The land announced at the moment when the sea was closing over the
corpse of the poor sailor was low-lying and of a yellow colour. This
line of slightly elevated downs was Long Island, a great sandy bank
enlivened with vegetation, which stretches along the American coast from
Montauk Point to Brooklyn, adjoining New York. Several yachts were
coasting along this island, which is covered with villas and
pleasure-houses, the favourite resorts of the New Yorkists.
Every passenger waved his hand to the land so longed for after the
tedious voyage, which had not been exempt from painful accidents. Every
telescope was directed towards this first specimen of the American
continent, and each saw it under a different aspect. The Yankee beheld
in it his mother-land; the Southerner regarded these northern lands with
a kind of scorn, the scorn of the conquered for the conqueror; the
Canadian looked upon it as a man who had only one step to take to call
himself a citizen of the Union; the Californian in his mind’s eye
traversed the plains of the Far West, and crossing the Rocky Mountains
had already set foot on their inexhaustible mines. The Mormonite, with
elevated brow and scornful lip, hardly noticed these shores, but peered
beyond to where stood the City of the Saints on the borders of Salt
Lake, in the far-off deserts. As for the young lovers, this continent
was to them the Promised Land.
In the meanwhile the sky was growing more and more threatening. A dark
line of clouds gathered in the zenith, and a suffocating heat penetrated
the atmosphere as though a July sun was shining directly above us.
“Would you like me to astonish you?” said the Doctor, who had joined me
on the gangway.
“Astonish me, Doctor?”
“Well, then, we shall have a storm, perhaps a thunder-storm, before the
day is over.”
“A thunder-storm in the month of April!” I cried.
“The ‘Great Eastern’ does not trouble herself about seasons,” replied
Dean Pitferge, shrugging his shoulders. “It is a tempest called forth
expressly on her account. Look at the threatening aspect of those clouds
which cover the sky; they look like antediluvian animals, and before
long they will devour each other.”
“I confess,” said I, “the sky looks stormy, and were it three months
later I should be of your opinion, but not at this time of year.”
“I tell you,” replied the Doctor, growing animated, “the storm will
burst out before many hours are past. I feel it like a barometer. Look
at those vapours rising in a mass, observe that cirrus, those mares’
tails which are blending together, and those thick circles which
surround the horizon. Soon there will be a rapid condensing of vapour,
which will consequently produce electricity. Besides the mercury has
suddenly fallen, and the prevailing wind is south-west, the only one
which can brew a storm in winter.”
“Your observations may be very true, Doctor,” said I, not willing to
yield, “but who has ever witnessed a thunder-storm at this season, and
in this latitude?”
“We have proof, sir, we have proof on record. Mild winters are often
marked by storms. You ought only to have lived in 1772, or even in 1824,
and you would have heard the roaring of the thunder, in the first
instance in February, and in the second in December. In the month of
January, 1837, a thunder-bolt fell near Drammen in Norway, and did
considerable mischief. Last year, in the month of February,
fishing-smacks from Tréport were struck by lightning. If I had time to
consult statistics I would soon put you to silence.”
“Well, Doctor, since you will have it so, we shall soon see. At any
rate, you are not afraid of thunder?”
“Not I,” replied the Doctor. “The thunder is my friend; better still, it
is my doctor.”
“Your doctor?”
“Most certainly. I was struck by lightning in my bed on the 13th July,
1867, at Kew, near London, and it cured me of paralysis in my right arm,
when the doctors had given up the case as hopeless.”
“You must be joking.”
“Not at all. It is an economical treatment by electricity. My dear sir,
there are many very authentic facts which prove that thunder surpasses
the most skilful physicians, and its intervention is truly marvellous in
apparently hopeless cases.”
“Nevertheless,” said I, “I have little trust in your doctor, and would
not willingly consult him.”
“Because you have never seen him at work. Stay; here is an instance
which I have heard of as occurring in 1817. A peasant in Connecticut,
who was suffering from asthma, supposed to be incurable, was struck by
lightning in a field, and radically cured.”
In fact I believe the Doctor would have been capable of making the
thunder into pills.
“Laugh, ignoramus!” said he to me. “You know nothing either of the
weather or medicine!”