Thunder and Lightning Part 20

But our last word has not been said about lightning. Just a few more.

One of the most curious effects produced on metals, is the magnetic polarity communicated to objects in steel and iron, no matter what they be. We have already quoted a remarkable case, that of the ascending lightning.

A tailor was slightly touched by the spark; the day after the accident he found his needles were magnetized: they clung closely to each other as they were taken out of the case.

Another case of magnetization has been recorded, where certain objects, which were struck by lightning, had power to raise three times their own weight.

This magnetization is almost always temporary. Examples are known, however, where objects preserved the magnetic powers that they acquired in the moment of the shock. And one can understand the terror inspired by lightning in uncultured minds, when, after the pa.s.sing of the meteor, they see common things suddenly animated by a fantastic vitality, fine needles attract and raise very much larger bodies than themselves, and impart a feverish agitation to any pieces of steel or iron that may be placed near them.

What a lively impression these curious phenomena must have made on the minds of men in the days when sorcery was in fashion, and when lightning was, according to the belief then popular, at the service of heaven and h.e.l.l! But, nowadays, sorcery is fallen into disuse; the magnetization of metal bodies, even when the result of lightning, is something too well known to be attributed to any connection with Satan.

And yet the gambols of electricity are truly extraordinary.

In the month of June, 1873, the electric fluid penetrated into a butcher's shop, quite calmly followed the iron bars from which the quarters of meat were hanging. From one of the hooks a whole ox was suspended. All at once the skinned carcase was galvanized by the electric current, and during several instants it was seen convulsed by the most frightful contortions.

Again, on June 28, 1879, a concierge in the Avenue de Clichy was sweeping his courtyard when the lightning broke at one metre above his head. The poor man escaped with the fright. The fluid ran up the leaden pipes and entered a room, where it broke the mirrors and a clock, injured the ceiling, and got off by breaking the panes in the window. On the upper storey it got into a lodging occupied by two old women, where it caused the following damage: one of the women was holding a bowl of milk, the bottom of the bowl was cracked and the milk spilled on the floor; some money which was in a wooden bowl disappeared and could not be found. The clock was stopped at half-past six, the pendulum unhooked; and a hole made in a gla.s.s globe the size of a five-shilling piece. Finally, a woman in bed on the same landing saw the bed split in two by the lightning, which disappeared in the wall. None of these persons were injured.

As a general rule, indeed, when lightning breaks into houses, although it often does a great deal of harm, it almost always spares the people who may be there. One is safer there than anywhere else.

Sometimes the walls are pierced or merely hollowed. This perforation of the walls is one of the most common effects of the meteor on buildings.

The thickness of the perforated walls is very variable.

At the Castle of Clermont, in Beauvaisis, there was a formidable old wall, built in the time of the Romans, so tradition has it, which was ten feet thick, and the cement was as hard as stone, so that it was almost impossible to break it. "One day," says Nollet, "a flash of lightning struck it, and instantly a hole, two feet deep and equally wide, was made in it, the _debris_ being thrown more than fifty feet away."

On June 17, 1883, at Louvemont (Haute-Marne), the wall of a bakehouse, fifty-five centimetres wide, was broken in by lightning.

The church at Lugdivan was struck by lightning in 1761. Two furrows like those made by a plough were to be seen on the wall.

One of the most dreadful acts of which lightning is capable is that of hurling considerable ma.s.ses of stone and rock, broken or intact, to great distances. We have numerous examples of this terrible phenomenon. Here are a few:--

On August 23, 1853, thunder burst over the belfry of Maison-Ponthieu.

The explosion scattered the slates and beams of the roof, and shot a stone, measuring thirty-five centimetres, to a distance of twenty metres. Rough stones, weighing more than forty pounds, were torn up and thrown almost horizontally as far as an opposite wall thirty feet away.

At Fuzie-en-Fetlar, in Scotland, towards the end of the eighteenth century, lightning broke, in about two seconds at most, a mica-schist rock of one hundred and fifty feet long, by ten broad, and in some parts four feet thick; this it split into great pieces. One, measuring twenty-six feet long by ten broad, and four in thickness, fell on the ground twenty centimetres off. Enormous stones are thrown, at times, in different directions.

In 1762 lightning struck the belfry of Breag Church in Cornwall, broke the stone pinnacle of the edifice, and threw one of the stones, weighing at least a hundred-weight and a half, on the roof of the apsis, in a southerly direction, fifty-five metres away.

In a northerly direction another huge stone was found at 365 metres or so from the belfry; and a third, still larger, to the south-east of the church.

In certain cases the lightning unites a fantastic skill with this excessive brutality. For instance, a wall has been removed intact without being broken in any part. Here is a record of one such extraordinary occurrence:--

On August 6, 1809, at Swinton, near Manchester, during a deluge of rain, the lightning all at once filled a brick building, in which coal was stored, full of pestilential, sulphureous vapour. Above it was a cistern half full. Suddenly the edifice, the walls of which measured thirty centimetres in thickness, were torn out of the ground, the foundations being sixty centimetres deep, and was transported in an upright position to a distance of ten metres.

The weight of this ma.s.s, so oddly and so rapidly moved by lightning, was estimated at ten thousand kilograms.

In many cases, on the contrary, the subtle fluid has pulverized a hard stone on the spot and reduced it to powder.

Tiles and slates are very often torn off the roofs: the lightning makes them fly through the air. Sometimes it is content to perforate them with a mult.i.tude of little holes.

As for chimneys, they are generally very ill-treated by the meteor.

The blows of which they are victims are to be accounted for easily, for they offer perfect powers of conducting to the fulminant matter, firstly, because of their prominence on the summit of the building, especially when they are surmounted by a vane. Again, the flue is often in cast-iron, and if it is bricked it is supported by bars of iron. The surface of the interior is covered with a layer of soot, an excellent conductor, and a stove-pipe often opens into it. Then, too, the hearth and its surroundings are more or less made of metal.

Finally, the column of smoke and of hot, damp air rising into the air, shows the lightning the way.

The latter often accepts this invitation, and very frequently gets into a house by the chimney, where everything seems ready for its reception.

Rafters and doors are sometimes bored through with one or two holes by the spark, and split or furrowed more or less deeply. A curious fact is that it is rare to find the slightest trace of combustion round them.

In the month of August, 1887, lightning struck the belfry of the church at Abrest (Allier), carrying off part of the roof.

It destroyed the walls of the porch, and in both sides of the swing doors bored two holes, each as big as a pigeon's egg, and as symmetrically as if they had been made by the hand of man.

The cleavage of beams is amongst the most extraordinary injuries to be observed on woodwork. Lightning works with wrought wood just as it does when the tree is in full sap: it reduces it to rags, and follows the direction of the fibres.

With what crimes lightning is charged! When it is a question of robbing a house, it spares nothing in its way.

The window-panes fly in pieces, and sometimes are thrown a long way off. Often they are melted and disappear totally.

In July, 1783, at Campo Sampiero Castello (Padua), lightning struck a building full of hay; the windows had gla.s.s in them, and the panes were melted _without the hay catching fire_!

A still more astonishing phenomenon is that of the total disappearance of the gla.s.s panes, observed at the Castle of Upsal, on August 24, 1760. Lightning visited this edifice and then took flight, carrying off sixteen panes out of a window. Not the smallest fragment of them was ever found.

Perhaps, as often happens, terrific heat was generated, and the gla.s.s evaporated.

If we follow the track of lightning through rooms, very singular effects may be seen on the furniture. Chests of drawers and wardrobes are gutted, and the contents pulled out and strewn about the room. In the middle of August, 1887, a house at Francines, near Limoges, was struck by lightning. It fell in a room where the master of the house was in bed. He felt a terrific shock, and saw his eiderdown pierced through and through by the perfidious fluid, and a chest of drawers with all its contents broken. Continuing on its way, the lightning demolished the door and entered another room.

A man who was asleep in it was killed. His wife by his side and his little girl felt nothing, but _a pillow on which one of them had her head was thrown to a distance_. Finally, the meteor went through the floor, broke a large clock on the ground floor, setting fire to everything on its way.

On June 1, 1903, a fulminant ray fell on the church of Cussy-la-Colonne (Cote d'Or). To start, it turned the clock tower upside down, broke a clock, then opened a cupboard in the sacristy in which there were various articles, and broke them all.

In April, 1886, lightning did great damage in the church at Montredon (Tarn). It demolished the steeple to an extent of three metres, several bells, and carried the enormous iron bar which supported them a long way off. The roof of the church was burst in and the tiles were pulverized in several places by the falling masonry. In the interior a bench was broken, an image of Christ reduced to powder, and a metal image of St. Peter twisted.

We may remark, by the way, that churches are very often struck by lightning, doubtless owing to the height of the steeple above the edifice.

We have innumerable notes about ruined steeples, turrets knocked off, the plundering of priestly objects. Sculptures and pictures adorning the sanctuary are often destroyed, and the altar itself shattered.

Cases of priests struck while officiating are not uncommon. As for the faithful killed while at church, they may be counted by the hundred.

Without wishing to call lightning a miscreant or an infidel, one is obliged to confess it fails in respect for holy places.

However, the quips and cranks of lightning observed in dwellings are no less varied and curious.

Here are some remarkable accounts:--

One night during a terrible thunderstorm, lightning came down the chimney of a room where two people were asleep. The husband awoke with a start and, believing the house to be on fire, groped his way to the mantelpiece to get a candle, but was stopped by a heap of rubbish.

Everything, in fact, of which the chimney had once consisted was heaped up in the middle of the room. The mantelshelf, violently torn off, had been partly melted, the clock had had the door of the case pulled off, and all the window-panes were broken. On the lower storey, another clock was similarly demolished, the floor was torn up and the tiles thrown with such force against the ceiling that there were splinters sticking all over it.

In the month of April, 1866, at Bure (Luxembourg), the thunder, which had been rumbling for some time, suddenly crashed down all at once about midnight with the most appalling violence, so that the ground seemed to tremble and the houses rock on their foundations.