词汇:lightning

adj. 快速的;闪电的

相关场景

The storm turned out to be just a heavy shower. In ten minutes the rain lightened, and soon it was barely sprinkling. The sun had set, but to the west there was a clear band of sky under the clouds, and the clouds were thinning. The band of sky became red with afterglow. Above it, as the clouds thinned, there was a band of white, and then a deep blue, with the evening star in it. Roscoe dismounted and stood there dripping, aware that he ought to be planning some form of defense but unable to think of any. It seemed to him the storm might have discouraged the two men—maybe one of them had even been struck by lightning.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Five minutes later, before he could even untie his tarp, it began to rain. Lightning started hitting the ground, and it rained torrents. Roscoe got totally soaked. In ten minutes there was a little river running down the middle of the gully, though the gully had been bone dry when they rode up. The thunder crashed and it grew dark.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But the men rode on, and Roscoe soon forgot about them and began to feel drowsy. The day was muggy, and occasionally he would see lightning flicker in the west.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Look at them,” Augustus said happily. “Ain’t they swimmers?”AS THE DAYS PASSED, Lorena found she liked the traveling more and more. The nights were no easier—almost every night the lightning flickered and thunderstorms rolled over them. Often, while she and Jake slept, big drops of rain would hit them in the face and force them to grab for the tarp. Soon the blankets seemed permanently damp, causing Jake to grumble and complain. But the tarp was hot and stiff, and he himself never thought to keep it handy. She would have to stumble around and arrange it in the dark, while Jake cussed the weather.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
At the head of the main bunch of cattle, Call surveyed the situation without too much apprehension. Unless there was a lightning victim somewhere, they had come through the storm well. The cattle had walked themselves out and were docile for the time being. Deets had been to look, and Soupy, Jasper and Needle had the rest of the herd a mile or two east. The wagon was stuck in a gully, but when the hands gathered they soon had enough ropes on it to pull it out. Bol refused to budge from the wagon seat while the pullout took place. Lippy had got out to help push and consequently was covered in mud practically up to his lip.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
She opened her eyes to blackness and a second later saw the lightning come to earth just across the river, cracking into the tree where they had made their first camp. The tree split at the top, then darkness fell, and when the next flash came the split part had fallen to the ground.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Dern it, come on!” Jake said. “This ain’t no place to sit out a lightning storm.” Every time he pulled, the tightness inside her broke out a little and she struck at him. The first blow hit him in the eye and he slipped and sat down in the mud. Then it was dark. When the lightning flashed again, she saw Jake trying to get up, a look of surprise on his face. But he grabbed her in the darkness and began to drag her away from the tree. She kicked at him and they both went down, but a bolt struck so loud and so near that she forgot to fight. She let him pull her toward the river, dragging the tarp. Another bolt hit so near it shook the ground, almost causing Jake to fall in the water. There was not much overhang to the bank, and the tarp was so muddy he could barely drag it, but he pulled it over them and sat close to her, shivering. In the flashes the light was so bright that she could see every wavelet on the river. She wondered where the turtle was, but before she could look it was pitch-dark again. In the next flash she saw the horses jumping and trying to shake off their hobbles. She shut her eyes but when the bolts hit she felt the light on her eyelids.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But Jake began to pull at her. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get under the bank. It might strike the tree.” The lightning had become constant—she could see every whisker on Jake’s face in the glare. He looked old. But he wouldn’t leave her under the tree. In the flashes she could see the river. The river had almost got her and now he wanted her to go back to it. When he pulled, she fought. The tree was the only protection she had and she didn’t want to leave it.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Lorena didn’t move. He was crazy. The tree was all that was keeping them from death. Out in the open the lightning would immediately strike them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Then the lightning began to strike in the trees nearby, with cracks so loud that it made her head ring. She didn’t mind the wet. Jake had tried to rig a tarp, but it wasn’t big enough.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
She held the blanket around her as tightly as she could, and her teeth were clenched as they had been when she crossed the river. She kept trying to think about something besides the lightning, but she couldn’t. She kept thinking of how it would feel if it hit her—it was said to be like a burn, but how could a burn travel through your body in an instant?
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Lorena didn’t answer. The lightning filled her with such tension that she didn’t think she could endure it. If it went on much longer she felt it would twist her like a wire.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
JAKE HAD FORGOTTEN to hobble the horses—he remembered it when the first lightning struck and Lorena’s young mare suddenly snapped her rein and ran off. It was dark and the sand was still blowing. He managed to get the hobbles on his own horse and the pack mule, but had to let the mare go.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Soon he got too tired to think and could only hope that it would finally be morning. But the night went on and on. The lightning died and the hard rain stopped, but a drizzle continued; they hit intermittent patches of thick brush and had to back and turn and go on as best they could. When he had crossed the gully, one boot had filled with water. Newt wanted to stop and empty it—but what if he dropped it and couldn’t find it in the dark? Or got it off and couldn’t get it back on? A fine sight he would make, if he ever saw camp again, riding in with one boot in his hand. Thinking about the ridicule that would involve, he decided just to let the boot squish.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Then Mouse began to move again and Newt heard the splashing of a horse ahead. He didn’t know if it carried a friendly rider, but Mouse seemed to think so, for he was trotting through the hock-high water, trying to locate the other horse. In one of the weakening flashes of lightning Newt saw cattle trotting along, fifty yards to his right. Suddenly, with no warning, Mouse began to slide. His back feet almost went out from under him—they had struck a gully, and Newt felt water rising up his legs. Fortunately it wasn’t a deep gully; Mouse regained his balance and struggled through it, as scared as Newt.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Almost before the last of the sand had stung his eyes, it seemed, the rain began, pelting down in big scattered drops that felt good after all the grit. But the drops got thicker and less scattered and soon the rain fell in sheets, blown this way and that at first by the fitful wind. Then the world simply turned to water. In a bright flash of lightning Newt saw a wet, frightened coyote run across a few feet in front of Mouse. After that he saw nothing. The water beat down more heavily even than the wind and the sand: it pounded him and ran in streams off his hat brim. Once again he gave up and simply sat and let Mouse do what he wanted. As far as he knew, he was completely lost, for he had moved away from the cattle in order to escape the lightning and had no sense that he was anywhere near the herd. The rain was so heavy that at moments he felt it might drown him right on his horse. It blew in his face and poured into his lip from his hat brim. He had always heard that cowboying involved considerable weather, but had never expected so many different kinds to happen in one night. An hour before, he had been so hot he thought he would never be cool again, but the drenching water had already made him cold.Mouse was just as dejected and confused as he was. The ground was covered with water—there was nothing to do but splash along. To make matters worse they hit another thicket and had to back out, for the wet mesquite had become quite impenetrable. When they finally got around it the rain had increased in force. Mouse stopped and Newt let him—there was no use proceeding when they didn’t know where they needed to proceed. The water pouring off his hat brim was an awkward thing—one stream in front, one stream behind. A stream of water poured right in front of his nose while another sluiced down his back.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
The wind had become fitful, gusting and then dying, and instead of beating steadily at his back, the sand was fitful too, swirling around him one moment and gone the next. In the flashes of lightning he could see that the sky was clearing high to the east, but a wall of clouds loomed to the west, the lightning darting underneath them.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Newt needed no urging, for the sight was scary and he remembered Dish describing how lightning had hit a cowboy he knew and turned him black. He wanted to ask Deets some questions, but between one flash and another Deets vanished.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Ride off the cattle,” he said. “Don’t get close to them when they got the lightning on their horns. Get away from em.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
But as the lightning came closer thunder came with it—the sound seemed to roll over them like giant boulders. Mouse flinched, and Newt began to flinch too. Then, instead of running across the horizon like snakes’ tongues, the lightning began to drive into the earth, with streaks thick as poles, and with terrible cracks.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
In the short lulls in the wind he could hear the clicking of long horns, as the cattle bumped into one another in the darkness. They were walking slowly, and Newt let Mouse walk along beside them. He had worried as much as he could, and he simply rode, his mind blank. It seemed like he had been riding long enough for the night to be over, but it wasn’t, and the sand still stung his skin. He was surprised suddenly by a flicker of light to the west—so quick and so soon lost that he didn’t at first recognize it as lightning. But it flickered again and soon was almost constant, though still far away. At first Newt welcomed it—it enabled him to see that he was still with the several hundred cattle, and also helped him avoid thickets.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“The wind’s gonna come about sundown,” he said. “First it will be sand and then lightning. Don’t tie the horses to no big trees.” Despite herself, Lorena felt her spirits sinking. She had always feared lightning above all things, and here she was without even a house to hide in. She saw it was going to be harder than she had imagined. Here it was only the second day and she had already had a fright like death. Now lightning was coming. For a moment it all felt hopeless—better she had just sat in the Dry Bean for life, or married Xavier. She had gone over to Jake in a minute, and yet, the truth was Xavier would probably have taken care of her better. It was all foolish, her dream of San Francisco.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
“Oh, Bol’s got the adventurer’s spirit,” Augustus said. “He’ll go. If he don’t, he’ll just have to go home and whet his wife more often than he cares to.” With that he went and got the two mules that constituted their wagon team. The bigger mule, a gray, was named Greasy, and the smaller, a bay, they called Kick Boy, out of respect for his lightning rear hooves. They had not been worked very much, there seldom having been a need to take the wagon anywhere. It was theoretically for rent, but rarely got rented more than once a year. Greasy and Kick Boy were an odd-looking team, the former being nearly four hands higher than the latter. Augustus hitched them to the wagon, while Call went to inspect the remuda, meaning to weed out any horses that looked sickly.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
It was Pea’s one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about—their penchant for flyingdirectly in the face of reason. Mary was as wet on the top as on the bottom, and the flapping sheet had knocked one of the combs out of her hair, causing it to come loose. The wash was as wet as it had been before she hung it up in the first place, and yet she wasn’t quitting. She was taking clothes off the line that would just have to be hung back on in fifteen minutes, and Pea was helping her do it as if it all made some sense. While he was steadying the clothesline he happened to notice something that gave him almost as hard a jolt as the bolt of lightning that killed Josh Cole: the clothes he had rescued were undergarments—white bloomers of the sort that it was obvious Mary was wearing beneath the skirt that was so wet against her legs. Pea was so shocked that he almost dropped the underpants back in the mud. She was bound to think it bold that he would pick up her undergarments like that—yet she was determined to have the sheets off the line and all he could do was stand there numb with embarrassment. It was a blessing that rain soon began to pour off his hat brim in streams right in front of his face, making a little waterfall for him to hide behind until the ordeal ended. With the water running off his hat he only caught blurred glimpses of what was going on—he could not judge to what extent Mary had been shocked by his helpful but thoughtless act.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇
Though he was content to stick with the Captain and Gus and do his daily work, he found that the problem of women was one that didn’t entirely go away. The question of marriage, about which Deets felt so free to chuckle, was a persistent one. Gus, who had been married twice and who whored whenever he could find a whore, was the main reason it was so persistent. Marriage was one of Gus’s favorite subjects. When he got to talking about it the Captain usually took his rifle and went for a walk, but by that time Pea would usually be comfortable on the porch and a little sleepy with liquor, so he was the one to get the full benefit of Gus’s opinions, one of which was that Pea was just going to waste by not marrying the widow Cole.The fact that Pea had only spoken to Mary Cole five or six times in his life, most of them times when she was still married to Josh Cole, didn’t mean a thing to a bystander like Gus, or even a bystander like Deets; both of them seemed to take it for granted that Mary regarded him as a fit successor to Josh. The thing that seemed to clinch it, in their view, was that, while Mary was an unusually tall woman, she was not as tall as Pea. She had been a good foot taller than Josh Cole, a mild fellow who had been in Pickles Gap buying a milk cow when a bad storm hit. A bolt of lightning fried both Josh and his horse—the milk cow had only been singed, but it still affected her milk. Mary Cole never remarried, but, in Gus’s view, that was only because Pea Eye had not had the enterprise to walk down the street and ask her.
>> Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇