There was no wind--no rain; and the air was as hushed as if it slept
over chaos in the infancy of a new creation.
Among the various objects displayed, instant by instant, by the rapid
lightning to the eyes of Hermanric, the most easily and most distinctly
visible was the broad surface of the rifted wall. The large, loose
stones, scattered here and there at its base, and the overhanging lid of
its broad rampart, became plainly though fitfully apparent in the brief
moments of their illumination. The lightning had played for some time
over that structure of the fortifications, and the bare ground that
stretched immediately beyond them, when the smooth prospect which it
thus gave by glimpses to view, was suddenly chequered by a flight of
birds appearing from one of the lower divisions of the wall, and
flitting uneasily to and fro at one spot before its surface.
As moment after moment the lightning continued to gleam, so the black
forms of the birds were visible to the practised eye of the Goth--
perceptible, yet evanescent, as sparks of fire or flakes of snow--
whirling confusedly and continually about the spot whence they had
evidently been startled by some unimaginable interruption.
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