in
keeping with the storm that with an equal celerity was gathering on the
earth below. There was a heavy languor, a dense stillness in the air,
and the cloud above us had drifted out from the face of the cliff so far
that it now hung over all the city like a vast black canopy. From this
sombre mass, that buried all beneath it in gloomy shadows, flashes of
lightning shot forth that each moment increased in fiery intensity, and
the rolling roar of thunder each moment grew louder and sharper in its
dark depths. Even as the Priest Captain spoke there came a yet more
vivid flash, and almost with it a crashing peal.

At the word of command, so vehemently given, the warrior faced about
upon Fray Antonio, and held high aloft his sword; but the monk, firmly
standing there, while in his eyes shone so glorious a light that it
seemed as though the wrath of outraged Heaven blazed forth from them,
opposed to this earthly weapon only his out-stretched crucifix, and thus
confronted the death that menaced him with so splendid a bravery that
for an instant his huge antagonist was held still by a wonder that was
born half of admiration and half of awe; and in the breathless hush of
that supreme moment Fray Antonio cried out, in tones so clear and so
ringing that his words were heard by all the thousands gathered there:

"I call for help upon the living and the only God!"

And even as these words still sounded in our ears there shot forth from
the cloud above us a swift red flash of blinding light, and with this
came a crash of thunder so mighty that the cliffs above strained and
quivered, and great fragments of rock came hurtling down from them, and
a shivering trembling surged through the whole mountain, so that we felt
it swaying beneath our feet.

And as we gazed in awe, through the gloom that from all parts of the
heavens was gathering towards the height whereon we were, we saw before
us God's wrath made manifest; for the warrior, still holding raised the
metal sword that had tempted death to him, trembled, reeled a little,
swayed gently forward, and then, with, a sudden jerk, swayed backward
again, and so fell lifeless--his bare right arm, and all the length of
his naked body to his very heel marked by a livid streak of bloody
purple that showed where the thunder-bolt had passed. For a moment the
monk also seemed stunned; and then, kneeling beside that
lightning-blasted corpse, and holding his hands out-stretched towards
heaven,