Rushlight

“ In the midst of it we would suddenly get on our feet and shout and clap our hands, and the flock would rise and rise and keep rising, farther and farther down the river, until the sky was darkened and the twilight became night, while the rush of the million wings swelled into rolling thunder. ”

“ It was one of those clear moonlight nights that make every peak and pinnacle on the mountain ranges stand out as clear and distinct against the cold sky as they do in the daytime; a moon that shames the headlight, and shows the twin threads of steel running away off yonder and meeting and going on together where the darkness begins. ”

“ Hour followed hour and day followed day, remorselessly, while we lay there, hours and days which we could measure only by the steady circling of the sunlight that slanted through our tiny windows. With each night came cold, a bitter cold that penetrated to our bones, and for all the red splendor of the dying sun above, the days were far from warm. ”

“ PART II RIVAL SLEUTH-HOUNDS
(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)
The half-hour that follows breakfast, when the fire has, so to speak, got into its stride, and the morning pipe throws up its clouds of incense, is, perhaps, the most agreeable in the whole day. Especially so when a sombre sky, brooding over the town, hints at streets pervaded by the chilly morning air, and hoots from protesting tugs upon the river tell of lingering mists, the legacy of the lately-vanished night. ”

“ When you’ve sought the kiss of the morning breeze
And the rose of the morning sky,
And the long brown road, where the tired spirit’s load
Slips off as the leagues go by!
Oh, there’s many a one who teaches that the shining river-reaches
Are the place to spend a long June day;
But give me the whirling wheel and a boat of air and steel
[30] To float upon the King’s highway!
Oh, give me the kiss of the morning breeze
And the rose of the morning sky,
And the long brown road, where the tired spirit’s load
Slips off as the leagues go by! ”

“ A single day amid surroundings where there are such infinite possibilities of change in cloud and storm, heat and cold, the dazzling glare of noon, or the calm romantic light of a full moon, and the slow progress of the seasons, gives but one picture, a single mood from out a thousand, and it may perchance be the very worst of all. ”

“ The sun always rises and sets very suddenly in the tropics. There is no “rosy blush of morn to herald the coming of a newborn day,” and so on, nor is there a gorgeous glow in the west when the twilight comes; but old Sol gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night without any ceremony, and with a startling suddenness. You awaken at the noise of carts in the street, find it dark as midnight, with the stars more brilliant than you ever saw them at home, turn over, doze a little, and in a few moments jump up, supposing it to be noonday. ”

“ It was our habit to rise very early and to travel very late, but to halt during the intolerable heat of the afternoon, when, for want of trees, we would crouch in the shadow of a sandhill, or, if that were wanting, behind our own camels and merchandise, in order to escape from the insufferable glare of the sun. ”

“ Dawn is a mingling of stirs: whistle of boat in the river fog, rattle of wagon in the gray cool mists turning and twisting, footbeat solitary on the damp hard pavement—this is dawn coming by the window into my room, to my face. ”

“ When daylight was once established there was no more real night, though the sun made thirty-seven more and more shallow dips below the horizon before rising spirally through the heavens in perpetual day. ”

“ It was then after one o’clock—in those latitudes a time that is neither day nor night, nor morning, nor evening, but a ghostlike hour, in which all shapes, all things, the very sky and earth, are strange to human beings. ”

“ Hour after hour, oftentimes by night, the march continued, through rain, or snow, or fog; up steep and slippery ascents, or down sharp depths where foothold could hardly be found. On and on the men stumbled, hungry, thirsty, weary, half asleep, not a few shoeless and lame, many a one dropping through weakness by the roadside, never to rise again. ”

“ Even at noon, when the sea-like expanse of storm-drifted snow is flushed faintly by the red, gloomy light of the low-hanging sun, it depresses the spirits and chills the imagination with its suggestions of infinite dreariness and solitude ”

“ At another time, perhaps, one sun will be above the horizon for half the round of the clock, the other taking the other half—no night during that period, simply so many hours of red and so many hours of blue light, and perhaps the sunrise of the one coincides with the sunset of the other. ”

“ Or, possibly, you arise very early in the morning; totter down stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o’clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach the top of the ascent in the first hour of the day. ”

“ In the spring, all these "divides," as well as the bottoms, are clothed with luxuriant verdure; but in summer, the rainless atmosphere there sweeps over them, like a sirocco, and everything soon perishes. At night, we found the air grew rapidly cold, and we shivered under our blankets; but in the middle of the day, the sun fairly blazed from a cloudless sky, and I have seldom felt its effects more severely. When we struck the Overland Route, we found its roadway a mass of impalpable dust, black and stifling. ”

“ The day has closed in by now, the darkness has fallen, and the moon is rising. We travel over a kind of marsh to a promontory that seems to have the river running about it. The long stretch of dark road is jealously watched. ”

“ I woke up early, when it was just light, And everything was very strange and still; The wind was blowing, as it blows at night; Beyond the trees, the road lay calm and white, Where, all day, noisy wagons roll downhill. ”

“ What an immeasurable interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last wave of daylight on the eastern slopes! It is wonderful how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from being aware of the one we become aware of the other. ”

“ The period is one, comparatively speaking, of repose and tranquillity,—the storm sleeps and the winds are still, the currents set in one direction, and we may sail from isle to isle over a sunny sea, dallying with the time, secure of a cloudless sky and of the greetings of innocence and love wheresoever the breeze may waft us. ”

“ The closed jalousies, the cloudless sky, the unruffled water, over which no boat is seen to glide, the universal stillness, all tell that it is noon—the noon of Italy, and truly the northern midnight is not a season of such unbroken repose. Looking at this scene, and fancying to myself the lethargic life of ease, which not even thought disturbs, of these people, I half wonder within me how had it fared with us of England beneath such a sun, and in such a clime. ”

“ Night journeys might be very well, in a way, during the balmy days of summer, when light airs and sweet exhalations from flower and leaf gave pleasing features to the scenes, but in the cold nights of winter, in lashing rain, in storms of wind and snow, [Pg 46] the unfortunate passengers and the guard and coachman must have had terrible times of it. ”

“ From six to seven o'clock is a busy time; breakfast is to be eaten, the tents struck, the wagons loaded, and the teams yoked and brought up in readiness to be attached to their respective wagons. All know when, at seven o'clock, the signal to march sounds, that those not ready to take their proper places in the line of march must fall into the dusty rear for the day. ”

“ I never in my life have known an evening pass as slowly as that one. Towards nightfall a wind sprang up, and as the darkness deepened it blew harder and harder, until a terrible gale was whistling over the moor. As I looked out of my window I could not catch a glimpse of a star, and the black clouds were flying low across the heavens. ”

“ About ten o'clock the sky became as black as ink—a heavy blow was comin' on, and we just had time to stow our loose gear up tidy, when the wind came down from between the mountains with a roar like thunder, and away went the roofs of the huts, and with it nearly everything around us that was not too heavy to be carried away. ”

“ The sun is now declining with a warm and bright light on all things, a light which answers to the late afterglow of the year, when, in the fall, wrapping his cloak about him, the traveler goes home at night to prepare for winter. This is the foreglow of the year, when the walker goes home at eve to dream of summer. ”

“ The drowsy heat of the afternoon invites to slumber as the cool hours before the noon of night invite to music, reverie, or sentimental conversation, and our midsummer-night dreams would be no worse for a moonlight ramble on the mountains or in the garden-suburbs of a large city. ”

“ Then as the spring drew near, if, indeed, such a word as spring be at all applicable to an abode of utter dreariness, a faint twilight would be just discernible. The illuminated portion of the sky would move round and round the horizon each twenty-four hours, gradually becoming more and more conspicuous, until at last the edge of the sun appeared. ”

“ Eleven o’clock at night is the great supper-time of the working classes; then, by the steady and industrious mechanic, the final calumet is smoked, the borrowed newspaper read, the topics of the day, the prospects of the coming week, discussed with the cheery and hard-working helpmate who sits by the side of her horny-handed lord, fills his pipe, pours out his beer, and darns the little children’s hose. ”

“ By timing the hours of travel so that a start is secured before daylight, and halting by the middle of the afternoon, the rains are avoided, as they invariably fall between noon and sunset, except at the beginning of the season. ”

“ Now comes the noontide hour—of all the hours, nearest akin to midnight, for each has its own calmness and repose. Soon, however, the world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day, when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. ”

“ When the eye longs for the light, and the moon rises behind the firs, reflecting their tapering tops against the bright rock opposite, it appears to us like the dead hand of a clock which was once wound up, and will some day cease to strike. ”

“ As the midnight approaches, the southern cross begins to bend, the whirling worlds change their places, and with starry finger-points the Almighty marks the passage of time upon the dial of the universe, and though no bell may beat the glad tidings, the lookout knows that the midnight is passing and that relief and rest are close at hand. Let the people everywhere take heart of hope, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing, and joy cometh with the morning. ”

“ A neighbouring clock is striking two. The night is cloudy. There will be no moon, and not a star to be seen. It is an easy thing to manage the rest; and, well beyond the prison walls, it cannot be far to that goal of his longing—the sea. ”

“ Night, as though it had leaped upon the back of the storm and had ridden hitherward on the wings of the wind all impatience to defy the laws of daylight, was in truth mistress of the mountains a full hour or more before the invisible sun's allotted time of setting. ”

“ At night the moon hung in the starless sky like a globe of blood, and day by day the dimness of the air increased. The cloud took no form of cloud, and not a sound came through it except for the voice of the water, and the occasional roll and clangour of the trains. ”

“ In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in the morning to nine at night. But in the winter it is too cold. The hands do not early get over the stiffness. Then you must work later—till after midnight sometimes. ”

“ The rain is slow but ceaseless, and the hours are days to the unemployed mind. We hum a tune and whistle to hurry time, but the indicating fingers of the tediously ticking clock seems stationary, and time waits for fair weather. The ladies love their chambers, and sleeping away the laggard hours, do not feel the oppression of a slow, continuous, lazy rain. ”

“ The monotonous tick of an old clock is the only sound, saving the longdrawn sigh of that young mother, or the quick, hollow breathing of the sleeping man. Now and then the wind whistles more shrilly through the crevices of the door, and the rain beats with greater force against the little window. ”

“ But if, on a beautiful day, mild, calm, and brilliant in sunlight, succeeding as nearly as possible to a rain warm with the south wind, at about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, a post is chosen on an eminence of a meadow or an avenue, and there, as near the ground as may be, and crouching low, the observer will look horizontally, he will perceive a series of fire-works, formed of innumerable threads launched from every direction and inclined toward the sky. ”

“ Day after day would find us surrounded by the same unbroken horizon, while, with the regularity of clockwork, at eleven o’clock every morning the piercing cold north-easterly wind would commence blowing, and continue until late in the afternoon, very often with the force of a strong gale. ”

“ It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon, the snow melts on the surface; the warmth of the sun reminds me of summer. The dog runs before us on the railroad causeway, and appears to enjoy it as much as ourselves. ”

“ Setting my face once more for the north-star, I advanced with a steady, though slow pace, for four or five nights, when I was again delayed by dark weather, and forced to remain in idleness nearly two weeks; and when the weather again became clear, I was arrested, on the second night, by a broad and rapid river, that appeared so formidable, that I did not dare to attempt its passage, until after examining it in daylight. ”