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The Country of the Blind and Other Stories - Under the Knife · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section twelve of the Country of the Blind and Other
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  Speaker 1: Stories by H. G. Wells. This Libriox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. Read by Peter Yearsley. Under the Knife,
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  Speaker 1: what if I die under it? The thought recurred again
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  Speaker 1: and again as I walked home from Haddon's. It was
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  Speaker 1: a purely personal question. I was spared the deep anxieties
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  Speaker 1: of a married man, and I knew there were few
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  Speaker 1: of my intimate friends but would find my death troublesome,
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  Speaker 1: chiefly on account of their duty of regret. I was surprised, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: and perhaps a little humiliated. As I turned the matter
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  Speaker 1: over to think how few could possibly exceed the conventional requirement.
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  Speaker 1: Things came before me, stripped of glamor in a clear,
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  Speaker 1: dry light. During that walk from Haddon's House over Primrose Hill.
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  Speaker 1: There were the friends of my youth. I perceived now
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  Speaker 1: that her affection was a tradition which before gathered rather
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  Speaker 1: laboriously to maintain. There were the rivals and helpers of
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  Speaker 1: my later career. I suppose I had been cold bloodied
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  Speaker 1: or undemonstrative. One perhaps implies the other. It may be
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  Speaker 1: that even the capacity for friendship is a question of physique.
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  Speaker 1: There had been a time in my own life when
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  Speaker 1: I had grieved bitterly enough at the loss of a friend.
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  Speaker 1: But as I walked home that afternoon, the emotional side
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  Speaker 1: of my imagination was dormant. I could not pity myself,
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  Speaker 1: nor feel sorry for my friends, nor conceive of them
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  Speaker 1: as grieving for me. I was interested in this deadness
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  Speaker 1: of my emotional nature, no doubt, a concomitant of my
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  Speaker 1: stagnating physiology, and my thoughts wandered off along the line
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  Speaker 1: it suggested once before, in my hot youth, I had
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  Speaker 1: suffered a sudden loss of blood and had been within
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  Speaker 1: an ace of death. I remembered now that my affections
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  Speaker 1: as well as my passions, had drained out of me,
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  Speaker 1: leaving scarce anything but a tranquil resignation, a dreg of
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  Speaker 1: self pity. It had been weeks before the old ambitions
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  Speaker 1: and tendernesses, and all the complex moral interplay of a
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  Speaker 1: man had reasserted themselves. It occurred to me that the
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  Speaker 1: real meaning of this numbness might be a gradual slipping
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  Speaker 1: away from the pleasure pain guidance of the animal man.
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  Speaker 1: It has been proven. I take it as thoroughly as
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  Speaker 1: anything can be proven in this world, that the higher emotions,
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  Speaker 1: the moral feelings, even the subtle unselfishness of love, are
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  Speaker 1: evolved from the elemental desires and fears of the simple animal.
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  Speaker 1: They are the harness in which man's mental freedom goes.
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  Speaker 1: And it may be that as death overshadows us, as
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  Speaker 1: our possibility of acting diminishes, this complex growth of balanced impulse,
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  Speaker 1: propensity and aversion whose interplay inspires our acts, goes with it,
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  Speaker 1: leaving what I was. Suddenly brought back to reality by
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  Speaker 1: an imminent collision with the butcher Boy's tray. I found
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  Speaker 1: that I was crossing the bridge over the Regent's Park Canal,
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  Speaker 1: which runs parallel with that in the Zoological Gardens. The
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  Speaker 1: boy in blue had been looking over his shoulder at
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  Speaker 1: a black barge advancing slowly towed by a gaunt white horse.
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  Speaker 1: In the gardens, a nurse was leading three happy little
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  Speaker 1: children over the bridge. The trees were bright green, the
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  Speaker 1: spring hopefulness was still unstained by the dusts of summer.
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  Speaker 1: The sky in the water was bright and clear, but
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  Speaker 1: broken by long waves by quivering bands of black. As
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  Speaker 1: the barge drove through, the breeze was stirring, but it
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  Speaker 1: did not stir me as the spring breeze used to do.
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  Speaker 1: Was this dullness of feeling in itself an anticipation? It
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  Speaker 1: was curious that I could reason and follow out a
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  Speaker 1: network of suggestion as clearly as ever so, at least
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  Speaker 1: it seemed to me it was calmness, rather than dulness
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  Speaker 1: that was coming upon me. Was there any ground for
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  Speaker 1: the relief in the presentiment of death? Did a man
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  Speaker 1: near to death begin instinctively to withdraw himself from the
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  Speaker 1: meshes of matter and sense even before the cold hand
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  Speaker 1: was laid upon his I felt strangely isolated, isolated without regret,
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  Speaker 1: from the life and existence about me. The children playing
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  Speaker 1: in the sun and gathering strength and experience for the
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  Speaker 1: business of life. The park keeper gossiping with the nursemaid,
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  Speaker 1: the nursing mother, the young couple intent upon each other
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  Speaker 1: as they passed me, The trees by the wayside, spreading new,
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  Speaker 1: pleading leaves to the sunlight, the stir in their branches.
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  Speaker 1: I had been part of it all, but I had
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  Speaker 1: nearly done with it. Now, some way down the broad walk,
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  Speaker 1: I perceived that I was tired, and that my feet
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  Speaker 1: were heavy. It was hot that afternoon, and I turned
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  Speaker 1: aside and sat down on one of the green chairs
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  Speaker 1: that line the way. In a minute, I had dozed
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  Speaker 1: into a dream, and the tide of my thoughts washed
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  Speaker 1: up a vision of the resurrection. I was still sitting
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  Speaker 1: in the chair, but I thought myself actually dead, withered, tattered, dried.
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  Speaker 1: One eye I saw pecked out by birds. Awake, cried
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  Speaker 1: a voice, and incontinently, the dust of the path and
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  Speaker 1: the mold under the grass became insurgent. I had never
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  Speaker 1: before thought of Regent's Park as the cemetery, but now
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  Speaker 1: through the trees, stretching as far as I could see,
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  Speaker 1: I beheld a flat plain of writhing graves and healing tombstones.
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  Speaker 1: There seemed to be some trouble. The rising dead appeared
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  Speaker 1: to stifle as they struggled upwards. They bled in their struggles.
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  Speaker 1: The red flesh was torn away from the white bones. Awake,
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  Speaker 1: cried a voice. But I determined I would not rise
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  Speaker 1: to such horrors. Awake, they would not let me alone,
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  Speaker 1: wake up, said an angry voice, a cockney angel. The
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  Speaker 1: man who sells the tickets was shaking me, demanding my pa.
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  Speaker 1: I paid my penny, pocketed my ticket, yawned, stretched my legs, and,
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  Speaker 1: feeling now rather less torpid, got up and walked on
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  Speaker 1: towards Langham Place. I speedily lost myself again in a
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  Speaker 1: shifting maze of thoughts about death. Going across Maryleban Road
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  Speaker 1: into that crescent at the end of Langham Place, I
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  Speaker 1: had the narrowest escape from the shaft of a cab
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  Speaker 1: and went on my way with a palpitating heart and
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  Speaker 1: a bruised shoulder. It struck me that it would have
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  Speaker 1: been curious if my meditations on my death on the
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  Speaker 1: morrow had led to my death that day, But I
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  Speaker 1: will not weary you with more of my experiences. That
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  Speaker 1: day and the next I knew more and more certainly
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  Speaker 1: that I should die under the operation. At times I
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  Speaker 1: think I was inclined to pose to myself. The doctors
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  Speaker 1: were coming at eleven, and I did not get up.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed scarce worth while to trouble about washing and dressing.
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  Speaker 1: And though I read my newspapers and the letters that
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  Speaker 1: came by the first post, I did not find them
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  Speaker 1: very interesting. There was a friendly note from Addison, my
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  Speaker 1: old school friend, calling my attention to two discrepancies and
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: a printer's error in my new book. With one from language,
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  Speaker 1: venting some vexation over Minton. The rest were business communications.
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  Speaker 1: I breakfasted in bed. The glow of pain at my
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  Speaker 1: side seemed more massive. I knew it was pain, and yet,
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  Speaker 1: if you can understand, I did not find it very painful.
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  Speaker 1: I had been awake and hot and thirsty in the night,
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  Speaker 1: but in the morning bed felt comfortable. In the night
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  Speaker 1: time I had lain thinking of things that were parts.
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  Speaker 1: In the morning, I dozed over the question of immortality.
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  Speaker 1: Hadden came punctual to the minute with a neat black bag,
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  Speaker 1: and Mowbray soon followed. Their arrival stirred me up a little.
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  Speaker 1: I began to take a more personal interest in the proceedings.
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  Speaker 1: Hadden moved the little octagonal table close to the bedside,
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  Speaker 1: and with his broad back to me, began taking things
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  Speaker 1: out of his bag. I heard the light click of
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  Speaker 1: steel upon steel. My imagination, I found, was not altogether stagnant.
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  Speaker 1: Will you hurt me much? I said, in an off
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  Speaker 1: hand tone, not a bit. Hadden answered over his shoulder,
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  Speaker 1: we shall chloroform you. Your heart's as sound as a bell.
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  Speaker 1: And as he spoke I had a whiff of the
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  Speaker 1: pungent sweetness of the anesthetic. They stretched me out with
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  Speaker 1: a convenient exposure of my side, and almost before I
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  Speaker 1: realized what was happening, the chloroform was being administered. It
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  Speaker 1: stings the nostrils, and there is a suffocating sensation. At
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  Speaker 1: first I knew I should die, that this was the
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  Speaker 1: end of consciousness for me. And suddenly I felt that
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  Speaker 1: I was not prepared for death. I had a vague
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  Speaker 1: sense of a duty overlooked. I knew not what what
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  Speaker 1: was it I had not done. I could think of
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  Speaker 1: nothing more to do, nothing desirable left in life, and
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  Speaker 1: yet I had the strangest disinclination to death, and the
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  Speaker 1: physical sensation was painfully oppressive. Of course, the doctors did
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  Speaker 1: not know they were going to kill me. Possibly I struggled.
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  Speaker 1: Then I fell motionless, and a great silence, a monstrous silence,
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  Speaker 1: and an impenetrable blackness came upon me. Must have been
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  Speaker 1: an interval of absolute unconsciousness seconds or minutes. Then with
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  Speaker 1: a chilly, unemotional clearness, I perceived that I was not
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  Speaker 1: yet dead. I was still in my body, but all
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  Speaker 1: the multitudinous sensations that come sweeping from it to make
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  Speaker 1: up the background of consciousness had gone, leaving me free
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  Speaker 1: of it all. No, not free of it all, for
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  Speaker 1: as yet something still held me to the poor, stark
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  Speaker 1: flesh upon the bed, held me, yet not so closely
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  Speaker 1: that I did not feel myself external to it, independent
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  Speaker 1: of it, straining away from it. I do not think
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  Speaker 1: I saw. I do not think I heard, but I
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  Speaker 1: perceived all that was going on. And it was as
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  Speaker 1: if I both heard and saw. Hadden was bending over me,
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  Speaker 1: Mowbray behind me. The scalpel, it was a large scalpel,
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  Speaker 1: was cutting my flesh at the side, under the flying ribs.
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  Speaker 1: It was interesting to see myself cut like cheese, without
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  Speaker 1: a pang, without even a qualm. The interest was much
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  Speaker 1: of a quality with that one might feel in a
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  Speaker 1: game of chess between strangers. Haddon's face was firm and
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  Speaker 1: his hand steady. But I was surprised to perceive how
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  Speaker 1: I know not that he was feeling the gravest doubt
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  Speaker 1: as to his own wisdom in the conduct of the operation.
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  Speaker 1: Mowbray's thoughts, too, I could see he was thinking that
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  Speaker 1: Haddan's manner showed too much of the specialist. New suggestions
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  Speaker 1: came up like bubbles through a stream of frothing meditation
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  Speaker 1: and burst one after another in the little bright spot
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  Speaker 1: of his consciousness. He could not help noticing and admiring
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  Speaker 1: Hadden's swift dexterity, in spite of his envious quality and
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  Speaker 1: his disposition to detract. I saw my liver exposed. I
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  Speaker 1: was puzzled at my own condition. I did not feel
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  Speaker 1: that I was dead, but I was different in some
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  Speaker 1: way from my living self. The gray depression that had
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  Speaker 1: weighed on me for a year or more and colored
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  Speaker 1: all my thoughts was gone. I perceived and thought without
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  Speaker 1: any emotional tint at all. I wondered if everyone perceived
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  Speaker 1: things in this way under chloroform and forgot it again
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  Speaker 1: when he came out of it, it would be inconvenient
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  Speaker 1: to look into some heads and not forget. Although I
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  Speaker 1: did not think that I was dead, I still perceived
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  Speaker 1: quite clearly that I was soon to die. This brought
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  Speaker 1: me back to the consideration of Haddon's proceedings. I looked
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  Speaker 1: into his mind and saw that he was afraid of
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  Speaker 1: cutting a branch of the portal vein My attention was
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  Speaker 1: distract it from details by the curious changes going on
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  Speaker 1: in his mind. His consciousness was like the quivering little
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  Speaker 1: spot of light which is thrown by the mirror of
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  Speaker 1: a galvanometer. His thoughts ran under it like a stream,
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  Speaker 1: some through the focus, bright and distinct, some shadowy in
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  Speaker 1: the half light of the edge. Just now, the little
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  Speaker 1: glow was steady. But the least movement on Mowbray's part,
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  Speaker 1: the slightest sound from outside, even a faint difference in
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  Speaker 1: the slow movement of the living flesh he was cutting,
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  Speaker 1: set the light spot shivering and spinning. A new sense
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  Speaker 1: impression came rushing up through the flow of thoughts, and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: lo the light spot jerked away towards it, swifter than
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  Speaker 1: a frightened fish. It was wonderful to think that upon
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  Speaker 1: that unstable, fitful thing depended all the complex motions of
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  Speaker 1: the man, that for the next five minut minutes therefore
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  Speaker 1: my life hung upon its movements. And he was growing
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  Speaker 1: more and more nervous in his work. It was as
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  Speaker 1: if the little picture of a cut vein grew brighter
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  Speaker 1: and struggled to oust from his brain another picture of
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  Speaker 1: a cut falling short of the mark. He was afraid
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  Speaker 1: his dread of cutting too little was battling with his
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  Speaker 1: dread of cutting too far. Then, suddenly, like an escape
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of water from under a lock gate, a great uprush
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of horrible realization set all his thoughts swirling, and simultaneously,
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  Speaker 1: I perceived that the vein was cut. He started back
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  Speaker 1: with a hoarse exclamation, and I saw the brown purple
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  Speaker 1: blood gather in a swift bead and run trickling. He
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: was horrified. He pitched the red stained sculpel on to
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  Speaker 1: the octagonal table, and instantly both doctors flung themselves upon me,
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  Speaker 1: making hasty and ill conceived efforts to remedy the disaster, Ice,
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  Speaker 1: said Mowbray, gasping. But I knew that I was killed,
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  Speaker 1: though my body still clung to me. I will not
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  Speaker 1: describe their belated endeavors to save me, though I perceived
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  Speaker 1: every detail. My perceptions were sharper and swifter than they
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  Speaker 1: had ever been in life. My thoughts rushed through my
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: mind with incredible swiftness, but with perfect definition. I can
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  Speaker 1: only compare their crowded clarity to the effects of a
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  Speaker 1: reasonable dose of opium. In a moment, it would all
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  Speaker 1: be over and I should be free. I knew I
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  Speaker 1: was immortal, but what would happen? I did not know
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  Speaker 1: Should I drift off presently like a puff of smoke
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  Speaker 1: from a gun, in some kind of half material body,
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  Speaker 1: an attenuated version of my material self. Should I find
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  Speaker 1: myself suddenly among the innumerable hosts of the dead and
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  Speaker 1: know the world about me for the phantasmagoria it had
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: always seemed. Should I drift to some spiritualistic seance and
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: there make foolish incomprehensible attempts to effect a purblind medium.
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  Speaker 1: It was a state of unemotional curiosity, of colorless expectation.
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  Speaker 1: And then I realized a growing stress upon me, a
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  Speaker 1: feeling as though some huge human magnet was drawing me
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: upward out of my body. The stress grew and grew.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I seem'd an atom for which monstrous forces were fighting.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: For one brief, terrible moment, sensation came back to me
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: that feeling of falling headlong which comes in night me
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: as that feeling a thousand times intensified that, and a
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: black horror swept across my thoughts in a torrent. Then
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  Speaker 1: the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side,
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  Speaker 1: the little room swept away from under me and vanished
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: as a speck of foam vanishes down an eddy I
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: was in mid air. Far below was the west end
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  Speaker 1: of London, receding rapidly, for I seemed to be flying
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: swiftly upward, and as it receded, passing westward like a panorama,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I could see through the faint haze of smoke, the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: innumerable roofs chimney set, the narrow roadways stippled with people
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and conveyances, the little specks of squares, and the church
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: steeples like thorns sticking out of the fabric. But it
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: spun away as the earth rotated on its axis, and
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: in a few seconds, as it seemed, I was over
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: the scattered clumps of town about ealing the Little Thames,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: a thread of blue to the south, and the Chiltern
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Hills and the North Downs coming up like the rim
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: of a basin, far away and faint with haze. Up
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I rushed, and at first I had not the faintest
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  Speaker 1: conception what this headlong rush upward could mean. Every moment,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: and the details of town and field, of hill and
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: valley got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: A luminous gray was mingled more and more with the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: blue of the hills and the green of the open meadows,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and a little patch of cloud low and far to
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  Speaker 1: the west shone ever more dazzlingly white above. As the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew thinner,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the sky, which had been a fair springtime blue at first,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: grew deeper and richer in color, passing steadily through the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: intervening shades, until presently it was as dark as the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: blue sky of midnight, and presently as black as the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: blackness of a frosty starlight, And at last as black
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  Speaker 1: as no blackness I had ever beheld. And first one star,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and then many, and at last an innumerable host broke
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: out upon the sky, more stars than any one has
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: ever seen from the face of the earth. For the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: blueness of the sky in the light of the sun,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and stars sifted and spread abroad blindingly. There is diffused
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: light even in the darkest skies of winter, and we
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: do not see the stars by day, only because of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the dazzling irradiation of the sun. But now I saw
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: things I know, not, how assuredly, with no mortal eyes,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And that defect of bedazzlement blinded me no longer. The
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Sun was incredibly strange and wonderful. The body of it
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: was a disk of blinding white light, not yellowish, as
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: it seems to those who live upon the Earth, but
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: livid white, all streaked with scarlet streaks, and rimmed about
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: with a fringe of writhing tongues of red fire, and
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: shooting half way across the heavens. From either side of it,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and brighter than the milky Way, were two pinions of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: silver white, making it look more like those winged globes
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I have seen in Egyptian sculpture than anything else I
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: can remember upon Earth. These I knew for the solar corona,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: though I had never seen anything of it but a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: picture during the days of my earthly life. When my
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: attention came back to the Earth again, I saw that
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it had fallen very far away from me. Field and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: town were long since indistinguishable, and all the varied hues
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: of the country were merging into a uniform, bright gray,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: broken only by the brilliant white of the clouds that
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: lay scattered in floculent masses over Ireland and the word
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: west of England. For now I could see the outlines
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of the north of France and Ireland, and all this
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: island of Britain, save where Scotland passed over the horizon
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  Speaker 1: to the north, or where the coast was blurred or
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: obliterated by cloud. The sea was a dull gray and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: darker than the land, and the whole panorama was rotating
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: slowly towards the east. All this had happened so swiftly
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: that until I was some thousand miles or so from
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the earth, I had no thought for myself. But now
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I perceived I had neither hands nor feet, neither parts
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: nor organs, and that I felt neither alarm nor pain
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: all about me. I perceived that the vacancy, for I
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: had already left the air behind, was cold beyond the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: imagination of man. But it troubled me not. The sun's
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: rays shot through the voyage, powerless to light or heat
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: until they should strike on matter in their course. I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: saw things with a serene self forgetfulness, even as if
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I were God. And down below there rushing away from
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: me countless miles. In a second, where a little dark
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: spot on the gray marked the position of London, two
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: doctors were struggling to restore life to the poor, hacked
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and outworn shell I had abandoned. I felt then such release,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: such serenity, as I can compare to no mortal delight
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I have ever known. It was only after I had
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: perceived all these things that the meaning of that headlong
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: rush of the Earth grew into comprehension. Yet it was
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: so simple, so obvious, that I was amazed at my
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: never anticipating the thing that was happening to me, I
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: had so suddenly been cut adrift from matter. All that
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: was material of me was there upon Earth, whirling away
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: through space, held to the Earth by gravitation, partaking of
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the Earth inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the Sun, and with the Sun and the planets on
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: their vast march through space. But the immaterial has no inertia,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: feels nothing of the pull of matter. For matter, where
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: it parts from its garment of flesh. There it remains,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: so far as space concerns it, any longer, immovable in space.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I was not leaving the Earth. The Earth was leaving me.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: And not only the Earth, but the whole Solar System
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: was streaming past and about me in space, invisible to me,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: scattered in the wake of the Earth upon its journey,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: there must be an innumerable multitude of soul stripped like myself,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: of the material, stripped like myself, of the passions of
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: the individual, and the generous emotions of the gregarious, brute
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: naked intelligences, things of new born wonder and thought, marveling
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: at the strange release that had suddenly come on them.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: As I receded faster and faster from the strange white
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: sun in the black heavens, and from the broad and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: shining Earth upon which my being had begun, I seemed
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to grow in some incredible manner, vast vast as regards
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: this world I had left, vast as regards the moments
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and periods of a human life. Very soon I saw
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the full circle of the Earth, slightly gibbous, like the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: moon when she nears her full but very large, and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the silvery shape of America was now in the noonday blaze,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: wherein as it seemed little Inland had been basking but
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: a few minutes ago. At first, the Earth was large
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and shone in the heavens, filling a great part of them.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: But every moment she grew smaller and more distant as
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: she shrank, the broad Moon in its third quarter crept
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: into view over the rim of her disk. I looked
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: for the constellations, only that part of Aries directly behind
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: the Sun and the Lion, which the Earth covered, were hidden.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I recognized the tortuous, tattered band of the Milky Way
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: with vigor very bright between Sun and Earth, and Syrius
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: and Orion shone splendid against the unfathomable blackness. In the
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: opposite quarter of the heavens. The Pole Star was overhead,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and the Great Bear hung over the circle of the Earth.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And away beneath and beyond the shining corona of the
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Sun were strange groupings of stars I had never seen
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: in my life, notably a dagger shaped group that I
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: knew for the Southern Cross. All these were no larger
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: than when they had shone on Earth. But the little
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: stars that one scarce seas shone now against the setting
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of black vacancy, as brightly as the first magnitudes had done,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: while the larger worlds were points of indescribable glory and color.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Aldebaran was a spot of blood red fire, and Sirius
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: condensed to one point the light of innumerable sapphires and
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: they shone steadily. They did not scintillate, They were calmly glorious.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: My impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness. There was
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: no blurring softness, no atmosphere, nothing but infinite darkness, set
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: with the myriads of these acute and brilliant points and
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: specks of lights. When I looked again, the little Earth
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: seemed no bigger than the Sun, and it dwindled and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: turned as I looked, until in a second's space, as
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: it seemed to me, it was halved. And so it
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: went on swiftly dwindling. Far away in the opposite direction,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a little pinkish pin's head of light, shining steadily was
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: the planet Mars. I swam motionless in vacancy, and without
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: a trace of terror or astonishment, watched the speck of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: cosmic dust we call the world fall away from me. Presently,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: it dawned upon me that my sense of duration had changed,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that my mind was moving not faster, but infinitely slower,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: that between each separate impression there was a period of
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: many days. The Moon spun once round the Earth. As
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I noticed this, and I perceived clearly the motion of
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Mars in his orbit. Moreover, it appeared as if the
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: time between thought and thought grew steadily greater, until at
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: last a thousand years was but a moment in my perception.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: At first the constellations had shone motionless against the black
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: background of infinite space. But presently it seemed as though
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the group of stars about Hercules and the Scorpion was contracting,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: while Orion and Aldebaran and their neighbors were scattering apart, flashing. Suddenly,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: out of the darkness there came a flying multitude of
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: particles of rock, glittering like dust specks in a sunbeam,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: and encompassed in a faintly luminous cloud. They swirled all
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: about me and vanished again in a twinkling far behind.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: And then I saw that a bright spot of light
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that shone a little to one side of my path
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: was growing very rapidly larger, and perceived that it was
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the planet Satin, rushing towards me. Larger and larger it grew,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: swallowing up the heavens behind it, and hiding every moment
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: a fresh multitude of stars. I perceived its flattened whirling body,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: its disc like belt, and seven of its little satellites
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: it grew and grew till it towered enormous. And then
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I plunged amid a streaming multitude of clashing stones and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: dancing dust particles and gas eddies, and saw for a
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: moment the mighty triple belt, like three concentric arches of
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: moonlight above me, its shadow black on the boiling tumult below.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: These things happened in one tenth of the time it
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: takes to tell them. The planet went by like a
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: flash of lightning. For a few seconds, it blotted out
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the Sun, and there and then became a mere, black, dwindling,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: winged patch against the light. The Earth, the mother mote
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of my being, I could no longer see, So with
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: a stately swiftness, in the profoundest silence, the Solar System
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: fell from me, as it had been a garment until
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the Sun was a mere star amid the multitude of stars,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: with its eddy of planet specks lost in the confused
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: glittering of the remoter light. I was no longer a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: denizen of the Solar System. I had come to the
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: outer universe. I seemed to grasp and comprehend the whole
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: world of matter. Ever more swiftly, the stars closed in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: about the spot where Antaris and Viager had vanished in
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a phosphorescent haze, until that part of the sky had
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the semblance of a whirling mass of nebulae, and ever
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: before me yawned vaster gaps of vacant blackness, and the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: stars shone fewer and fewer. It seemed as if if
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: I moved towards a point between Orion's belt and sword,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and the void about that region opened vaster and vaster
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: every second, an incredible gulf of nothingness into which I
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: was falling faster and ever faster, the universe, rushed by
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a hurry of whirling motes, at last speeding silently into
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: the void, stars growing brighter and brighter, with their circling
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: planets catching the light in a ghostly fashion. As I
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: neared them, shone out and vanished again into inexistence. Faint comets,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: clusters of meteorites, winking specks of matter eddying light points,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: whizzed past, some perhaps a hundred millions of miles or
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: so from me, at most, few nearer, traveling with unimaginable rapidity,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: shooting constellations momentary darts of fire through that black, enormous night.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: More than anything else. It was like a dusty draft
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: sunbeamlet broader and wider and deeper grew the starless space,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: the vacant beyond into which I was being drawn. At
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: last a quarter of the heavens was black and blank,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and the whole headlong rush of stellar universe closed in
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: behind me, like a veil of light that is gathered together.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: It drove away from me like a monstrous jack o' lantern,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: driven by the wind I had come out into the
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: wilderness of space. Ever, the vacant blackness grew broader, until
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the hosts of the stars seemed only like a swarm
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: of fiery specks, hurrying away from me inconceivably remote and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the darkness, the nothingness and emptiness, was about me on
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: every side. Soon the little universe of matter, the cage
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: of points, in which I had begun to be, was dwindling,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: now to a world disc of luminous glittering, and now
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: to one minute disc of hazy light. In a little
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: while it would shrink to a point, and at last
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: would vanish altogether. Suddenly, feeling came back to me, feeling
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in the shape of overwhelming terror, such a dread of
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: those dark vastitudes as no word can describe a passionate
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: resurgence of sympathy and social desire. Were there other souls
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: invisible to me as I to them about me in
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the darkness? Or was I? Indeed, even as I felt alone?
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Had I passed out of being into something that was
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: neither being nor not being? The covering of the body,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the covering of matter had been torn from me, and
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: the hallucinations of companionship and security. Everything was black and silent.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: I had ceased to be. I was nothing. There was
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: nothing save only that infinitesimal dot of light that dwindled
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: in the gulf. I strained myself to hear and see,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: and for a while there was nought but infinite silence,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: intolerable darkness, horror, and despair. Then I saw that about
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the spot of light into which the whole world of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: matter had shrunk, there was a faint glow, and in
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: a band on either side of that. The darkness was
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: not absolute. I watched it for ages, as it seemed
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: to me, and through the long waiting, the haze grew
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: imperceptibly more distinct, And then about the band appeared an
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: irregular cloud of the faintest palest brown. I felt a
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: passionate impatience. But the things grew brighter, so slowly that
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: they scarce seemed to change. What was unfolding itself? What
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: was this strange, reddish dawn in the interminable night of space?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: The cloud's shape was grotesque. It seemed to be looped
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: along its lower side into four projecting masses, and above
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: it ended in a straight line. What phantom was it?
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: I felt assured I had seen that figure before, but
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I could not think what, nor where, nor when it was.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Then the realization rushed upon me. It was a clenched hand.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I was alone in space, alone with this huge, shadowy hand,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: upon which the whole universe of matter lay like an
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: unconsidered speck of dust. It seemed as though I watched
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: it through vast periods of time. On the forefinger glittered
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a ring, and the universe from which I had come
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: was but a spot of light upon the ring's curvature.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: The thing that the hand gripped had the likeness of
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: a black rod. Through a long eternity, I watched this
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: hand with the ring and the rod, marveling and fearing
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: and waiting helplessly on what might follow it seemed as
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: though nothing could follow, that I should watch forever, seeing
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: only the hand and the thing it held, and understanding
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: nothing of its import. Was the whole universe but a
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: refracting speck upon some greater being. Were our worlds, but
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: the atoms of another universe, and those again of another,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: and so on through an endless progression. And what was I? Was?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I indeed immaterial? A vague persuasion of a body gathering
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: about me came into my suspense. The abysmal darkness about
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the hand, filled with impalpable suggestions, with uncertain and fluctuating shapes.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Then suddenly came a sound like the sound of a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: tolling bell, faint, as if infinitely far, muffled, as though
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: heard through thick swathings of darkness, a deep, vibrating resonance,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: with vast gulfs of silence between each stroke, and the
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: hand appeared to tighten on the rod, and I saw
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: far above the hand, towards the apex of the darkness,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: a circle of dim phosphorescence, a glowing sphere. Whence these
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: sounds came throbbing, and at the last stroke, the hand vanished,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: for the hour had come, and I heard a noise
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: of many waters, but the black rod remained as a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: great band across the sky. And then a voice which
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: seemed to run to the uttermost parts of space, spoke, saying,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: there will be no more pain. At that an almost
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: intolerable gladness and radiance rushed in upon me, and I
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: saw the circle shining white and bright, and the rod
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: black and shining, and many things else distinct and clear,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: and the circle was the face of the clock, and
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the rod the rail of my bed. Haddon was standing
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: at the foot against the rail with a small pair
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: of scissors on his fingers, and the hands of my
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: clock on the mantel over his shoulder, were clasped together.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Over the hour of twelve Mowbray was watching something in
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: a basin at the octagonal table, and at my side
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I felt a subdued feeling that could scarce be spoken
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: of as pain. The operation had not killed me, and
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I perceived suddenly that the dull melancholy of half a
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: year was lifted from my mind. End of Section twelve
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: s