killed or wounded; and as now this
section, now that, was more deeply engaged, there was some shifting
among the men, occasional changes of place. The dusk increased; it was
evident that soon night and the storm would put an end to the battle.
Stafford, watching, made out that even now the blue and grey forms in
the tossing woods and boggy meadows were showing less and less their
glow-worm fires, were beginning to move apart. The guns above them
boomed more slowly, with intervals between their speech. The thunder
came now, not in ear-splitting cracks but with long rolling peals, with
spaces between filled only by the wind and the rain. The human voice
might be heard, and the officers shouted, not gestured their orders. The
twilight deepened. The men about the gun nearest Stafford looked but
shadows, bending, leaning across, rising upright. They talked, however,
and the words were now audible. "Yes, if you could handle
lightning--take one of them zigzags and t