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I sought refuge in the top gallery of a church with light green domes, and from here I watched the flood, first as it covered the quays, tumbling in cascades of glittering water over the high parapet, trickling in little lines and pools, then rising into sheeted levels, then billowing in waves against the walls of the house, flooding the doors and the windows, until so far as the eye could reach there were only high towers remaining above its grasp.
Much the same is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.
Yet Lidgerwood fancied that of the group circling the fire, Flemister was the one whose eyes turned oftenest toward the sheeted figures across the track; sometimes in morbid starings, but now and again with the haggard side-glance of fear. Why was the mine-owner afraid? Lidgerwood analyzed the query shrewdly. Was he implicated in the matter of the loosened rail?
Westwards and northwards the round roof and walls of cloud were shaken and the black rain hung sheeted between sky and earth. Overhead the dark tissues thinned out and lengthened. The fir trees quivered; they gave out slight creaking, crackling noises as the rain came down. It poured off each of the sloping fir branches like a jet from a tap. "We must make a dash for it," Jerrold said.
"Sure you may," said Mary kindly. "I'll be glad to have you. You'll be company. Some of those dark closets, and the bedrooms with sheeted chairs and things give me the creeps. An old house and old unused rooms are eerie-like. Sometimes I can almost hear whispers, and sighs, and things talking." "I know," said Hortense. "Everything talks chairs, and tables, and bureaus, and everything.
The shock of the quaking earth, the silent passing of the sheeted dead and the rush of the affrighted multitudes tell us that a cosmic tragedy is at hand. In a flare of lightning we see silhouetted against an angry sky three crosses at the top of a sad little hill. It is a crucifixion infinitely more real, more intense than Doré's.
Two of the sheeted visitors seized Helen again and led her softly out of the room. A sentinel had been left in the corridor, and the word was whispered that all was silent in the house; Miss Scrimp was known to be a heavy sleeper, and the French teacher was certainly absent from her room. The girls led Helen downstairs and to the outer door. This opened with a spring lock.
The trail, the main trail, that is, seemed to go straight away eastward, and, for a short distance, downward through a hollow or depression; while, up the mountain side to the left, the north, following the spur or shoulder, there were signs as of hoof tracks, half sheeted by the new-fallen snow, and through this fresh, fleecy mantlet ploughed the trooper boots in rude, insistent pursuit.
The latter was set, close-reefed, as the ship came to the wind on the larboard tack, and by the time every thing was braced up and hauled aft, on that tack, the main-top-sail was ready to be sheeted home, anew.
The fields were all sheeted up; they were tucked in among the snow, and their shape was modelled through the pliant counterpane, like children tucked in by a fond mother. The wind had made ripples and folds upon the surface, like what the sea, in quiet weather, leaves upon the sand. There was a frosty stifle in the air.