Read "The Treasure of Pearls" by Gustave Aimard online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It had fallen a very black night, we say. Not a star peeped out among the heavy clouds grazing the treetops and rim of the bowl in the centre of which Monte Tesoro flaunted its defiant colours. In the northward, long peals of thunder rolled without any lightning being visible.
Whether from the effect of the atmosphere, or by the presentiment of the assault by the multitude of besiegers being imminent, a kind of gloom seemed to reign in the hacienda; the courts were deserted, the sentries were almost unseen, and their "all's well" but feebly re-echoed along the barriers. Not one light sparkled at an aperture to cheer the two watchers on the hill in the heart of the hostile camp.