Part 37 (1/2)
”I would probably be considered mentally deranged; this I have before admitted.”
”Would it not be better then,” he continued, ”to go with me, by your own free will, into the unknown future, which you need fear less than a return to the scoffing mult.i.tude amid the storms of upper earth? You know that I have not at any time deceived you. I have, as yet, only opened before you a part of one rare page out of the boundless book of nature; you have tasted of the sweets of which few persons in the flesh have sipped, and I now promise you a further store of knowledge that is rich beyond conception, if you wish to continue your journey.”
”What if I decide to return?”
”I will retrace my footsteps and liberate you upon the surface of the earth, as I have others, for few persons have courage enough to pa.s.s this spot.”
”Binding me to an oath of secrecy?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”SPRUNG FROM THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF INTO THE ABYSS BELOW, CARRYING ME WITH HIM INTO ITS DEPTHS.”]
”No,” he answered; ”for if you relate these events men will consider you a madman, and the more clearly you attempt to explain the facts that you have witnessed, the less they will listen to you; such has been the fate of others.”
”It is, indeed, better for me to go with you,” I said musingly; ”to that effect my mind is now made up, my course is clear, I am ready.”
With a motion so quick in conception, and rapid in execution that I was taken altogether by surprise, with a grasp so powerful that I could not have repelled him, had I expected the movement and tried to protect myself, the strange man, or being beside me, threw his arms around my body. Then, as a part of the same movement, he raised me bodily from the stone, and before I could realize the nature of his intention, sprung from the edge of the cliff into the abyss below, carrying me with him into its depths.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE INNER CIRCLE, OR THE END OF GRAVITATION.--IN THE BOTTOMLESS GULF.
I recall a whirling sensation, and an involuntary attempt at self-preservation, in which I threw my arms wildly about with a vain endeavor to clutch some form of solid body, which movement naturally ended by a tight clasping of my guide in my arms, and locked together we continued to speed down into the seven thousand miles of vacancy.
Instinctively I murmured a prayer of supplication, and awaited the approaching hereafter, which, as I believed, would quickly witness the extinction of my unhappy life, the end of my material existence; but the moments (if time can be so divided when no sun marks the division) multiplied without bodily shock or physical pain of any description; I retained my consciousness.
”Open your eyes,” said my guide, ”you have no cause for fear.”
I acquiesced in an incredulous, dazed manner.
”This unusual experience is sufficient to unnerve you, but you need have no fear, for you are not in corporal danger, and can relax your grasp on my person.”
I cautiously obeyed him, misgivingly, and slowly loosened my hold, then gazed about to find that we were in a sea of light, and that only light was visible, that form of light which I have before said is an ent.i.ty without source of radiation. In one direction, however, a great gray cloud hung suspended and gloomy, dark in the center, and shading therefrom in a circle, to disappear entirely at an angle of about forty-five degrees.
”This is the earth-shelf from which we sprung,” said the guide; ”it will soon disappear.”
Wherever I glanced this radiant exhalation, a peaceful, luminous envelope, this rich, soft, beautiful white light appeared. The power of bodily motion I found still a factor in my frame, obedient, as before, to my will. I could move my limbs freely, and my intellect seemed to be intact. Finally I became impressed with the idea that I must be at perfect rest, but if so what could be the nature of the substance, or material, upon which I was resting so complacently? No; this could not be true. Then I thought: ”I have been instantly killed by a painless shock, and my spirit is in heaven;” but my earthly body and coa.r.s.e, ragged garments were palpable realities; the sense of touch, sight, and hearing surely were normal, and a consideration of these facts dispelled my first conception.
”Where are we now?”
”Moving into earth's central s.p.a.ce.”
”I comprehend that a rus.h.i.+ng wind surrounds us which is not uncomfortable, but otherwise I experience no unusual sensation, and can not realize but that I am at rest.”
”The sensation, as of a blowing wind, is in consequence of our rapid motion, and results from the friction between our bodies and the quiescent, attenuated atmosphere which exists even here, but this atmosphere becomes less and less in amount until it will disappear altogether at a short distance below us. Soon we will be in a perfect calm, and although moving rapidly, to all appearances will be at absolute rest.”
Naturally, perhaps, my mind attempted, as it so often had done, to urge objections to his statements, and at first it occurred to me that I did not experience the peculiar sinking away sensation in the chest that I remembered follows, on earth, the downward motion of a person falling from a great height, or moving rapidly in a swing, and I questioned him on the absence of that phenomenon.