The thunder rolled, the lightning flashed; the rain poured down like Heaven's wrath. Surrounded at one moment by intolerable light, and at the next by pitchy darkness, they still pressed forward on their journey. Even when they arrived at the end of the stage, and might have tarried, they did not; but ordered horses out immediately. Nor had this any reference to some five minutes' lull, which at that time seemed to promise a cessation of the storm. They held their course as if they were impelled and driven by its fury. Although they had not exchanged a dozen words, and might have tarried very well, they seemed to feel, by joint consent, that onward they must go.
Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled, as through the myriad halls of some vast temple in the sky; fiercer and brighter became the lightning, more and more heavily the rain poured down. The horses (they were travelling now with a single pair) plunged and started from the rills of quivering fire that seemed to wind along the ground before them; but there these two men sat, and forward they went as if they were led on by an invisible attraction.
The eye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in its every gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noon in fifty times that period. Bells in steeples, with the rope and wheel that moved them; ragged nests of birds in cornices and nooks; faces full of consternation in the tilted waggons that came tearing past: their frightened teams ringing out a warning which the thunder drowned; harrows and ploughs left out in fields; miles upon miles of hedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious as the scarecrow in the beanfield close at hand; in a trembling, vivid, flickering instant, everything was clear and plain: then came a flush of red into the yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness so intense that there was nothing else but light; and then the deepest and profoundest darkness.
The lightning being very crooked and very dazzling may have presented or assisted a curious optical illusion, which suddenly rose before the startled eyes of Montague in the carriage, and as rapidly disappeared. He thought he saw Jonas with his hand lifted, and the bottle clenched in it like a hammer, making as if he would aim a blow at his head. At the same time he observed (or so believed) an expression in his face: a combination of the unnatural excitement he had shown all day, with a wild hatred and fear: which might have rendered a wolf a less terrible companion.
He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and called to the driver, who brought his horses to a stop with all speed.
It could hardly have been as he supposed, for although he had not taken his eyes off his companion, and had not seen him move, he sat reclining in his corner as before.
`What's the matter?' said Jonas. `Is that your general way of waking out of your sleep?'
`I could swear,' returned the other, `that I have not closed my eyes!'
`When you have sworn it,' said Jonas, composedly, `we had better go on again, if you have only stopped for that.'
He uncorked the bottle with the help of his teeth; and putting it to his lips, took a long draught."
This most wide-ranging of Dickens' books is also famous for it's criticisms of American culture in the 19th century, or the lack thereof, as well as the lack of ethics, personal hygeine, table manners, modesty, and of any ability to accept criticisms of that nature. People get very hostile toward good authors, and spitting tobacco juice on every available object, animate or inanimate, was apparently considered an important freedom guaranteed by the Constitution...
P.S. Charles Dickens was surely one of the greatest writers of horror, though he's unrecognized as such. I can't wait to start reading "Our Mutual Friend"... which opens with a father and daughter scavenging for corpses on the Thames.
But if you enjoy a nice financial scandal, I think a fine companion to "Martin Chuzzlewhit" is Emile Zola's "Money", which also deals with financial corruption, having a "Universal Bank" of it's own to rival the "Anglo-Bengalese Disinterested Loan And Life Insurance Company"...