Thus, on February 16, 1866, a thunderstorm descended upon a farm in the Commune of Chapelle-Largeau (Deux-Sevres), and the circ.u.mstances attending its explosion are too remarkable to be overlooked. After a tremendous thunderclap, a young man who was standing near the farm saw an immense fireball touch the ground at his feet, but it did him no damage, but pa.s.sed, still harmlessly, through a room in the farmhouse in which there were nine persons. The only effect it produced was the flaring up of some matches upon the chimney-piece.

It proceeded towards the stables, which were divided into two compartments. In one there were two cows and two oxen: the first cow, to the right of the entrance, was killed, the second was uninjured; the first ox was killed, the second was uninjured.

The same effect was found to have been produced in the other compartment, in which there were four cows; the first and the third were killed, the second and fourth were spared: the odd numbers taken and the even numbers left.

Similar freaks have been recorded in connection with piles of plates struck by lightning--holes being found in alternate plates. How are these things to be explained?

The following story is very extraordinary, though it does not help to clear up the mystery of lightning"s strange ways:--

On August 24, 1895, about ten in the morning, in the midst of a storm of wind and rain, several persons saw descending to the ground a whitish-coloured globe of about an inch and a half in diameter, which, on touching the ground, split into two smaller globes. These rose at once to the height of the chimneys on the houses close by and disappeared. One went down a chimney, crossed a room in which were a man and a child, without harming them, and went through the floor, perforating a brick with a clean round hole of about the size of a franc. Under this room there was a sheepfold. The shepherd"s son, seated at the doorway, suddenly saw a bright light shining over the flock of sheep, while the lambs were jumping about in alarm. When he went up to them, he was startled to discover that five sheep had been killed. They bore no trace of burning, or of wound of any kind, but about their lips was a sort of foam, slightly pink in colour.

In the adjoining house, the second fireball had also gone down a chimney, and had exploded in the kitchen, causing great damage.

In 1890, a young farmer was working on a plot of ground, two or three miles from Montfort-l"Amaury. A storm breaking out, he stood up against his horses to take refuge from the rain; moving away a few yards in order to get his whip, there was seen, when he returned, a ball of fire almost touching the ear of one of his horses. A moment later it exploded with a deafening noise. The two horses fell--one of them unable to get up again. The farmer himself was dashed to pieces.

On other occasions the meteor is hardly more devastating than the ordinary bomb.

On April 21, at Lanxade, near Bergerac, a storm had been raging already for some hours, when suddenly--simultaneously with a small thunderclap--a ball of fire, of the size of the opening of a sack of corn, fell slowly on one of the banks of the Dordogne, spoiling some fruit trees, and then crossing the river, it raised a waterspout several yards high as it went.

It disappeared finally on the other side of a field of corn.

On November 12, 1887, a very curious instance of a fireball was noticed on the Atlantic.

It was at midnight, near Cape Race. An enormous fireball was seen to rise slowly out of the sea to the height of sixteen or seventeen metres. It travelled against the wind, and came quite near the vessel from which it was being watched. Then it turned towards the south-east and disappeared. The apparition lasted about five minutes.

In July, 1902, in the course of a violent storm, and immediately after a loud peal of thunder, a fireball of about the size of a toy balloon was seen to make its appearance suddenly in the Rue Veron at Montmartre. After moving along, just above the ground, in front of a wine-merchant"s shop, it exploded like a bomb, most fortunately without hurting any one, or doing any damage.

The little village of Candes, situated by the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire, was the scene of the appearance of a fireball in June, 1897. Three persons were sitting in the verandah of a house during a storm, when they suddenly saw a fireball travelling past them through the air for a distance of thirty yards or so. Then it exploded with a loud noise, striking sparks from the ironworks of the verandah. At the same moment, the servants saw another fireball cross a garden at the other side of the house, and drop into a small pond. A gardener was knocked over, but not hurt.

On March 6, 1894, M. Dandois, professor of surgery at the University of Louvain, went to the neighbouring town of Linden, by railway, to see a patient. On his return, on foot, the sky suddenly so darkened over, that he made for the nearest dwelling-place, avoiding, as he did so, the telegraph poles along the road. Suddenly a ball of fire came against him and threw him over a ditch into a field, where he lay unconscious.

A quarter of an hour later, having regained his senses and finding himself undamaged save for a numbness in one arm and one leg, the doctor set out again, congratulating himself on the fact that his umbrella had acted as a sort of portable lightning conductor, for the steels were all twisted, and showed signs of having borne the brunt of the fray. Had the handle been of steel also, the electric current would have run down it into his hand, doubtless, and killed him.

On another occasion a fireball fell upon the door of a house, pushed it violently open, and made its way into the kitchen.

At the sight of this strange visitor, the cook bolted from the room. A sempstress, who was at work near the window, received a small burn on her forehead, of about the size of half a franc, with a slight weal a couple of inches long--like the tail of a comet.

After bursting, the fireball made its way up the chimney, from which it removed a ma.s.s of soot, smelling somewhat of sulphur.

Here is an instance more curious still--

A violent storm was raging near Ma.r.s.eilles, when seven persons, seated together in the ground-floor drawing-room of a country house, saw a fireball as big as a plate appear in their midst.

It directed its course towards a young girl of eighteen, who, frightened out of her life, had fallen on her knees. Touching her shoes, it rebounded to the ceiling, then came down to her feet again, and so on two or three times, with mysterious regularity, the girl experiencing, it seems, no other sensation than that of a slight cramp in her legs. Eventually the fireball made its exit from the room through a keyhole!

The girl could not get up at once after it had gone. For a fortnight or so she could not walk without a.s.sistance, and it was two years before she got over a liability to sudden weakness in her legs, causing her suddenly to fall.

It is strange to reflect that these diminutive fireb.a.l.l.s, produced by the actual atmosphere we breathe, are less understood by us than that enormous globe which we call the sun, and to which is due the flowering of the entire life of our planet. If we are still in doubt as to the nature of the sun"s spots, at least we have been able to a.n.a.lyse its own elements. And we know its dimensions, its weight, its distance from us, its rate of rotation, etc., etc.

Yet these electric spheres that make their escape from the clouds in times of storm, baffle our investigations altogether.

According to records which seem authentic, fireb.a.l.l.s have been seen actually to come into existence upon the surface of a ceiling, at the mouth of a well, and upon the flagstones of a church.

In 1713, at the chateau of Fosdinaro, in the neighbourhood of Ma.s.sa Carrara, in the course of a storm and heavy downpour of rain, there was seen to appear suddenly upon the ground a very vivid flame, white and blue in colour. It seemed to flare fiercely, but did not move apparently from the one spot, and after growing quickly in volume it suddenly disappeared. Simultaneously with its going, one of the observers felt a curious sort of tickling behind his shoulder, moving upwards; several bits of plaster from the ceiling under which he stood fell upon his head, and there was a sudden crash quite unlike an ordinary thunderclap.

In 1750, on the 2nd of July, at about three in the afternoon, the Abbe Richard happened to be in the church of St. Michel at Dijon during a storm. "Suddenly," he tells us, "I saw between two pillars of the nave a bright red flame floating in the air about three feet above the floor. Presently it rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, increasing in volume. Then, after having moved some yards to one side, while still rising diagonally to the height almost of the woodwork of the organ, it disappeared at last with an explosion like the report of a cannon."

On July 21, 1745, a violent storm broke out in Boulogne, and the tower of a convent was struck by a fireball. It was of great size, and was seen to emerge from one of the sewers of the town and to move along the surface of the road until it hit against this tower, of which a part subsided. No one was hurt. A nun affirmed that some years before she had seen just such another fireball emerge from the same spot and precipitate itself with a crash against the summit of the tower without doing any damage.

In the middle of a violent storm, Dr. Gardons saw several fireb.a.l.l.s flying in different directions, not far from the ground, making a crackling sort of noise. One of them was seen by witnesses to come out of an excavation full of stagnant water. They killed one man, several animals, and did much damage to the trees and houses in the vicinity.

In February, 1767, at Presbourg, a blue, conical flame escaped suddenly with a detonating noise from a brasier, breaking it to pieces, and scattering the glowing cinders all around. It then went twisting about the room, burnt the face and hands of a child, escaped partly through the window, partly through the door, broke into a thousand pieces a second brasier in another room, and disappeared finally up a chimney, carrying up with it and discharging from the chimney-top into the street several hams which had been hung under the chimney-piece. For several days afterwards the atmosphere of the house retained a smell of sulphur.

In some cases, fireb.a.l.l.s have been seen to come down from the sky apparently, and then, after almost reaching but not actually touching the ground, to ascend again. Thus on a hot day in summer 1837, M.

Hapoule, a landed proprietor in the department of the Moselle, standing in front of the entrance to his stables under the shelter of a porch during a storm, saw a fireball about the size of an orange moving in the direction of a dung-heap not far from him. But instead of going right into it, it stopped about a yard off, and changing its route, it went off at an angle, keeping the same level for some distance, when it suddenly seemed to change its mind again, and rose perpendicularly till it disappeared in the clouds.

These sudden changes, as we have seen, are strangely characteristic of the habits of fireb.a.l.l.s.

The Garde Champetre of the village of Lalande de Libourne (Gironde) was traversing the country one evening about half-past ten, engaged in organizing a _garde de surveillance_, when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a bright and penetrating light. Astonished, he looked behind him, and saw a fireball, just broken loose from a cloud, descending quickly to the ground.

The light vanished presently, but he made his way towards where the fireball seemed to be falling. When he had gone about two hundred yards, he saw another brilliant light breaking out from the top of a tree and spreading itself into a sheaf of rays, every point of which seemed to emit electric sparks.

At the end of a quarter of an hour the light became weaker, and then disappeared. The tree was afterwards cut down, and it was found that the lightning had gone down the centre to a distance of three yards, and had then pa.s.sed down outside to the soil, leaving trace of a semi-circular route; and finally, after rising again on the opposite side of the tree to a height of four yards, tearing off two narrow strips of bark, had disappeared. At the foot of the tree a small hole, about an inch and a quarter in diameter, retained a certain degree of warmth for an hour and a half afterwards.

Fireb.a.l.l.s often keep within the frontiers of cloud-land. They may be seen pa.s.sing sometimes from one cloud to another in the high regions of the atmosphere.

On September 22, 1813, at seven in the evening, M. Louis Ordinaire saw a fireball leave a cloud at the zenith--the sky being very much lowering at the time--and go towards another. It was of a reddish-yellow and extremely brilliant, lighting up the ground with a bright radiance.

He was able to follow its movements for at least a minute, and then saw it disappear into the second cloud. There was an explosion followed by a dull sound like the firing off of a cannon in the distance.

After a violent storm which broke out near Wakefield on March 1, 1774, there remained only two clouds in the sky, just above the horizon.

b.a.l.l.s of fire were observed gliding from the higher of the two into the lower, like falling stars.

In high mountainous districts--in the Alps, for instance--you may often look down from above upon a storm. It is fascinating thus to watch the grandiose spectacle of the elements at war. Here from the pen of Pere Lozeran du Fesch is a striking picture of such a scene--

"It was on the 2nd of September, 1716, about three o"clock in the afternoon. A traveller was making his way down towards Vic from the summit of Cantal, accompanied by a guide.

"The weather was calm and very warm, but down below, about the middle of the mountain, a vast sea of mist stretched out in wavelike clouds.

"These clouds were furrowed continually by lightning flashes, some going quite straight, some zigzag, some taking the shape of fireb.a.l.l.s.

When the two men came near this region of clouds, the mist grew so thick they could hardly see the bridles of their horses.

"The air became gradually more cold and the darkness more dense as they proceeded downwards. Now they were in the midst of the fireb.a.l.l.s flying in every direction all round them, revolving as they went, reddish in colour, like saffron lit up.

"They were of all sizes--some quite small on their first appearance, seeming to grow immensely in volume in a few moments. Drops of rain fell when they pa.s.sed. Up to this point the sight had been curious but not terrifying, but suddenly now, one of these fireb.a.l.l.s, about two feet in diameter, burst open near the traveller and emitted streams of a bright and beautiful light in every direction, and there was a dull report followed by a tremendous crash. The two men were much shaken and the air all round them seemed polluted. After a minute or two, however, all trace of the explosion had been dissipated, and they proceeded on their way."

On January 6, 1850, near Merlan, about six in the afternoon, a fireball burst above the heads of two men, enveloping them in a bluish light, without hurting them or even damaging their clothes, but giving them a momentary thrill as from an electric battery. It left no traces of any kind, not even a smell.

Mr. G. M. Ryan records an instance which he witnessed at Karachi in Scinde. While in his drawing-room one day with two friends who were taking refuge from a storm, he rose from his chair and went to the door to open it, the windows as well as the door being shut at the time. Returning, he saw in the air and between his friends, a ball of fire of about the size of a full moon. At the same time there was a terrible clap of thunder. Two of the spectators were slightly wounded; one felt a sharp pain on the left side of the face, the other, a sensation in one arm with a feeling as if his hair were burning. There was a strong smell of sulphur. In the next room there were two rifles in a case; one was intact but the other was broken, and there was a hole in the wall at the point where the muzzle leant against it, and there were two holes in the same wall a story higher.