"Why Don't Lightning Cast a Shadow?"

Consider first the case in which the lightning bolt and gun are at right angles to one another. Since Jim placed the gun upright, the bolt would be horizontal, striking from cloud to cloud. Another fierce glare lit up the forest and an instant crash followed that seemed to rend the tree-tops right over the boys' heads. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in a clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outline of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpses through the drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. The storm culminated in one matchless effort that seemed likely to tear the island to pieces, burn it up, drown it to the tree-tops, blow it away, and deafening every creature in it, all at one and the same moment.