Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

The thunder rumbled around the hills, and now and again there was a faint glare on the horizon. Would Judas bump Magdalen? Opinion on the raft seemed to be divided. But the sanguine spirits were in a majority. “If I were making a book on the event,” said a middle-aged clergyman, with that air of breezy emancipation which is so distressing to the laity, “I’d bet two to one we bump.” “You demean your cloth, sir,” the Duke would have said, “without cheating its disabilities,” had not his mouth been stopped by a loud and prolonged thunder-clap. In the hush thereafter, came the puny sound of a gunshot. The boats were starting. Would Judas bump Magdalen? Would Judas be head of the river? Strange, thought the Duke, that for him, standing as he did on the peak of dandyism, on the brink of eternity, this trivial question of boats could have importance. And yet, and yet, for this it was that his heart was beating. A few minutes hence, an end to victors and vanquished alike; and yet... A sudden white vertical streak slid down the sky. Then there was a consonance to split the drums of the world’s ears, followed by a horrific rattling as of actual artillery--tens of thousands of gun-carriages simultaneously at the gallop, colliding, crashing, heeling over in the blackness. Then, and yet more awful, silence; the little earth cowering voiceless under the heavens’ menace. And, audible in the hush now, a faint sound; the sound of the runners on the towing-path cheering the crews forward, forward.