It was still the twilight of dawn when he reached the field. He beheld the
fire first from a point several hundred yards away. As he explained it,
the light--for it was more aptly described as a light than a
fire--extended in parallel rays from the ground directly upward into the
sky. He could see no line of demarkation where it ended at the top. It
seemed to extend into the sky an infinite distance. It was, in fact, as
though an enormous searchlight were buried in his field, casting its beam
of light directly upward.
But more than all this, the farmer was struck by the extraordinary color
of the light. At the base it was a deep, solid green. This green color
extended upward for perhaps fifty feet, then it shaded into red. The
farmer noticed, too, that the fire did not leap and dance with flames, but
seemed rather to glow--a steady light like the burning of colored powder.
In the morning half-light it threw a weird, unearthly reddish-green glow
over the field.
The farmer approached to within twenty feet of the light. He looked to see
what was burning, but could not determine, for the greenish base extended
directly down into the ground. He noticed also that it gave out
extraordinarily little heat. The morning was not exceptionally cold, yet
he stood within twenty feet of the fire without discomfort.
I was on the staff of the Boston _Observer_ at this time. I reached
Brookline about noon of the 11th of November, and went directly to the
field where the fire was burning. Nearly a thousand people were there,
watching.
By daylight the fire still held its green and red color, although its
light was much less intense. It held its characteristic shape. Though
clearly definable, under the rays of the sun it became quite transparent.
Looking through it, I could see plainly the crowd of people on the farther
side of the field. The effect was similar to looking through a faintly
tinted glass, except that now I noticed that the light had a sort of
crawling motion, like the particles of a heavy fog. The fire came from a
hole in the ground; by daylight now the hole could be seen plainly.
For some moments I stood silent, awestruck by this extraordinary
spectacle. Then a man standing beside me remarked that there was no smoke.
I had not thought of that before, but it was true--indeed, the fire
appeared phosphorescent.
"Let's get up closer," said the man beside me.
Together we walked to within ten feet of the outer edge of the fire. We
could feel its heat now, although it was not uncomfortable except when it
beat directly on our faces. Standing so close, we could see down into the
hole from which the light emanated.
Lying at the bottom of the hole, perhaps ten feet below the surface, I saw
the jagged top of an enormous gray sphere, burned and pitted. This was the
meteor--nearly thirty feet in diameter--that in its fall had buried itself
deep in the loam of the field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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