Part 5 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+ning 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.