Adam the Htifiter 315 



I had closed my eyes to listen more intently, 

 when a whispered "Oh!" — a sigh — came from 

 behind me, and looking up, there soared another of 

 those rare, weird, strange messengers — a fire-ball! 

 the second I have seen — the same moon-faced nu- 

 cleus nearly as large as the moon, the same short, 

 thick, writhing tail, but not the whip-like snapping 

 which we heard when one passed over the island 

 four years before. 



This one was flying southwest, and seemed to be 

 describing a curve which would bring it to the earth 

 about a mile away; but of course any calculation 

 of its orbit would be guesswork. The other one, 

 alluded to above, was more striking. My wife and 

 sister were seated at the camp-fire while I was about 

 to enter my study-cabin at the far end of the island. 

 The night was dark but clear, when suddenly the 

 ground was illuminated, and the shadows of the 

 pines began wheeling past. Looking up, there 

 the apparition came, from the southwest. Com- 

 pared with the speed of a meteor, it moved quite 

 slowly. It was round, about the size of the moon, 

 but much brighter. Its train about five diameters 

 of the nucleus in length, writhed and twisted like 

 a flame, and showed colors of blue and yellow. 

 The flame ended quite abruptly, and left no train 

 of sparks. It gave forth sounds almost identical 

 with that of a flag snapping in the wind. It ap- 

 peared to be no more than four or five tree-top 

 heights above the lake, and disappeared in the for- 



