AUGUST vi 



child out of its mother's arms, but, strange to say, without doing 

 more than stupefy either mother or child. Here is a second 

 instance of lightning producing stupefaction without doing 

 physical harm. One night at Pretoria I was kept very late at 

 my office attending to some official business. During the evening 

 a thunderstorm passed over the town, but it cleared away by 

 midnight, and I did not reach home before three o'clock in 

 the morning. On entering the sitting-room, as he is a very 

 abstemious man, I was astonished to see the friend with whom I 

 lived hanging over the arm of an easy chair apparently quite intoxi- 

 cated. I roused him, and muttering something he staggered off 

 to bed. Next morning he told me that the last thing he remem- 

 bered was sitting in the chair and seeing a bright flash of light. 

 Afterwards, on going to inspect the hen-house which we were 

 building at a distance of about fifteen paces from the cottage, we 

 found several of the poles neatly grooved round by the lightning 

 in the fashion of the tree at Ellingham. It must have been 

 the shock and proximity of this flash which stupefied my friend, 

 for I do not think that it entered the house. 



In short, in Africa the lightning is a thing which even Ajax 

 would scarce have ventured to defy. If the traveller is overtaken 

 by a tempest on the open veld, the best thing that he can do is to 

 get off his horse, or out of his cart, and lie down upon the ground. 

 It was through neglect of this precaution that a gentleman 

 whom I knew was killed, as he drove along the road in his spider. 

 His name was Carter, and he kept an hotel in Pretoria. He had 

 been educated at Eton, or one of the other large public schools, and 

 I think that some tankards which he had won in the school sports 

 stood upon a shelf in the bar or sitting-room of the hotel. If I 

 remember rightly, the companion who was with Mr. Carter in the 

 spider escaped. In the same way, while I was in Natal, a flash 

 struck near a man and wife sleeping side by side. One was taken 

 and the other left. 



But of tales of the doings of lightning in South Africa there is 

 no end, so with these samples I will leave the subject. 



