A Tramps Sketches | Page 5

to put my tea things into my pack and take to the road, for it
was necessary to find a convenient night place. In a quarter of an hour
it was night. At regular intervals all along the road were the brightly lit
lamps of glow-worms; they looked like miniature street lights, the
fitting illumination of a road mostly occupied by hedgehogs.
I found a dry resting-place under a tree and laid myself out to sleep,
watching the moon who had just risen perfectly, out of the East; but I
had hardly settled myself when I was surprised by a gleam of lightning.
Turning to the west, I saw the vast array of cloud that had overtaken the

sun, coming forward into the night--eclipsing the sky.
A storm? Would it reach me? My wishes prompted comforting answers
and I lay and stared at the sky, trying to find reassurance. I did not feel
inclined to stir, but the clouds came on ominously. I marked out a
bourne across the wide sky and resolved that if the shadow crept past
certain bright planets in the north, south, and centre, I would take it as a
sign, repack my wraps, and seek shelter in a farm-house. But the clouds
came on and on. Slowly but surely the great army advanced and the
lightnings became more frequent. My sky-line was passed. I rose
sorrowfully, put all my things in the knapsack, and took the road once
again.
The lightning rushed past on the road and, blazing over the forests, lit
up the wide night all around. Overhead the sky was cut across: in the
east was a perfectly clear sky except at the horizon where the moon
seemed to have left behind fiery vapours; in the west and overhead lay
the dense black mass of the storm cloud. The clouds came forward in
regular array like an army. Nothing could hold them back; they came
on--appallingly. And the moon looked at the steady advance and her
light gleamed upon the front ranks as if she were lighting them with
many lanterns.
I had lain down to sleep quite sober-hearted, but now as the lightnings
played around I began to feel as excited as if I were in a theatre--my
blood burned. I had tired feet, but I forgot them. I walked swiftly. I felt
ready to run, to dance. Very strangely there was at the same time a
presentiment that I might be struck by lightning. But all Nature was
madly excited with me and also shared my presentiment of destruction.
We lived together like the victim and the accomplices in a Dionysian
sacrifice and orgy.
And the clouds kept on gaining! Far away I heard the storm wind and
the clamour of the sea. The thunder moaned and sobbed. I hurried
along the deserted road and asked my heart for a village, a house, a
church, a cave, anything to shield from the oncoming drench.
Spying a light far away on a hill, I left the road and plunged towards it.
I went over many maize-fields, by narrow paths through the tall waving
grain, the lightning playing like firelight among the sheath-like leaves. I
crossed a wide tobacco plantation and approached the light on the hill,
by a long, heavily-rutted cart-track. This led right up to the doors of a

farmhouse. Big surly dogs came rushing out at me, but I clumped them
off with my stick, and having much doubt in my mind as to the sort of
reception I should get, I knocked at the windows and doors. I expected
to be met by a man with a gun, for the dogs had made such a rumpus
that any one might have been alarmed.
The door was opened by a tall Russian peasant.
"May I spend the night here?" I asked.
The man smiled and put out his arms as if to embrace me.
"Yes, of course. Why ask? Come inside," he replied.
"I thought of sleeping in the open air," I added, "but the storm coming
up I saw I should be drenched."
"Why sleep outside when man is ready to receive you?" said the
peasant. "It is unkind to pass our houses by. Why do you deny your
brothers so? You said you slept in the fields, eh? That is bad. You
shouldn't. The earth here is full of evil, and the malaria comes up with
the dampness. Your bones grow brittle and break, or they go all soft,
you shrivel up and become white, or swellings come out on you and
you get bigger and bigger until you die. No, no! God be thanked you
came to me."
He asked me would I sleep in the house or on the maize straw. His sons
slept on the maize; it