266 Lost in the Bush. 



the blue lightning came hissing through the sky, and the whole 

 forest would blaze up with light. There was something truly 

 awful in the sudden pitchy darkness which would shut me in 

 again in a moment after the flash died away. At first I was 

 so stunned with the noise, frightened at the dreadful lightning, 

 blinded and deluged with the rain, that I did not know what 

 to do, but suddenly a flash of lightning, which seemed to play 

 in rings down my gun barrel (and once before this has hap- 

 pened to me in Australia, without feeling the least shock), 

 brought me to my senses. It would never do to carry my gun 

 about in such a storm, and yet I dare not lay it down, for 

 I knew I should never find it again, so I was puzzled how to 

 act. My gun I must save at all risks. Yet my life (though at that 

 moment it did not appear to be worth many minutes' purchase) 

 was dearer than my gun. It luckily happened that a bush fire had 

 swept over the forest a few days before, and many old logs and 

 stumps (notwithstanding all the rain) were still burning. I 

 saw one at a little distance, and close to it I placed my gun, and 

 kept sentry over it the whole night. I don't know why I dare 

 not sit down, but I got a notion into my head that I was safer 

 if I walked about ; and there I paced backwards and forwards, 

 never losing sight of the one little spark in the forest gloom, 

 which showed me where the only single treasure I at that time 

 owned in the whole world lay. I have described the first clap 

 of thunder, and the first flash of lightning, and I need not 

 describe another, for they both continued the same without the 

 least variation, at intervals of about five minutes, throughout 

 the whole night. My position certainly was critical, for a large 

 gum tree was struck with the lightning, and shivered from 

 the top to the root, not very far from where I stood. I never, 

 however, knew this till I went back with the station master 

 the next day to see it. I certainly did recollect hearing one 

 roll of thunder a little louder than the rest, and seeing a flash 

 of lightning which appeared to come nearer down to me than 

 any other, but the thunder and lightning came so simultaneously 

 together, that the rattle of the thunder drowned all other 

 noise. If ever I felt that I was perfectly helpless, and that my 

 life was held in other and more powerful hands than my own, 

 it was on this night. I was as nerveless as an infant, and 

 paced up and down for hour after hour, expecting every one 

 to be my last. But there was One who ruled even that storm, 

 and it was His will that I was to escape the lightning which 

 flashed all round me ; but as if to show to me that the power, 

 if not the will, to strike me dead in an instant was all there, 

 one flash passed harmlessly over my head, but shivered a tree 

 of 100 feet high into a thousand splinters close to me. But 

 the storm at length died away, and before I left the forest the 



