Now and then a peal awakened us, and
made us conscious of the electric battle that was raging, and of the
floods that dashed upon the stanch canvas over our heads.
We lay
upon india-rubber cloths, placed between our blankets and the soil.
For a while they excluded the water to admiration; but when at length
it accumulated and began to run over the edges, they served equally
well to retain it, so that toward the end of the night we were
unconsciously reposing in small pools of rain.
On finally awaking in the morning the prospect was not a cheerful
one. The rain no longer poured in torrents; but it pattered with a
quiet pertinacity upon the strained and saturated canvas. We
disengaged ourselves from our blankets, every fiber of which
glistened with little beadlike drops of water, and looked out in vain
hope of discovering some token of fair weather. The clouds, in lead-
colored volumes, rested upon the dismal verge of the prairie, or hung
sluggishly overhead, while the earth wore an aspect no more
attractive than the heavens, exhibiting nothing but pools of water,
grass beaten down, and mud well trampled by our mules and horses.
Our companions' tent, with an air of forlorn and passive misery, and
their wagons in like manner, drenched and woe-begone, stood not far
off. The captain was just returning from his morning's inspection of
the horses. He stalked through the mist and rain, with his plaid
around his shoulders; his little pipe, dingy as an antiquarian relic,
projecting from beneath his mustache, and his brother Jack at his
heels.
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