Never had a day dawned more brightly, never had the skies been bluer than on the morning of a day a week or so later, to which the Scouts had looked forward with so much pleasure; and yet it proved to be a day of disaster.
The unfortunate happenings had begun with an accident to Mr. Durland. He had stepped carelessly upon a loose stone, and, his foot slipping, he had been thrown from his balance, and had rolled and slid down the steep mountain side. He had grasped at some stout bushes and so managed to stay his fall until help could reach him. His Troop had all been thankful enough when at last they had him at the top again and had found no bones were broken, and that there was apparently no more serious injury done than some severe bruises.
Thankful as they were, the accident had affected them all, for there was not a boy in that Adirondack camp who did not love Mr. Durland. He had been their Scout-Master ever since the formation of the Thirty-ninth Troop, and in all that time they had spent together the Scouts had found nothing in him that the most critical would have cared to change if he could. His never-failing cheerfulness, his quick sympathy and full understanding of boy nature, his hearty praise for work well done or any act that proved the doer a worthy Scout; the quiet reproof, when reproof could no longer be withheld—all these traits had endeared their Scout-Master to the members of the Thirty-ninth.
So it had been with thankful hearts but subdued spirits that they had again taken up the trail.
Then venturesome Tom Binns had foolishly wandered away, and it had taken an hour of searching before they had located him.
They had gone on quietly without any other unpleasant incident and had covered several miles of their hike where there had come literally “lightning out of a clear sky.”
One moment the sky had been of clearest blue, the sun shining brightly. The next the air had been filled with a lurid yellow light. It had thundered and lightened and, by sheer good fortune, just in the nick of time, the boys had stumbled upon a refuge formed by three great rocks piled one against the other. Against and between these they managed to crowd, but it had offered only meagre protection from the fury of the storm. Such a storm had never been witnessed before by any of them. It was preceded by a terrific wind which bent the saplings to the ground, wrenched up great trees by their roots, casting them aside like a giant’s discarded playthings. This it had made the boys’ hearts ache to see, for they had come to love the trees, and regard them almost as friends.
Then came the rain, in driving sheets that hid even nearby objects. It seemed as if the very floodgates of heaven were opened, and that it poured in “floods that came and came again,” until in every depression there was a small lake and wherever the ground sloped downward small rivers ran.
Not a living thing was to be seen, for every wild creature had taken refuge from the fury of the storm in its deepest woodland shelter and nestled there quivering, while still the thunder rolled, the lightning flashed and the rain came down in torrents.
Suddenly there was a peculiarly vivid flash, and then a crash that seemed as if the heavens themselves must be falling, and a tall oak directly opposite the Scouts’ shelter was riven by lightning. Straight through the center of the tree the blue fire ran, from topmost leaf to roots, and the giant parted and fell crashing to the ground.