A GREAT THUNDER-CLAP 235 



out of its orbit. Then the crash came, and I was 

 killed or stunned, and the next thing I knew was that 

 I was wide-awake sitting up in bed, trembling, and 

 a sweat of terror pouring from me. 



"O what an awful dream!" I thought; then the 

 door of my room opened and my sister in her night- 

 dress, a lighted candle in her trembling hand, stood 

 there staring at me out of wide frightened eyes, her 

 face white as a sheet. 



"You heard it ? " she said. 



*' Heard what?" I asked. 



"Oh, why do you ask," she returned, "when you 

 are sitting up in bed and looking like that ? We are 

 all up — the house has been struck!" 



I got up and joined the others, going round from 

 room to room and finding no sign of damage. 



The wonder was when next day we found that our 

 neighbours on all sides had had the same dreadful 

 experience, and that in every house within a circuit 

 of about forty miles the inmates had been roused 

 from sleep by that awful sound and had started up, 

 thinking that the house had been struck or that the 

 end of the world had come. 



I have never found in my reading an instance of 

 a thunder-clap heard as in this case, as we are accus- 

 tomed to hear thunder when sound and flash come 

 together, over so wide an area. But wonderful as 

 the phenomenon was, the dream about it interested 

 me even more when I came to think of it. The 

 physicist might be able to explain to us why and 

 how that thunder-clap had had so widespread an 



