"'Tis no wonder," I said to myself, "that in the moment of transition from the underground caverns to the sunshine above, the shock should have disturbed my mental equilibrium, and in the moment of reaction I should have dreamed fantastic and horrible imaginings."

A cool and refreshing breeze sprung now, from I know not where; I did not care to ask; it was too welcome a gift to question, and contrasted pleasantly with the misery of my past hallucination. The sun was shining hot above me, the sand was glowing, parched beneath me, and yet the grateful breeze fanned my brow, and refreshed my spirit.

"Thank G.o.d," I cried, "for the breeze, for the coolness that it brings; only those who have experienced the silence of the cavern solitudes through which I have pa.s.sed, and added thereto, have sensed the horrors of the more recent nightmare scenes, can appreciate the delights of a gust of air."

The incongruity of surrounding conditions, as connected with affairs rational, did not appeal at all to my questioning senses, it seemed as though the cool breeze, coming from out the illimitable desolation of a heated waste was natural. I arose and walked on, refreshed. From out that breeze my physical self drew refreshment and strength.

"'Tis the cold," I said; "the blessed ant.i.thesis of heat, that supports life. Heat enervates, cold stimulates; heat depresses, cold animates.

Thank G.o.d for breezes, winds, waters, cold."

I turned and faced the gladsome breeze. "'Tis the source of life, I will trace it to its origin, I will leave the accursed desert, the hateful sunshine, and seek the blissful regions that give birth to cool breezes."

I walked rapidly, and the breeze became more energetic and cooler. With each increase of momentum on my part, corresponding strength seemed to be added to the breeze--both strength and coolness.

"Is not this delightful?" I murmured; "my G.o.d at last has come to be a just G.o.d. Knowing what I wanted, He sent the breeze; in answer to my prayer the cool, refreshing breeze arose. d.a.m.n the heat," I cried aloud, as I thought of the horrid day before; "blessed be the cold," and as though in answer to my cry the breeze stiffened and the cold strengthened itself, and I again returned thanks to my Creator.

With ragged coat wrapped about my form I faced the breeze and strode onward towards the home of the gelid wind that now dashed in gusts against my person.

Then I heard my footstep crunch, and perceived that the sand was hard beneath my feet; I stooped over to examine it and found it frozen.

Strange, I reflected, strange that dry sand can freeze, and then I noticed, for the first time, that spurts of snow surrounded me, 'twas a sleety mixture upon which I trod, a crust of snow and sand. A sense of dread came suddenly over me, and instinctively I turned, affrighted, and ran away from the wind, towards the desert behind me, back towards the sun, which, cold and bleak, low in the horizon, was sinking. The sense of dread grew upon me, and I shivered as I ran. With my back towards the breeze I had blessed, I now fled towards the sinking sun I had cursed. I stretched out my arms in supplication towards that orb, for from behind overhanging blackness spread, and about me roared a fearful hurricane.

Vainly. As I thought in mockery the heartless sun disappeared before my gaze, the hurricane surrounded me, and the wind about me became intensely cold, and raved furiously. It seemed as though the sun had fled from my presence, and with the disappearance of that orb, the outline of the earth was blotted from existence. It was an awful blackness, and the universe was now to me a blank. The cold strengthened and froze my body to the marrow of my bones. First came the sting of frost, then the pain of cold, then insensibility of flesh. My feet were benumbed, my limbs motionless. I stood a statue, quiescent in the midst of the roaring tempest. The earth, the sun, the heavens themselves, my very person now had disappeared. Dead to the sense of pain or touch, sightless, amid a blank, only the noise of the raging winds was to me a reality. And as the creaking frost reached my brain and congealed it, the sound of the tempest ceased, and then devoid of physical senses, my quickened intellect, enslaved, remained imprisoned in the frozen form it could not leave, and yet could no longer control.

Reflection after reflection pa.s.sed through that incarcerated thought ent.i.ty, and as I meditated, the heinous mistakes I had committed in the life that had pa.s.sed, arose to torment. G.o.d had answered my supplications, successively I had experienced the hollowness of earthly pleasures, and had left each lesson unheeded. Had I not alternately begged for and then cursed each gift of G.o.d? Had I not prayed for heat, cold, light, and darkness, and anathematized each? Had I not, when in perfect silence, prayed for sound; in sheltered caverns, prayed for winds and storms; in the very corridors of heaven, and in the presence of Etidorhpa, had I not sought for joys beyond?

Had I not found each pleasure of life a mockery, and notwithstanding each bitter lesson, still pursued my headstrong course, alternately blessing and cursing my Creator, and then myself, until now, amid a howling waste, in perfect darkness, my conscious intellect was bound to the frozen, rigid semblance of a body? All about me was dead and dark, all within was still and cold, only my quickened intellect remained as in every corpse the self-conscious intellect must remain, while the body has a mortal form, for death of body is not attended by the immediate liberation of mind. The consciousness of the dead man is still acute, and he who thinks the dead are mindless, will realize his fearful error when devoid of motion he lies a corpse, conscious of all that pa.s.ses on around him, waiting the liberation that can only come by disintegration and destruction of the flesh.

So, unconscious of pain, unconscious of any physical sense, I existed on and on, enthralled, age after age pa.s.sed and piled upon one another, for time was to me unchangeable, no more an ent.i.ty. I now prayed for change of any kind, and envied the very devils in h.e.l.l their pleasures, for were they not gifted with the power of motion, could they not hear, and see, and realize the pains they suffered? I prayed for death--death absolute, death eternal. Then, at last, the darkness seemed to lessen, and I saw the frozen earth beneath, the monstrous crags of ice above, the raging tempest about, for I now had learned by reflection to perceive by pure intellect, to see by the light within. My body, solid as stone, was fixed and preserved in a waste of ice. The world was frozen. I perceived that the sun, and moon, and stars, nearly stilled, dim and motionless, had paled in the cold depths of s.p.a.ce. The universe itself was freezing, and amid the desolation only my deserted intellect remained. Age after age had pa.s.sed, aeons of ages had fled, nation after nation had grown and perished, and in the uncounted epochs behind, humanity had disappeared. Unable to free itself from the frozen body, my own intellect remained the solitary spectator of the dead silence about.

At last, beneath my vision, the moon disappeared, the stars faded one by one, and then I watched the sun grow dim, until at length only a milky, gauze-like film remained to indicate her face, and then--vacancy. I had lived the universe away. And in perfect darkness the living intellect, conscious of all that had transpired in the ages past, clung still enthralled to the body of the frozen mortal. I thought of my record in the distant past, of the temptations I had undergone, and called myself a fool, for, had I listened to the tempter, I could at least have suffered, I could have had companionship even though it were of the devils--in h.e.l.l. I lived my life over and over, times without number; I thought of my tempters, of the offered cups, and thinking, argued with myself:

"No," I said; "no, I had made the promise, I have faith in Etidorhpa, and were it to do over again I would not drink."

Then, as this thought sped from me, the ice scene dissolved, the enveloped frozen form of myself faded from view, the sand shrunk into nothingness, and with my natural body, and in normal condition, I found myself back in the earth cavern, on my knees, beside the curious inverted fungus, of which fruit I had eaten in obedience to my guide's directions. Before me the familiar figure of my guide stood, with folded arms, and as my gaze fell upon him he reached out his hand and raised me to my feet.

"Where have you been during the wretched epochs that have pa.s.sed since I last saw you?" I asked.

"I have been here," he replied, "and you have been there."

"You lie, you villainous sorcerer," I cried; "you lie again as you have lied to me before. I followed you to the edge of demon land, to the caverns of the drunkards, and then you deserted me. Since last we met I have spent a million, billion years of agony inexpressible, and have had that agony made doubly horrible by contrast with the thought, yes, the very sight and touch of Heaven. I pa.s.sed into a double eternity, and have experienced the ecstacies of the blessed, and suffered the torments of the d.a.m.ned, and now you dare boldly tell me that I have been here, and that you have been there, since last I saw you stand by this cursed fungus bowl."

"Yes," he said, taking no offense at my violence; "yes, neither of us has left this spot; you have sipped of the drink of an earth-d.a.m.ned drunkard, you have experienced part of the curses of intemperance, the delirium of narcotics. Thousands of men on earth, in their drunken hallucination, have gone through hotter h.e.l.ls than you have seen; your dream has not exaggerated the sufferings of those who sup of the delirium of intemperance."

And then he continued:

"Let me tell you of man's conception of eternity."

CHAPTER XLII.

ETERNITY WITHOUT TIME.

"Man's conception of eternity is that of infinite duration, continuance without beginning or end, and yet everything he knows is bounded by two or more opposites. From a beginning, as he sees a form of matter, that substance pa.s.ses to an end." Thus spoke my guide.

Then he asked, and showed by his question that he appreciated the nature of my recent experiences: "Do you recall the instant that you left me standing by this bowl to start, as you imagined, with me as a companion, on the journey to the cavern of the grotesque?"

"No; because I did not leave you. I sipped of the liquid, and then you moved on with me from this spot; we were together, until at last we were separated on the edge of the cave of drunkards."

"Listen," said he; "I neither left you nor went with you. You neither went from this spot nor came back again. You neither saw nor experienced my presence nor my absence; there was no beginning to your journey."

"Go on."

"You ate of the narcotic fungus; you have been intoxicated."

"I have not," I retorted. "I have been through your accursed caverns, and into h.e.l.l beyond. I have been consumed by eternal d.a.m.nation in the journey, have experienced a heaven of delight, and also an eternity of misery."

"Upon the contrary, the time that has pa.s.sed since you drank the liquid contents of that fungus fruit has only been that which permitted you to fall upon your knees. You swallowed the liquor when I handed you the sh.e.l.l cup; you dropped upon your knees, and then instantly awoke. See,"

he said; "in corroboration of my a.s.sertion the sh.e.l.l of the fungus fruit at your feet is still dripping with the liquid you did not drink. Time has been annihilated. Under the influence of this potent earth-bred narcoto-intoxicant, your dream begun inside of eternity; you did not pa.s.s into it."

"You say," I interrupted, "that I dropped upon my knees, that I have experienced the hallucination of intoxication, that the experiences of my vision occurred during the second of time that was required for me to drop upon my knees."

"Yes."

"Then by your own argument you demonstrate that eternity requires time, for even a millionth part of a second is time, as much so as a million of years."

"You mistake," he replied, "you misinterpret my words. I said that all you experienced in your eternity of suffering and pleasure, occurred between the point when you touched the fungus fruit to your lips, and that when your knees struck the stone."

"That consumed time," I answered.

"Did I a.s.sert," he questioned, "that your experiences were scattered over that entire period?"

"No."

"May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the second that accompanied the mental impression produced by the liquor, or the second of time that followed, or any other part of that period, or a fraction of any integral second of that period?"

"I can not say," I answered, "what part of the period the hallucination, as you call it, occupied."

"You admit that so far as your conception of time is concerned, the occurrences to which you refer may have existed in either an inestimable fraction of the first, the second, or the third part of the period."

"Yes," I replied, "yes; if you are correct in that, they were illusions."

"Let me ask you furthermore," he said; "are you sure that the flash that bred your hallucination was not instantaneous, and a part of neither the first, second, nor third second?"

"Continue your argument."

"I will repeat a preceding question with a slight modification. May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the s.p.a.ce between the second of time that preceded the mental impression produced by the liquor, and the second that followed it? Need it have been a part of either second, or of time at all? Indeed, could it have been a part of time if it were instantaneous?"