Page:Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers.djvu/146

136, even louder than the one preceding. A great ball of fire, pear shaped, leaped for the same spot in the mountain.

"There's a mass of iron ore there!" yelled Mr. Parker. "The lightning is attracted to it!"

His voice was swallowed up in the terrific crash that followed, and, as there came another flash of the celestial fire, the figure in white could be seen hurrying back up the mountain trail. Evidently the electrical storm, with lightning bolts discharging so close, was too much for the "ghost."

In another instant it looked as if the whole place about where the diamond seekers stood, was a mass of fire. Great forked tongues of lightning leaped from the clouds, and seemed to lick the ground. There was a rattle and bang of thunder, like the firing of a battery of guns. Tom and the others felt themselves tingling all over, as if they had hold of an electrical battery, and there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air.

"We are in the midst of the storm!" cried Mr. Parker. "We are standing on a mass of iron ore! Any minute may be our last!"

But fate had not intended the adventurers for death by lightning. Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the discharge of the tongues of fire