Part 16 (2/2)
I did so, and saw it flutter slowly away to a considerable distance parallel with our position in the boat as though in a perfect calm, and then it disappeared. It seemed to have been dissolved. I gazed at my guide in amazement.
”Try again,” said he.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”THE BIT OF GARMENT FLUTTERED LISTLESSLY AWAY TO THE SAME DISTANCE, AND THEN--VACANCY.”]
I tore another and a larger fragment from my coat sleeve. I fixed my eyes closely upon it, and cast it from me. The bit of garment fluttered listlessly away to the same distance, and then--vacancy. Wonders of wonderland, mysteries of the mysterious! What would be the end of this marvelous journey? Suspicion again possessed me, and distrust arose.
Could not my self-existence be blotted out in like manner? I thought again of my New York home, and the recollection of upper earth, and those broken family ties brought to my heart a flood of bitter emotions.
I inwardly cursed the writer of that alchemistic letter, and cursed myself for heeding the contents. The tears gushed from my eyes and trickled through my fingers as I covered my face with my hands and groaned aloud. Then, with a gentle touch, my guide's hand rested on my shoulder.
”Calm yourself,” he said; ”this phenomenon is a natural sequence to a deeper study of nature than man has reached. It is simply the result of an exhibition of rapid motion. You are upon a great underground lake, that, on a shelf of earth substance one hundred and fifty miles below the earth's surface, covers an area of many thousand square miles, and which has an average depth of five miles. We are now crossing it diagonally at a rapid rate by the aid of the force that man will yet use in a perfectly natural manner on the rough upper ocean and bleak lands of the earth's coa.r.s.e surface. The fragments of cloth disappeared from sight when thrown beyond the influence of our protecting diaphragm, because when they struck the outer motionless atmosphere they were instantly left behind; the eye could not catch their sudden change in motion. A period of time is necessary to convey from eye to mind the sensation of sight. The bullet shot from a gun is invisible by reason of the fact that the eye can not discern the momentary interruption to the light. A cannon ball will compa.s.s the field of vision of the eye, moving across it without making itself known, and yet the fact does not excite surprise. We are traveling so fast that small, stationary objects outside our track are invisible.”
Then in a kind, pathetic tone of voice, he said:
”An important lesson you should learn, I have mentioned it before.
Whatever seems to be mysterious, or marvelous, is only so because of the lack of knowledge of a.s.sociated natural phenomena and connected conditions. All that you have experienced, all that you have yet to meet in your future journey, is as I have endeavored to teach you, in exact accordance with the laws that govern the universe, of which the earth const.i.tutes so small a portion that, were the conditions favorable, it could be blotted from its present existence as quickly as that bit of garment disappeared, and with as little disturbance of the mechanism of the moving universe.”
I leaned over, resting my face upon my elbow; my thoughts were immethodically wandering in the midst of multiplying perplexities; I closed my eyes as a weary child, and slept.
CHAPTER XXVII.
SLEEP, DREAMS, NIGHTMARE.--”STRANGLE THE LIFE FROM MY BODY.”
I know not how long I sat wrapped in slumber. Even if my body had not been wearing away as formerly, my mind had become excessively wearied. I had existed in a state of abnormal mental intoxication far beyond the period of accustomed wakefulness, and had taxed my mental organization beyond endurance. In the midst of events of the most startling description, I had abruptly pa.s.sed into what was at its commencement the sweetest sleep of my recollection, but which came to a horrible termination.
In my dream I was transported once more to my native land, and roamed in freedom throughout the streets of my lost home. I lived over again my early life in Virginia, and I seemed to have lost all recollection of the weird journey which I had lately taken. My subsequent connection with the brotherhood of alchemists, and the unfortunate letter that led to my present condition, were forgotten. There came no thought suggestive of the train of events that are here chronicled, and as a child I tasted again the pleasures of innocence, the joys of boyhood.
Then my dream of childhood vanished, and the scenes of later days spread themselves before me. I saw, after a time, the scenes of my later life, as though I viewed them from a distance, and was impressed with the idea that they were not real, but only the fragments of a dream. I shuddered in my childish dreamland, and trembled as a child would at confronting events of the real life that I had pa.s.sed through on earth, and that gradually a.s.suming the shape of man approached and stood before me, a hideous specter seemingly ready to absorb me. The peaceful child in which I existed shrunk back, and recoiled from the approaching living man.
”Away, away,” I cried, ”you shall not grasp me, I do not wish to become a man; this can not, must not be the horrible end to a sweet existence.”
Gradually the Man Life approached, seized and enveloped me, closing around me as a jelly fish surrounds its living victim, while the horrors of a nightmare came over my soul.
”Man's life is a fearful dream,” I shouted, as I writhed in agony; ”I am still a child, and will remain one; keep off! Life of man, away! let me live and die a child.”
The Specter of Man's Life seized me more firmly as I struggled to escape, and holding me in its irresistible clutch absorbed my substance as a vampire might suck the blood of an infant, and while the childish dream disappeared in that hideous embrace, the miserable man awoke.
I found myself on land. The guide, seated at my side, remarked:
”You have slept.”
”I have lived again,” I said in bitterness.
”You have not lived at all as yet,” he replied; ”life is a dream, usually it is an unsatisfied nightmare.”
”Then let me dream again as at the beginning of this slumber,” I said; ”and while I dream as a child, do you strangle the life from my body,--spare me the nightmare, I would not live to reach the Life of Man.”
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