The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1893-12-22
IN A PELTINe OF THUNDERBoLTa
Thrilling Experience of Two Hunters on .
Pennsylvania Lake.

i
Pennsylvania Lake.
Sometimes think | haven't got over
my scare yet," said Fred Mullen the gun
maker, for every time think about the
evening spent on Rose lake one summer
up in northern Pennsylvania, near the
Steuben county border, / can feel shud-
der go through me. One thing do know.
Twill never take any comfort again going
out jacking for deer l was in camp with
q local hunter and fisherman named Henry
Nelson. Deer are getting scarce in that re
gion, but one day in going to the outlet of
Rose lake, on the shore of which we were
camping, Nelson discovered the tracks Of a
deer in the soft margin of the water. The
deer had been to the lake the night before
to drink and stamp among the lily pads,
and we made up our minds to jack for it.
"We went out that very night. While
we were lying in our boat near the outlet,
which was on the opposite side OF the lake
from our cabin, half mile away thunder
storm, which we had supposed was an hour
away from us yet, broke upon us with as
tonishing suddenness, and we started back
for camp. The rain fell in sheets, and the
thunder and lightning were simply ap-
palling. Before we had gone a hundred
places around the lake, and eight big dead
pine trees were ablaze The play of cleo
tricity was so continuous that the lake was
wrapped i'll an almost stead y blaze of light,
which, terrible as it was, proved a good
thing for u.s. for our torch of birch bark
had been extinguished by the rain, and the
chances are that if darkness had prevailed
we would not have reached the shore. The
oh re hot
our boat, and its swapping with us would
have only been question of time.
almost Immediately following the
eighth stroke of lightning on the shore, a
clap of thunder that seemed to be directly
over our heads broke with report like a
cannon, and ball of fire shot out from the
inky blackness of the clouds and went
swiftly down into the lake quarter of a
mile away. This report was followed in
quick succession by two others, and each
was accompanied by simultaneous flash
and the shooting into the lake of balls of
fire like the first.
Both Nelson and myself were terror
stricken, for not only were we in the midst
of this awful electrical bombardment, but
our boat was almost half full of water and
rapidly taking in more. We bent all our
eucGSltS W rGdCu Ouc SAOIO, "ulCu oOl1l
nearly quarter of mile distant. The
startling play of the lightning continued,
and we were guided by it straight for camp
as clearly as if we had been on the lake in
midday We had got to within 100 yards
of the shanty, which was near the shore,
when there came another terrible thunder
clap and a flash OF lightning that blinded
and for a few seconds stunned us. When
we recovered from our daZed condition we
saw that the bolt had been hurled against
a big tree at one end of the shanty, and a
regular pillar of fire marked where the tree
stood.
1--WE were now in shallow water, and we
ran the boat as far on land as we could and
then waded out into the lake up to our
necks, believing that we were safer there
| than among the trees on shore. We stood
there nearly half an hour before the fury of
the storm had passed. In that time light
ming struck five times within an area of a
hundred yards of our shanty and innumer-
! able times at more distant places and in
| the lake. When we at last waded ashore,
it was all that either of us could do to drag
| our steps to the cabin, so unstrung were we
by the appalling scenes we had witnessed
and the dangers we had escaped. We were sc
unnerved, in fact, that we broke camp early
next day and returned home. That deer is
probably looking about Rose lake yet-if it
wasn't killed by some one of those thunder.
bolts that were hurled about SO promiscu-
ously that fearful night New York Sun.