midnight
By the number of such accidents on record , we might suppose that the thunder-stone , as they termed it , fell oftener and deadlier on steeples , dwellings , and unsheltered wretches . In fine , our fathers bore the brunt of more raging and pitiless elements than we . There were forebodings , also , of a more fearful tempest than those of the elements . At two or three dates , we have stories of drums , trumpets , and all sorts of martial music , passing athwart the midnight sky , accompanied with the -- roar of cannon and rattle of musketry , prophetic echoes of the sounds that were soon to shake the land . Besides these airy prognostics , there were rumors of French fleets on the coast , and of the march of French and Indians through the wilderness , along the borders of the settlements . The country was saddened , moreover , with grievous sicknesses . The small-pox raged in many of the towns , and seems , though so familiar a scourge , to have been regarded with as much affright as that which drove the throng from Wall Street and Broadway at the approach of a new pestilence .