CHAPTER I
Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain,
prosaic lieutenant in the republican service have done the incredible
things here set out for the love of a woman--for a chimera in female
shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of woman-loveliness? At times I tell
myself I dare not: that you will laugh, and cast me aside as a fabricator;
and then again I pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for
I MUST write it--the pallid splendour of that thing I loved, and won,
and lost is ever before me, and will not be forgotten. The tumult
of the struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind,
the soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransacked for its sake and
the roar of the destruction which followed me back from the quest
drowns all other sounds in my ears! I must and will write--it relieves
me; read and believe as you list.
At the moment this story commences I was thinking of grilled steak
and tomatoes--steak crisp and brown on both sides, and tomatoes red
as a setting sun!
Much else though I have forgotten, THAT fact remains as clear as the
last sight of a well-remembered shore in the mind of some wave-tossed
traveller. And the occasion which produced that prosaic thought was
a night well calculated to make one think of supper and fireside,
though the one might be frugal and the other lonely, and as I, Gulliver
Jones, the poor foresaid Navy lieutenant, with the honoured stars
of our Republic on my collar, and an undeserved snub from those in
authority rankling in my heart, picked my way homeward by a short
cut through the dismalness of a New York slum I longed for steak and
stout, slippers and a pipe, with all the pathetic keenness of a troubled
soul.
It was a wild, black kind of night, and the weirdness of it showed
up as I passed from light to light or crossed the mouths of dim alleys
leading Heaven knows to what infernal dens of mystery and crime even
in this latter-day city of ours. The moon was up as far as the church
steeples; large vapoury clouds scudding across the sky between us
and her, and a strong, gusty wind, laden with big raindrops snarled
angrily round corners and sighed in the parapets like strange voices
talking about things not of human interest.
It made no difference to me, of course. New York in this year of grace
is not the place for the supernatural be the time never so fit for
witch-riding and the night wind in the chimney-stacks sound never
so much like the last gurgling cries of throttled men. No! the world
was very matter-of-fact, and particularly so to me, a poor younger
son with five dollars in my purse by way of fortune, a packet of unpaid
bills in my breastpocket, and round my neck a locket with a portrait
therein of that dear buxom, freckled, stub-nosed girl away in a little
southern seaport town whom I thought I loved with a magnificent affection.
Gods! I had not even touched the fringe of that affliction.
Thus sauntering along moodily, my chin on my chest and much too absorbed
in reflection to have any nice appreciation of what was happening
about me, I was crossing in front of a dilapidated block of houses,
dating back nearly to the time of the Pilgrim Fathers, when I had
a vague consciousness of something dark suddenly sweeping by me--a
thing like a huge bat, or a solid shadow, if such a thing could be,
and the next instant there was a thud and a bump, a bump again, a
half-stifled cry, and then a hurried vision of some black carpeting
that flapped and shook as though all the winds of Eblis were in its
folds, and then apparently disgorged from its inmost recesses a little
man.
Before my first start of half-amused surprise was over I saw him by
the flickering lamp-light clutch at space as he tried to steady himself,
stumble on the slippery curb, and the next moment go down on the back
of his head with a most ugly thud.
Now I was not destitute of feeling, though it had been my lot to see
men die in many ways, and I ran over to that motionless form without
an idea that anything but an ordinary accident had occurred. There
he lay, silent and, as it turned out afterwards, dead as a door-nail,
the strangest old fellow ever eyes looked upon, dressed in shabby
sorrel-coloured clothes of antique cut, with a long grey beard upon
his chin, pent-roof eyebrows, and a wizened complexion so puckered
and tanned by exposure to Heaven only knew what weathers that it was
impossible to guess his nationality.
I lifted him up out of the puddle of black blood in which he was lying,
and his head dropped back over my arm as though it had been fixed
to his body with string alone. There was neither heart-beat nor breath
in him, and the last flicker of life faded out of that gaunt face
even as I watched. It was not altogether a pleasant situation, and
the only thing to do appeared to be to get the dead man into proper
care (though little good it could do him now!) as speedily as possible.
So, sending a chance passer-by into the main street for a cab, I placed
him into it as soon as it came, and there being nobody else to go,
got in with him myself, telling the driver at the same time to take
us to the nearest hospital.
"Is this your rug, captain?" asked a bystander just as we
were driving off.
"Not mine," I answered somewhat roughly. "You don't
suppose I go about at this time of night with Turkey carpets under
my arm, do you? It belongs to this old chap here who has just dropped
out of the skies on to his head; chuck it on top and shut the door!"
And that rug, the very mainspring of the startling things which followed,
was thus carelessly thrown on to the carriage, and off we went.
Well, to be brief, I handed in that stark old traveller from nowhere
at the hospital, and as a matter of curiosity sat in the waiting-room
while they examined him. In five minutes the house-surgeon on duty
came in to see me, and with a shake of his head said briefly--
"Gone, sir--clean gone! Broke his neck like a pipe-stem. Most
strange-looking man, and none of us can even guess at his age. Not
a friend of yours, I suppose?"
"Nothing whatever to do with me, sir. He slipped on the pavement
and fell in front of me just now, and as a matter of common charity
I brought him in here. Were there any means of identification on him?"
"None whatever," answered the doctor, taking out his notebook
and, as a matter of form, writing down my name and address and a few
brief particulars, "nothing whatever except this curious-looking
bead hung round his neck by a blackened thong of leather," and
he handed me a thing about as big as a filbert nut with a loop for
suspension and apparently of rock crystal, though so begrimed and
dull its nature was difficult to speak of with certainty. The bead
was of no seeming value and slipped unintentionally into my waistcoat
pocket as I chatted for a few minutes more with the doctor, and then,
shaking hands, I said goodbye, and went back to the cab which was
still waiting outside.
It was only on reaching home I noticed the hospital porters had omitted
to take the dead man's carpet from the roof of the cab when they carried
him in, and as the cabman did not care about driving back to the hospital
with it, and it could not well be left in the street, I somewhat reluctantly
carried it indoors with me.
Once in the shine of my own lamp and a cigar in my mouth I had a closer
look at that ancient piece of art work from heaven, or the other place,
only knows what ancient loom.
A big, strong rug of faded Oriental colouring, it covered half the
floor of my sitting-room, the substance being of a material more like
camel's hair than anything else, and running across, when examined
closely, were some dark fibres so long and fine that surely they must
have come from the tail of Solomon's favourite black stallion itself.
But the strangest thing about that carpet was its pattern. It was
threadbare enough to all conscience in places, yet the design still
lived in solemn, age-wasted hues, and, as I dragged it to my stove-front
and spread it out, it seemed to me that it was as much like a star
map done by a scribe who had lately recovered from delirium tremens
as anything else. In the centre appeared a round such as might be
taken for the sun, while here and there, "in the field,"
as heralds say, were lesser orbs which from their size and position
could represent smaller worlds circling about it. Between these orbs
were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all
directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven
characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit.
Round the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect
jungle of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could have forced
a way in search of meaning.
Altogether, I thought as I kicked it out straight upon my floor, it
was a strange and not unhandsome article of furniture--it would do
nicely for the mess-room on the Carolina, and if any representatives
of yonder poor old fellow turned up tomorrow, why, I would give them
a couple of dollars for it. Little did I guess how dear it would be
at any price!
Meanwhile that steak was late, and now that the temporary excitement
of the evening was wearing off I fell dull again. What a dark, sodden
world it was that frowned in on me as I moved over to the window and
opened it for the benefit of the cool air, and how the wind howled
about the roof tops. How lonely I was! What a fool I had been to ask
for long leave and come ashore like this, to curry favour with a set
of stubborn dunderheads who cared nothing for me--or Polly, and could
not or would not understand how important it was to the best interests
of the Service that I should get that promotion which alone would
send me back to her an eligible wooer! What a fool I was not to have
volunteered for some desperate service instead of wasting time like
this! Then at least life would have been interesting; now it was dull
as ditch-water, with wretched vistas of stagnant waiting between now
and that joyful day when I could claim that dear, rosy-checked girl
for my own. What a fool I had been!
"I wish, I wish," I exclaimed, walking round the little
room, "I wish I were--"
While these unfinished exclamations were actually passing my lips
I chanced to cross that infernal mat, and it is no more startling
than true, but at my word a quiver of expectation ran through that
gaunt web--a rustle of anticipation filled its ancient fabric, and
one frayed corner surged up, and as I passed off its surface in my
stride, the sentence still unfinished on my lips, wrapped itself about
my left leg with extraordinary swiftness and so effectively that I
nearly fell into the arms of my landlady, who opened the door at the
moment and came in with a tray and the steak and tomatoes mentioned
more than once already.
It was the draught caused by the opening door, of course, that had
made the dead man's rug lift so strangely--what else could it have
been? I made this apology to the good woman, and when she had set
the table and closed the door took another turn or two about my den,
continuing as I did so my angry thoughts.
"Yes, yes," I said at last, returning to the stove and taking
my stand, hands in pockets, in front of it, "anything were better
than this, any enterprise however wild, any adventure however desperate.
Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here, anywhere out of this redtape-ridden
world of ours! I WISH I WERE IN THE PLANET MARS!"
How can I describe what followed those luckless words? Even as I spoke
the magic carpet quivered responsively under my feet, and an undulation
went all round the fringe as though a sudden wind were shaking it.
It humped up in the middle so abruptly that I came down sitting with
a shock that numbed me for the moment. It threw me on my back and
billowed up round me as though I were in the trough of a stormy sea.
Quicker than I can write it lapped a corner over and rolled me in
its folds like a chrysalis in a cocoon. I gave a wild yell and made
one frantic struggle, but it was too late. With the leathery strength
of a giant and the swiftness of an accomplished cigar-roller covering
a "core" with leaf, it swamped my efforts, straightened
my limbs, rolled me over, lapped me in fold after fold till head and
feet and everything were gone--crushed life and breath back into my
innermost being, and then, with the last particle of consciousness,
I felt myself lifted from the floor, pass once round the room, and
finally shoot out, point foremost, into space through the open window,
and go up and up and up with a sound of rending atmospheres that seemed
to tear like riven silk in one prolonged shriek under my head, and
to close up in thunder astern until my reeling senses could stand
it no longer. and time and space and circumstances all lost their
meaning to me.
CHAPTER II
How long that wild rush lasted I have
no means of judging. It may have been an hour, a day, or many days,
for I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but presently
my senses began to return and with them a sensation of lessening speed,
a grateful relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed
in its grasp, without destroying it completely. It was just that sort
of sensation though more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller
feels when he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached
and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the slowing down was
for a long time comparative. Yet the sensation served to revive my
scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of
amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire
to know what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or
twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a woodpecker flying from
tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first, rolled over several times,
then steadied again, and, coming at last to rest, the next minute
the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its borders in its peculiar
way, and humping up in the middle shot me five feet into the air like
a cat tossed from a schoolboy's blanket.
As I turned over I had a dim vision of a clear light like the shine
of dawn, and solid ground sloping away below me. Upon that slope was
ranged a crowd of squatting people, and a staid-looking individual
with his back turned stood nearer by. Afterwards I found he was lecturing
all those sitters on the ethics of gravity and the inherent properties
of falling bodies; at the moment I only knew he was directly in my
line as I descended, and him round the waist I seized, giddy with
the light and fresh air, waltzed him down the slope with the force
of my impetus, and, tripping at the bottom, rolled over and over recklessly
with him sheer into the arms of the gaping crowd below. Over and over
we went into the thickest mass of bodies, making a way through the
people, until at last we came to a stop in a perfect mound of writhing
forms and waving legs and arms. When we had done the mass disentangled
itself and I was able to raise my head from the shoulder of someone
on whom I had fallen, lifting him, or her--which was it?--into a sitting
posture alongside of me at the same time, while the others rose about
us like wheat-stalks after a storm, and edged shyly off, as well as
they might.
Such a sleek, slim youth it was who sat up facing me, with a flush
of gentle surprise on his face, and dapper hands that felt cautiously
about his anatomy for injured places. He looked so quaintly rueful
yet withal so good-tempered that I could not help bursting into laughter
in spite of my own amazement. Then he laughed too, a sedate, musical
chuckle, and said something incomprehensible, pointing at the same
time to a cut upon my finger that was bleeding a little. I shook my
head, meaning thereby that it was nothing, but the stranger with graceful
solicitude took my hand, and, after examining the hurt, deliberately
tore a strip of cloth from a bright yellow toga-like garment he was
wearing and bound the place up with a woman's tenderness.
Meanwhile, as he ministered, there was time to look about me. Where
was I? It was not the Broadway; it was not Staten Island on a Saturday
afternoon. The night was just over, and the sun on the point of rising.
Yet it was still shadowy all about, the air being marvellously tepid
and pleasant to the senses. Quaint, soft aromas like the breath of
a new world--the fragrance of unknown flowers, and the dewy scent
of never-trodden fields drifted to my nostrils; and to my ears came
a sound of laughter scarcely more human than the murmur of the wind
in the trees, and a pretty undulating whisper as though a great concourse
of people were talking softly in their sleep. I gazed about scarcely
knowing how much of my senses or surroundings were real and how much
fanciful, until I presently became aware the rosy twilight was broadening
into day, and under the increasing shine a strange scene was fashioning
itself.
At first it was an opal sea I looked on of mist, shot along its upper
surface with the rosy gold and pinks of dawn. Then, as that soft,
translucent lake ebbed, jutting hills came through it, black and crimson,
and as they seemed to mount into the air other lower hills showed
through the veil with rounded forest knobs till at last the brightening
day dispelled the mist, and as the rosy-coloured gauzy fragments went
slowly floating away a wonderfully fair country lay at my feet, with
a broad sea glimmering in many arms and bays in the distance beyond.
It was all dim and unreal at first, the mountains shadowy, the ocean
unreal, the flowery fields between it and me vacant and shadowy.
Yet were they vacant? As my eyes cleared and day brightened still
more, and I turned my head this way and that, it presently dawned
upon me all the meadow coppices and terraces northwards of where I
lay, all that blue and spacious ground I had thought to be bare and
vacant, were alive with a teeming city of booths and tents; now I
came to look more closely there was a whole town upon the slope, built
as might be in a night of boughs and branches still unwithered, the
streets and ways of that city in the shadows thronged with expectant
people moving in groups and shifting to and fro in lively streams--chatting
at the stalls and clustering round the tent doors in soft, gauzy,
parti-coloured crowds in a way both fascinating and perplexing.
I stared about me like a child at its first pantomime, dimly understanding
all I saw was novel, but more allured to the colour and life of the
picture than concerned with its exact meaning; and while I stared
and turned my finger was bandaged, and my new friend had been lisping
away to me without getting anything in turn but a shake of the head.
This made him thoughtful, and thereon followed a curious incident
which I cannot explain. I doubt even whether you will believe it;
but what am I to do in that case? You have already accepted the episode
of my coming, or you would have shut the covers before arriving at
this page of my modest narrative, and this emboldens me. I may strengthen
my claim on your credulity by pointing out the extraordinary marvels
which science is teaching you even on our own little world. To quote
a single instance: If any one had declared ten years ago that it would
shortly be practicable and easy for two persons to converse from shore
to shore across the Atlantic without any intervening medium, he would
have been laughed at as a possibly amusing but certainly extravagant
romancer. Yet that picturesque lie of yesterday is amongst the accomplished
facts of today! Therefore I am encouraged to ask your indulgence,
in the name of your previous errors, for the following and any other
instances in which I may appear to trifle with strict veracity. There
is no such thing as the impossible in our universe!
When my friendly companion found I could not understand him, he looked
serious for a minute or two, then shortened his brilliant yellow toga,
as though he had arrived at some resolve, and knelt down directly
in front of me. He next took my face between his hands, and putting
his nose within an inch of mine, stared into my eyes with all his
might. At first I was inclined to laugh, but before long the most
curious sensations took hold of me. They commenced with a thrill which
passed all up my body, and next all feeling save the consciousness
of the loud beating of my heart ceased. Then it seemed that boy's
eyes were inside my head and not outside, while along with them an
intangible something pervaded my brain. The sensation at first was
like the application of ether to the skin--a cool, numbing emotion.
It was followed by a curious tingling feeling, as some dormant cells
in my mind answered to the thought-transfer, and were filled and fertilised!
My other brain-cells most distinctly felt the vitalising of their
companions, and for about a minute I experienced extreme nausea and
a headache such as comes from over-study, though both passed swiftly
off. I presume that in the future we shall all obtain knowledge in
this way. The Professors of a later day will perhaps keep shops for
the sale of miscellaneous information, and we shall drop in and be
inflated with learning just as the bicyclist gets his tire pumped
up, or the motorist is recharged with electricity at so much per unit.
Examinations will then become matters of capacity in the real meaning
of that word, and we shall be tempted to invest our pocket-money by
advertisements of "A cheap line in Astrology," "Try
our double-strength, two-minute course of Classics," "This
is remnant day for Trigonometry and Metaphysics," and so on.
My friend did not get as far as that. With him the process did not
take more than a minute, but it was startling in its results, and
reduced me to an extraordinary state of hypnotic receptibility. When
it was over my instructor tapped with a finger on my lips, uttering
aloud as he did so the words--
"Know none; know some; know little; know morel" again and
again; and the strangest part of it is that as he spoke I did know
at first a little, then more, and still more, by swift accumulation,
of his speech and meaning. In fact, when presently he suddenly laid
a hand over my eyes and then let go of my head with a pleasantly put
question as to how I felt, I had no difficulty whatever in answering
him in his own tongue, and rose from the ground as one gets from a
hair-dresser's chair, with a vague idea of looking round for my hat
and offering him his fee.
"My word, sir!" I said, in lisping Martian, as I pulled
down my cuffs and put my cravat straight, "that was a quick process.
I once heard of a man who learnt a language in the moments he gave
each day to having his boots blacked; but this beats all. I trust
I was a docile pupil?"
"Oh, fairly, sir," answered the soft, musical voice of the
strange being by me; "but your head is thick and your brain tough.
I could have taught another in half the time."
"Curiously enough," was my response, "those are almost
the very words with which my dear old tutor dismissed me the morning
I left college. Never mind, the thing is done. Shall I pay you anything?"
"I do not understand."
"Any honorarium, then? Some people understand one word and not
the other." But the boy only shook his head in answer.
Strangely enough, I was not greatly surprised all this time either
at the novelty of my whereabouts or at the hypnotic instruction in
a new language just received. Perhaps it was because my head still
spun too giddily with that flight in the old rug for much thought;
perhaps because I did not yet fully realise the thing that had happened.
But, anyhow, there is the fact, which, like so many others in my narrative,
must, alas! remain unexplained for the moment. The rug, by the way,
had completely disappeared, my friend comforting me on this score,
however, by saying he had seen it rolled up and taken away by one
whom he knew.
"We are very tidy people here, stranger," he said, "and
everything found Lying about goes back to the Palace store-rooms.
You will laugh to see the lumber there, for few of us ever take the
trouble to reclaim our property."
Heaven knows I was in no laughing mood when I saw that enchanted web
again!
When I had lain and watched the brightening scene for a time, I got
up, and having stretched and shaken my clothes into some sort of order,
we strolled down the hill and joined the light-hearted crowds that
twined across the plain and through the streets of their city of booths.
They were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon, well-formed
and like to us as could be in the main, but slender and willowy, so
dainty and light, both the men and the women, so pretty of cheek and
hair, so mild of aspect, I felt, as I strode amongst them, I could
have plucked them like flowers and bound them up in bunches with my
belt. And yet somehow I liked them from the first minute; such a happy,
careless, light-hearted race, again I say, never was seen before.
There was not a stain of thought or care on a single one of those
white foreheads that eddied round me under their peaked, blossom-like
caps, the perpetual smile their faces wore never suffered rebuke anywhere;
their very movements were graceful and slow, their laughter was low
and musical, there was an odour of friendly, slothful happiness about
them that made me admire whether I would or no.
Unfortunately I was not able to live on laughter, as they appeared
to be, so presently turning to my acquaintance, who had told me his
name was the plain monosyllabic An, and clapping my hand on his shoulder
as he stood lost in sleepy reflection, said, in a good, hearty way,
"Hullo, friend Yellow-jerkin! If a stranger might set himself
athwart the cheerful current of your meditations, may such a one ask
how far 'tis to the nearest wine-shop or a booth where a thirsty man
may get a mug of ale at a moderate reckoning?"
That gilded youth staggered under my friendly blow as though the hammer
of Thor himself had suddenly lit upon his shoulder, and ruefully rubbing
his tender skin, he turned on me mild, handsome eyes, answering after
a moment, during which his native mildness struggled with the pain
I had unwittingly given him--
"If your thirst be as emphatic as your greeting, friend Heavy-fist,
it will certainly be a kindly deed to lead you to the drinking-place.
My shoulder tingles with your good-fellowship," he added, keeping
two arms'-lengths clear of me. "Do you wish," he said, "merely
to cleanse a dusty throat, or for blue or pink oblivion?"
"Why," I answered laughingly, "I have come a longish
journey since yesterday night--a journey out of count of all reasonable
mileage--and I might fairly plead a dusty throat as excuse for a beginning;
but as to the other things mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses,
I do not even know what you mean."
"Undoubtedly you are a stranger," said the friendly youth,
eyeing me from top to toe with renewed wonder, "and by your unknown
garb one from afar."
"From how far no man can say--not even I--but from very far,
in truth. Let that stay your curiosity for the time. And now to bench
and ale-mug, on good fellow!--the shortest way. I was never so thirsty
as this since our water-butts went overboard when I sailed the southern
seas as a tramp apprentice, and for three days we had to damp our
black tongues with the puddles the night-dews left in the lift of
our mainsail."
Without more words, being a little awed of me, I thought, the boy
led me through the good-humoured crowd to where, facing the main road
to the town, but a little sheltered by a thicket of trees covered
with gigantic pink blossoms, stood a drinking-place--a cluster of
tables set round an open grass-plot. Here he brought me a platter
of some light inefficient cakes which merely served to make hunger
more self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine contained in a triple-bodied
flask, each division containing vintage of a separate hue. We broke
our biscuits, sipped that mysterious wine, and talked of many things
until at last something set us on the subject of astronomy, a study
I found my dapper gallant had some knowledge of--which was not to
be wondered at seeing he dwelt under skies each night set thick above
his curly head with tawny planets, and glittering constellations sprinkled
through space like flowers in May meadows. He knew what worlds went
round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I began to question
him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind and, you will remember,
so far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim, restless
suspicion that I had come beyond the ken of all men's knowledge.
Therefore, sweeping clear the board with my sleeve, and breaking the
wafer cake I was eating, I set down one central piece for the sun,
and, "See here!" I said, "good fellow! This morsel
shall stand for that sun you have just been welcoming back with quaint
ritual. Now stretch your starry knowledge to the utmost, and put down
that tankard for a moment. If this be yonder sun and this lesser crumb
be the outermost one of our revolving system, and this the next within,
and this the next, and so on; now if this be so tell me which of these
fragmentary orbs is ours--which of all these crumbs from the hand
of the primordial would be that we stand upon?" And I waited
with an anxiety a light manner thinly hid, to hear his answer.
It came at once. Laughing as though the question were too trivial,
and more to humour my wayward fancy than aught else, that boy circled
his rosy thumb about a minute and brought it down on the planet Mars!
I started and stared at him; then all of a tremble cried, "You
trifle with me! Choose again--there, see, I will set the symbols and
name them to you anew. There now, on your soul tell me truly which
this planet is, the one here at our feet?" And again the boy
shook his head, wondering at my eagerness, and pointed to Mars, saying
gently as he did so the fact was certain as the day above us, nothing
was marvellous but my questioning.
Mars! oh, dreadful, tremendous, unexpected! With a cry of affright,
and bringing my fist down on the table till all the cups upon it leapt,
I told him he lied--lied like a simpleton whose astronomy was as rotten
as his wit--smote the table and scowled at him for a spell, then turned
away and let my chin fall upon my breast and my hands upon my lap.
And yet, and yet, it might be so! Everything about me was new and
strange, the crisp, thin air I breathed was new; the lukewarm sunshine
new; the sleek, long, ivory faces of the people new! Yesterday--was
it yesterday?--I was back there--away in a world that pines to know
of other worlds, and one fantastic wish of mine, backed by a hideous,
infernal chance, had swung back the doors of space and shot me--if
that boy spoke true--into the outer void where never living man had
been before: all my wits about me, all the horrible bathos of my earthly
clothing on me, all my terrestrial hungers in my veins!
I sprang to my feet and swept my hands across my eyes. Was that a
dream, or this? No, no, both were too real. The hum of my faraway
city still rang in my ears: a swift vision of the girl I had loved;
of the men I had hated; of the things I had hoped for rose before
me, still dazing my inner eye. And these about me were real people,
too; it was real earth; real skies, trees, and rocks--had the infernal
gods indeed heard, I asked myself, the foolish wish that started from
my lips in a moment of fierce discontent, and swept me into another
sphere, another existence? I looked at the boy as though he could
answer that question, but there was nothing in his face but vacuous
wonder; I clapped my hands together and beat my breast; it was true;
my soul within me said it was true; the boy had not lied; the djins
had heard; I was just in the flesh I had; my common human hungers
still unsatisfied where never mortal man had hungered before; and
scarcely knowing whether I feared or not, whether to laugh or cry,
but with all the wonder and terror of that great remove sweeping suddenly
upon me I staggered back to my seat, and dropping my arms upon the
table, leant my head heavily upon them and strove to choke back the
passion which beset me.
