Part 38 (1/2)
Indeed he went so far as to declare that, with certain modifications, it should be continued in the future, and even to intimate that he would bear the overnst other places, we stopped at Benares and watched the funeral rites in progress upon the banks of the holy Ganges The bearers of the dead brought the body of a wolittered with tinsel orna as they ran, they placed it upon the stones for a little while, then lifted it up again and carried it down the steps to the edge of the river Here they took water and poured it over the corpse, thus perfor the rite of the baptism of death This done, they placed its feet in the water and left it looking very small and lonely Presently appeared a tall, white-draped woman who took her stand by the body and wailed It was the dead one's ain the bearers approached and laid the corpse upon the fla pyre
”These rites are ancient,” said Oro ”When I ruled as King of the World they were practised in this very place It is pleasant to efulness of Time Let it continue till the end”
Here I will cease These experiences that I have recorded are but samples, for also we visited Russia and other countries Perhaps, too, they were not experiences at all, but only dreams consequent on h much of what I seemed to see fitted in very well indeed hat I learned in after days, and certainly at the tiether upon those various shores
Chapter XXI Love's Eternal Altar
Now of all these happenings I said very little to Bastin and Bickley
The former would not have understood them, and the latter attributed what I did tell hi onher to explain their origin and to tell ht
She listened to athered that she too feared for lad, O Hus are not without danger He who travels far out of the body may chance to return there no s, or dreams?” I asked
She evaded a direct answer
”I cannot say My father has great powers I do not know thes nor dreams Mayhap he used you as the sorcerers in the old days used the lass, and after he had put his spell upon you, read in your mind that which passes elsewhere”
I understood her to refer to e call clairvoyance, when the person entranced reveals secret or distant things to the entrancer This is a more or less established phenomenon and much less marvelous than the actual transportation of the spiritual self through space Only I never knew of an instance in which the seer, on awaking, res that he had seen, as in my case There, however, themore from Yva, who appeared to me to have her orders on the point
Nor did Oro ever talk of what I had seeh he continued froht But now our conversation was of other ift he had soon learned how to read the English language, although he never spoke a single word in that tongue Aht from the yacht, was a thin paper edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which he borrohen he discovered that it contained compressed information about the various countries of the world, also concerning almost every other matter My belief is that within a month or so that marvelous old man not only read this stupendous work fro of interest which it contained At least, he would appear and show the fullest acquaintance with certain subjects or places, seeking further light froive him
An accident, as it chanced, whereof I need not set out the details, caused e was limited Thus, at one period, he knew little about any an with a letter later in the alphabet than, let us say, C A few days afterwards he was acquainted with those up to F, or G; and so on till he reached Z, when he appeared to , and returned the book Now, indeed, he was a , very ancient and very new, and with soarnered facts or deductions of what had happened between
Moreover, he took to astrono on the rock at night studying the heavens On one of these occasions, when he had the two metal plates, of which I have spoken, in his hands, I ventured to approach and ask what he did He replied that he was checking his calculations that he found to be quite correct, an exact period of two hundred and fifty thousand years having gone by since he laid himself down to sleep Then, by aid of the plates, he pointed out tothat period in the positions of some of the stars
For instance, he showed nised as Sirius, and reo it was further away and much smaller Noas precisely in the place and of the size which he had predicted, and he pointed to it on his prophetic lass told me was Capella, which, I suppose, is one of the most brilliant stars in the sky, and showed me that on the o, it did not exist, as then it was too far north to appear thereon Still, he observed, the passage of this vast period of time had produced but little effect upon the face of the heavens To the human eye the majority of the stars had not moved so very far
”And yet they travel fast, O Hureat is their journey between the tiather and that day when, worn-out, once -lived who compared to them exist but a tiny fraction of a second, nearly all of which I have been doomed to pass in sleep And, Hureat plans and would shake the world But one, and--whither, whither?”
”If you lived as long as those stars, the end would be the sa, millions of millions of years; also, after death, they reform, as other stars But shall I reform as another Oro? With all my wisdom, I do not know It is known to Fate only--Fate-the master of worlds and men and the Gods they worshi+p--Fate, whoe, to be lost in the sands of Tireat,” I said, ”and have lived long and learned much Yet the end of it is that your lot is neither worse nor better than that of us creatures of an hour”
”It is so, Humphrey Presently you will die, and within a few centuries I shall die also and be as you are You believe that you will live again eternally It may be so because you do believe, since Fate allows Faith to shape the future, if only for a little while But in me Wisdom has destroyed Faith and therefore I ain for tens of thousands of years, ill it helpthat sleep is unconsciousness and that I shall only wake again to die, since sleep does not restore to us our youth?”
He ceased, and walked up and down the rock with a troubled mien Then he stood in front of me and said in a triumphant voice:
”At least, while I live I will rule, and then let come what may come I know that you do not believe, and the first victory of this new day of reat powers and you shall see theht, rule with me for a little while, perhaps, as the first of my subjects Hearken now; in one s They showed me that at this tiain have rocked and split the world, would recur But now it seems that there is an error, a tiny error of eleven hundred years, which o by before those earthquakes coested humbly, ”that there is not also an error in those star-maps you hold?”