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From the steamer one could see neither the water, nor the shore, nor the sky; a leaden-gray gloominess enwrapped it on all sides; devoid of shadings, painfully monotonous, the gloominess was motionless, it oppressed the steamer with immeasurable weight, slackened its movements and seemed as though preparing itself to swallow it even as it was swallowing the sounds.
A leaden-gray dome of cloud had closed in over the morning sky and the feeling of snow was in the air. There was only a dull flush of red in the east to show the night had been frostily clear. Ike raised a great shout to let his neighbors know he was in the field. Councill, with a fork over his shoulder, was on his way down the lane to help a neighbor thresh.
Verner's estimation. But he laughed with John; laughed as merrily as his heavy heart would allow him. It was quite a wintry day, telling of the passing autumn. The skies were leaden-gray; the dead leaves rustled on the paths; and the sighing wind swept through the trees with a mournful sound. Void of brightness, of hope, it all looked, as did Lionel Verner's fortunes.
Meanwhile the aspect of things in the new Empire had become very different. Men breathed the oppressive air with laboring breasts; the bright dawn which promised so glorious a day had, been followed by sullen mists, and the blue sky had disappeared behind heavy, leaden-gray clouds, through which no comforting ray of sunshine pierced.
Yet it was a different life. Gatun had changed. Even her concrete light-house was winking all night now up among the I. C. C. dwellings. The breeze from off the Caribbean was heavy and lifeless. The landscape looked wet and lush and rampant, of a deep-seated green, and instead of the china-blue skies the dull, leaden-gray heavens seemed to hang low and heavy overhead, like a portending fate.
At that moment the distant rumbling roar of thunder sounded dismally over the leaden-gray, white-capped water; and the wind, rising instantly into a fierce gale, hurled the dark storm-clouds across the sky, blotting the lurid glow of sunset and mantling the heavens above her in its dusky folds.
In ten minutes the canvas was up, the beds rolled, the panniers protected, the food stored safely; but they were none too soon, for the thick gray veil of rain, which had clothed the loftiest crags for half an hour, swung out over the water leaden-gray under its folds and with a roar which began in the tall pines a roar which deepened, hushed only when the thunder crashed resoundingly from crag to crest the tempest fell upon the camp and the world of sun and odorous pine vanished almost instantly, and a dark, threatening, and forbidding world took its place.
In the morning water from the tanks is expelled and the boat rises to greet a smiling sea. Also to greet a grim destroyer. The war-ship sees her as she comes up from a distance of perhaps a mile away. All steam is crowded on while the leaden-gray fighter the one craft that the submarine fears makes for her prey. Sharp orders ring through the U-boat.
It was almost five in the afternoon: cold, dismal, leaden-gray was the sky the darkness already coming on. Fred sat listlessly watching the great snow feathers, as they slowly sailed down from the sky. Now he heard gay laughs, as groups of merry children passed; and then he started, as he saw some woman in a black bonnet, and thought she looked like his mother.
It was a hopelessly wet day, with a perpetual drizzling rain and a leaden-gray sky; weather which seemed to harmonise well enough with the pervading gloom of Gilbert's thoughts as he stood by the fire, leaning against an angle of the mantelpiece, and watching Marian's needle moving monotonously in and out of the canvas.
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