The banditti grew pale as they viewed each other’s grim visages in the blue glare of the lightning. They grew pale as death, and their "felon souls" quaked within them, for there is a terrible something in the sound of thunder, which appals most men. It seems like God’s own voice speaking in the firmament.
But Alosegui called for lights and for liquor, and pig-skins and jars were speedily set abroach; the half-ruined hall was soon illuminated by candles of all sorts and sizes, which streamed and guttered, untrimmed and unheeded, in the currents of air that passed freely through the place, although the crazy windows were covered up with boards, and stuffed with cloaks, bags of straw, &c. to keep out the wind and rain.
Assembled in the dilapidated hall, if it deserved such a name, the banditti withdrew their guards and scouts, and forgot the storm without amid the laughter and brutal uproar of their carousal. Wine and the strong heady _aguadiente_—a liquor not unlike Scottish whisky,—were flowing like water, and the noise within the Torre de los Frayles almost equalled the uproar of the elements without.
Ronald’s spirits fell, and he grew sad; he expected that there would be no attack that night, and he pitied the unfortunate soldiers who were exposed on a night-march to such a storm. From old experience he well knew the misery of such a duty. He withdrew from the scene of bandit merriment, and seeking a solitary place, watched the elemental war without, and gazed with mingled awe and pleasure on the bright streaks of forked lightning as they darted through the sky, lighting up the shattered cliffs, the mountain tops, the deep valley, and the swollen river,—displaying them vividly, tinging them all over with a pale sulphurous blue, and causing the whole scene to assume a wild and ghastly appearance. Again the thunder roared, then died away, and nought could be heard but the howling wind, and the rain rushing fiercely down from the parted clouds.
After continuing for about two hours, the storm at last began to abate, and Stuart’s hopes of freedom revived. It yet wanted some hours of midnight, but he greatly feared that the fury of such a tempest would scatter Don Alvaro’s command of horse and foot, drench them to the skin, and destroy their arms and ammunition. Yet he still continued at the loophole, watching the dispersion of the clouds, the appearance of the stars, and the increasing light of the moon as the successive shrouds of gauze-like vapour withdrew from her shining face.