In February, 1767, at Presbourg, a blue, conical flame escaped suddenly with a detonating noise from a brasier, breaking it to pieces, and scattering the glowing cinders all around. It then went twisting about the room, burnt the face and hands of a child, escaped partly through the window, partly through the door, broke into a thousand pieces a second brasier in another room, and disappeared finally up a chimney, carrying up with it and discharging from the chimney-top into the street several hams which had been hung under the chimney-piece. For several days afterwards the atmosphere of the house retained a smell of sulphur.
In some cases, fireballs have been seen to come down from the sky apparently, and then, after almost reaching but not actually touching the ground, to ascend again. Thus on a hot day in summer 1837, M. Hapoule, a landed proprietor in the department of the Moselle, standing in front of the entrance to his stables under the shelter of a porch during a storm, saw a fireball about the size of an orange moving in the direction of a dung-heap not far from him. But instead of going right into it, it stopped about a yard off, and changing its route, it went off at an angle, keeping the same level for some distance, when it suddenly seemed to change its mind again, and rose perpendicularly till it disappeared in the clouds.
These sudden changes, as we have seen, are strangely characteristic of the habits of fireballs.
The Garde Champêtre of the village of Lalande de Libourne (Gironde) was traversing the country one evening about half-past ten, engaged in organizing a garde de surveillance, when he suddenly found himself surrounded by a bright and penetrating light. Astonished, he looked behind him, and saw a fireball, just broken loose from a cloud, descending quickly to the ground.
The light vanished presently, but he made his way towards where the fireball seemed to be falling. When he had gone about two hundred yards, he saw another brilliant light breaking out from the top of a tree and spreading itself into a sheaf of rays, every point of which seemed to emit electric sparks.
At the end of a quarter of an hour the light became weaker, and then disappeared. The tree was afterwards cut down, and it was found that the lightning had gone down the centre to a distance of three yards, and had then passed down outside to the soil, leaving trace of a semi-circular route; and finally, after rising again on the opposite side of the tree to a height of four yards, tearing off two narrow strips of bark, had disappeared. At the foot of the tree a small hole, about an inch and a quarter in diameter, retained a certain degree of warmth for an hour and a half afterwards.
Fireballs often keep within the frontiers of cloud-land. They may be seen passing sometimes from one cloud to another in the high regions of the atmosphere.
On September 22, 1813, at seven in the evening, M. Louis Ordinaire saw a fireball leave a cloud at the zenith—the sky being very much lowering at the time—and go towards another. It was of a reddish-yellow and extremely brilliant, lighting up the ground with a bright radiance.
He was able to follow its movements for at least a minute, and then saw it disappear into the second cloud. There was an explosion followed by a dull sound like the firing off of a cannon in the distance.
After a violent storm which broke out near Wakefield on March 1, 1774, there remained only two clouds in the sky, just above the horizon. Balls of fire were observed gliding from the higher of the two into the lower, like falling stars.