In an
instant they had passed through, and found themselves in daylight
once more. The sudden glare almost blinded them, for, though the
sky was overcast by clouds, from which jagged tongues of
lightning played, the outside was much lighter than the dark
cave.
"I should say it was a storm!" cried Tom Swift. "See, it is
striking every minute, and all around us!"
In fact, lightning bolts were falling on every side of the
adventurers. Every time the balls of fire struck, they burst open
great stones, or seared a livid scar on the face of some cliff.
As for Tom and the others, they stood on a dry dirt hill, in
which, fortunately, there was no iron ore. To this fact they
undoubtedly owed their lives, though had there been rain, to
moisten the ground and make the earth a good conductor of
electricity, they probably would have been badly shocked. But the
electrical outburst was not accompanied by rain.
Tom looked up. He saw a compact mass of cloud moving toward the
summit of the mountain on the slope of which they stood. From
this cloud there played shafts of reddish-green fire.
"Look!" called the young inventor to Mr. Parker. The instant
the latter saw the cloud, he cried:
"We must get away from here by all means! That is the center of
the storm. As soon as it gets over the mountain, where that
lightning rod is, all the electrical fluid will be discharged in
one bolt at the mountain, and it will be destroyed! We must run,
but keep on the dirt places! Run for your lives!"
They needed no second warning.
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