How can I describe it

Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst lik... Read More October 11, 2016

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K0-Gpslygm4/V_ujuuGe-PI/AAAAAAAAAJs/_94ffFH6kzc7JOu8Z7MsXy3VdZq7LWQGwCLcB/s1600/pexels-photo-105234.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K0-Gpslygm4/V_ujuuGe-PI/AAAAAAAAAJs/_94ffFH6kzc7JOu8Z7MsXy3VdZq7LWQGwCLcB/s1600/pexels-photo-105234.jpeg" /></a></div><br />Close on its apparition, and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead.  The horse took the bit between his teeth and bolted. A moderate incline runs towards the foot of Maybury Hill, and down this we clattered.  Once the lightning had begun, it went on in as rapid a succession of flashes as I have ever seen.  The thunderclaps, treading one on the heels of another and with a strange crackling accompaniment, sounded more like the working of a gigantic electric machine than the usual detonating reverberations.  The flickering light was blinding and confusing, and a thin hail smote gustily at my face as I drove down the slope. At first I regarded little but the road before me, and then abruptly my attention was arrested by something that was moving rapidly down the opposite slope of Maybury Hill.  At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement.  It was an elusive vision--a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright. And this Thing I saw!  How can I describe it?  A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.  A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer.  Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground?  That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.</div>