In circling tones and semitones of wrath it volleyed
gradually through the dark ravines, and, startled by the sound, the two
travelers, roused for the first time from their natural engrossment in
the common doings of the _wu-pan_,[C] saw the reflection of the sun on
the waters, now turned to a livid murkiness, deepening with a
threatening ink-like aspect as the river rushed voluminously past our
tiny floating haven. Strangely silenced were we by this weird terror,
and watched and listened, chained to the deck by a thousand mingled
fears and fascinations, which breathed upon our nerves like a chill
wind. As we became accustomed then to the yellow darkness, we beheld
about the landscape a spectral look, and the sepulchral sound of the
moving thunder seemed the half-muffled clang of some great iron-tongued
funeral bell. Then came the rain, introduced swiftly by the deafening
clatter of another thunder crash that made one stagger like a ship in a
wild sea, and we strained our eyes to gaze into a visionary chasm
cleaved in twain by the furious lightning. Playing upon the face of the
unruffled river, with a brilliancy at once awful and enchanting, this
singular flitting and wavering of the heavenly electricity, as it
flashed haphazardly around all things, threw about one an illumination
quite indescribable.
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