"It's surprising," he went on, "but even trees of closely related character show very different effects of lightning. 'Nothing but lightning,' writes John Muir, 'hurts the Sequoia or Big Tree. It lives on through indefinite thousands of years, until burned, blown down or undermined, or shattered by some tremendous lightning stroke. No ordinary bolt ever hurts the Sequoia. I have seen silver firs split into long peeled rails radiating like spokes of a wheel from a hole in the ground where the tree stood. But the Sequoia, instead of being split and shivered, usually has forty to fifty feet of its brash knotty top smashed off in short chunks, about the size of cord-wood, the rosy-red ruins covering the ground in a circle one hundred feet wide or more.
"'I never saw any that had been cut down to the ground, or even to below the branches, except one about twelve feet in diameter, the greater part of which was smashed to fragments. All the very old Sequoias have lost their heads by lightning. All things come to him who waits, but of all living things, Sequoia is perhaps the only one able to wait long enough to make sure of being struck by lightning. Thousands of years it stands ready and waiting, offering its head to every passing cloud, as if inviting its fate, praying for Heaven's fire as a blessing, and when, at last, the old head is off, another of the same shape immediately grows on.'"
"And then, I suppose," said Fred, "it will never be struck again. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place."
"Oh, yes, it does," said the Forecaster. "That's all nonsense. Take the Eiffel Tower in Paris, for example. That's struck nearly every time there's a thunderstorm. But lightning can't hurt the Eiffel Tower because practically the entire building is a lightning-rod and it has been very carefully grounded into deep wells, a long way below the ground."
"I've been wondering," said Anton thoughtfully, with his characteristic opening, "just how a thunder-and-lightning storm happens. You promised to explain it to me, Mr. Levin," he continued, "and you never have."
"Very good," said the Forecaster, briskly, "I'll explain it now. And you couldn't have picked a better day for your question, Anton, because we can see the tail end of that thunderstorm going off to the east, and, if I'm not mistaken, there's another one coming up to the south-west. Do you see that layer of cirro-stratus clouds?"
"Yes, sir."
"And do you notice those festoons of cloud, slowly coming down and dissolving—you see there's one small one there, and another one a little larger, behind?"
"Sure!"
"Well, those are the heralds of a thunderstorm. We've only seen those since my nephew began talking about the hurricane, about an hour ago. Away off on the horizon, though, you can see a bigger bunch of those festoons, dropping from the five-mile height of the cirro-stratus and condensing away down lower. This heat that we're now feeling will diminish, just as soon as that cloud covers the sun, not because the sun is hidden, but because of a change of wind."