"Home! but we are determined to have the skins first."

"No, you are not," said Willis; "I know you better than you know yourselves. You are both brave fellows, but I know you would not, for all the skins in the world, have your good mother suppose that you were buffeted about by the waves in a storm."

"True; up with the anchor, Willis," said Fritz.

"Be it so," said Jack, shaking his fist menacingly at the silent forest, "but we shall lose nothing by waiting."

The sailor had not erred in his calculations, for they had scarcely unfurled the sail before they heard the distant rumbling of the storm.

As soon as the first flash of lightning shot across the sky, Jack put his forefinger of one hand on the wrist of the other, and began counting one--two--three.

"Do you feel feverish?" inquired Willis.

"No, not personally," replied Jack; "I am feeling the pulse of the storm--twenty-four--twenty-five--twenty-six--it is a mile off."

"Aye! how do you make that out?"

"Very easily; you recollect Ernest telling us that light travelled so rapidly, that the time it occupied in passing from one point to another of the earth's surface was scarcely perceptible to our senses?"

"Yes, but I thought he was spinning a yarn at the time."

"You were wrong, Willis; he likewise told us that sound travels at the rate of four hundred yards in a second."

"Well, but--"

"Have patience, Willis! When the lightning flashes, the electric spark is discharged, is it not?"

"Well, I was never high enough aloft to see."

"But others have been; Newton and Franklin have seen it. Now, if the sound reaches our ears a second after the flash, it has travelled four hundred yards. If we hear it twelve or thirteen seconds after, it has travelled twelve or thirteen times four hundred yards, or about half a mile, and so on."

"But what has that to do with your pulse?"

"In the first place, I am in perfect health, am I not?"

"I hope so, Master Jack."

"Then when our systems are in good order, the pulse, keeping fractions out of view, beats once in every second; and consequently, though we do not always carry a watch, we always have our arteries about us, and may therefore always reckon time."

"Now I understand."

"Ah! then we are to escape this time without the 'Mariner's March.'"

"It appears, Master Jack, that you have turned philosopher as well as your brothers. Can you tell me what causes lightning?"

"Yes, I can, Willis. You must know, in the first place, that all the layers of the atmosphere are, more or less, charged with electricity."

"Ask him how," said Fritz drily.

"Ah, you hope to puzzle me," replied Jack, "but thanks to Mr. Wolston, I am too well up in physics to be easily driven off my perch, and therefore may safely take my turn in philosophising."

"Well, we are listening."

"The air, by means of the vapor it contains, absorbs electricity from terrestrial bodies, and so becomes a sort of reservoir of this invisible fluid. All chemical combinations evolve electricity, the air collects it and stores it up in the clouds. There, worshipful brother, your question is answered."

"Good, go on."

"Well, Willis, you must know, in the second place, the clouds are very good fellows, and share with each other the good things they possess.

When one cloud meets another, the one over-supplied with this fluid and the other in its normal state, there is an immediate interchange of courtesies, the negative electricity of the one is exchanged for the positive of the other."

"There does not appear, however, to be much generosity in this transaction, since the surcharged cloud does not cede its superfluous abundance without a consideration."

"It is very rarely that philanthropy amongst us goes much further,"

remarked Fritz.

"No, everybody is not like Willis," rejoined Jack, "who acts like a prince, and gives legs of mutton gratis to hyenas and tigers. The discharges of electricity from one cloud to another are the flashes of lightning, and it is to be observed that the thunder is nothing more than the noise made by the fluid rushing through the air."

"What, then, is the thunderbolt?"

"There is no such thing as what is popularly understood by the term thunderbolt. The lightning itself, however, often does mischief. This happens when the discharge, instead of being between two clouds in the air, takes place between a cloud and the ground--a cloud surcharged with electricity understood. Then all intervening objects are struck by the fluid."

"There, however, you are wrong," said Fritz. "All objects are not struck; on the contrary, the fluid avoids some things and searches out others, even moving in a zig-zag direction to manifest these caprices; it often discharges itself on or into hard substances, and passes by those which are soft or feeble."

"I might say this arose from a sentiment of generosity," added Jack, "but I have other reasons to assign."

"So much the better," said Fritz, "as I should scarcely be satisfied with the first."

"Well," continued Jack, "lightning has its likings and dislikings."

"Like men and women," suggested Willis.

"It has a partiality for metal."

"An affection that is not returned, however," observed Fritz.

"If the fluid enters a room, for example, it runs along the bell wires, inspects the works of the clock, and sometimes has the audacity to pounce upon the money in your purse, even though a policeman should happen to be in the kitchen at the time."

"Perhaps," remarked Willis, "it is Socialist or Red Republican in its notions."

"It does not, however, patronise war," replied Jack; "I once heard of it having melted a sword and left the scabbard intact."

"That, to say the least of it, is improbable," remarked Fritz. "The hilt, or even the point, might have been fused; but even supposing the electric fluid to have been capable of such flagrant preference, the scabbard could not have held molten metal without being itself consumed."

"Aye," remarked Willis, "there are plenty of non-sensical stories of that kind in circulation, because nobody takes the trouble to test their truth. Still, according to your own account, a man or woman runs no danger from the lightning."

"I beg your pardon there, Willis; the electric fluid does not go out of its way to attack a human being, but if one should-happen to be in its way, it does not take time to request that individual to stand aside, it simply passes through him, and leaves him or her, as the case may be, a coagulated mass of inanimate tissues."

"What a variety of ways there are of getting out of the world!" said Willis lugubriously.