operation

Mowbray's thoughts, too, I thinking that Haddon's manner showed specialist New suggestions came up like bubbles through stream of frothing meditation, and burst one after another little bright spot consciousness help noticing and admiring Haddon's swift dexterity, envious quality disposition to detract my liver exposed puzzled at my own condition feel that dead, but different in some way from my living self The grey depression, that had weighed on me for year or more and coloured all my thoughts, was gone I perceived and thought without any emotional tint at all I wondered if everyone perceived things under chloroform, and forgot it again when out of it It inconvenient to look into some heads, and not forget

Although think that dead, I still perceived quite clearly that soon to die This brought me back consideration of Haddon's proceedings I looked into his mind, and saw that afraid of cutting branch portal vein My attention was distracted from details curious changes going on mind His consciousness was like the quivering little spot of light thrown mirror of galvanometer His thoughts ran under it like stream, some focus bright and distinct, some shadowy half-light edge Just now the little glow was steady; but the least movement on Mowbray's part, the slightest sound from outside, even faint difference slow movement living flesh cutting, set the light-spot shivering and spinning new sense-impression came rushing up flow of thoughts; and lo ! the light-spot jerked away towards it, swifter than frightened fish wonderful that upon that unstable, fitful thing depended all the complex motions man; that next five minutes, therefore, my life hung upon its movements And growing more and more nervous work little picture of cut vein grew brighter, and struggled to oust brain another picture of cut falling short mark afraid: his dread of cutting too little was battling dread of cutting too far

Then, suddenly, like an escape of water from under lock-gate, great uprush of horrible realisation set all his thoughts swirling, and simultaneously I perceived vein was cut He started back with hoarse exclamation, and the brown-purple blood gather in swift bead, and run trickling horrified He pitched the red-stained scalpel on octagonal table; and instantly both doctors flung themselves upon me, making hasty and ill-conceived efforts to remedy the disaster "Ice ! " said Mowbray, gasping But that killed, though my body still clung

describe their belated endeavours to save me, though I perceived every detail My perceptions were sharper and swifter than they had ever been in life; my thoughts rushed through my mind with incredible swiftness, but with perfect definition only compare their crowded clarity effects of reasonable dose of opium In moment it would all be over, and free immortal, but what would happen know Should I drift off presently, like puff of smoke from gun, in some kind of half-material body, an attenuated version material self ? Should myself suddenly innumerable hosts dead, and know the world about me phantasmagoria it had always seemed ? Should I drift to some spiritualistic sance_, and there make foolish, incomprehensible attempts to affect purblind medium ? state of unemotional curiosity, of colourless expectation And then I realised growing stress upon me, feeling some huge human magnet was drawing me upward out body The stress grew and grew I seemed an atom monstrous forces were fighting brief, terrible moment sensation came back That feeling of falling headlong which comes in nightmares, that feeling thousand times intensified, that and black horror swept across my thoughts in torrent Then the two doctors, the naked body with its cut side, the little room, swept away from under me and vanished, as speck of foam vanishes down an eddy

in mid-air Far below West End of London, receding rapidly,--for I seemed flying swiftly upward,--and as it receded, passing westward like panorama I , faint haze of smoke, the innumerable roofs chimney-set, the narrow roadways, stippled with people and conveyances, the little specks of squares, church steeples like thorns sticking fabric But it spun away earth rotated on its axis, and in few seconds (as it seemed) over the scattered clumps of town about Ealing, the little Thames thread of blue south, Chiltern Hills North Downs coming up like the rim of basin, far away and faint with haze Up I rushed And at first I the faintest conception what this headlong rush upward could mean

Every moment the circle of scenery beneath me grew wider and wider, details of town and field, of hill and valley, got more and more hazy and pale and indistinct, luminous grey was mingled more and more blue hills green open meadows; and little patch of cloud, low and far west, shone ever more dazzlingly white Above, veil of atmosphere between myself and outer space grew thinner, the sky, which fair springtime blue at first, grew deeper and richer in colour, passing steadily intervening shades, until presently as dark blue sky of midnight, and presently as black blackness of frosty starlight, and at last as black as no blackness I had ever beheld And first one star, and then many, and at last an innumerable host broke out sky: more stars than anyone has ever seen face earth blueness sky light sun and stars sifted and spread abroad blindingly: diffused light even darkest skies of winter, and the stars by day only because dazzling irradiation sun But now things-- not how; assuredly with no mortal eyes-- defect of bedazzlement blinded me no longer The sun was incredibly strange and wonderful The body of disc of blinding white light: not yellowish, as it seems who live earth, but livid white, all streaked with scarlet streaks and rimmed about with fringe of writhing tongues of red fire And shooting half-way across the heavens from either side of it and brighter Milky Way, were two pinions of silver white, making it look more like those winged globes in Egyptian sculpture than anything else remember upon earth These solar corona, though I had never seen anything of it but picture during the days earthly life

When my attention came back earth again, had fallen very far away from me Field and town were long since indistinguishable, and all the varied hues country were merging into uniform bright grey, broken only brilliant white clouds that lay scattered in flocculent masses over Ireland west of England For now I the outlines north of France and Ireland, and all this Island of Britain, save where Scotland passed over the horizon north, or where the coast was blurred or obliterated by cloud The sea was dull grey, and darker land; whole panorama was rotating slowly towards the east

All this had happened so swiftly that until some thousand miles or so earth I had no thought But now I perceived I had neither hands nor feet, neither parts nor organs, neither alarm nor pain All about me I perceived vacancy (for I had already left the air behind) was cold beyond the imagination of man; but it troubled me not The sun's rays shot void, powerless to light or heat until they should strike on matter in their course things with serene self-forgetfulness, even I were God And down below there, rushing away from me,--countless miles in second,--where little dark spot grey marked the position of London, two doctors were struggling to restore life poor hacked and outworn shell I had abandoned then such release, such serenity as compare to no mortal delight ever known

only after I had perceived all these things meaning headlong rush earth grew into comprehension Yet so simple, so obvious, that amazed at my never anticipating the thing that was happening I had suddenly been cut adrift from matter: all that was material of me was there upon earth, whirling away through space, held earth by gravitation, partaking earth-inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun, and sun planets on their vast march through space But the immaterial has no inertia, feels nothing pull of matter for matter: where it parts from its garment of flesh, there it remains ( as space concerns it any longer) immovable in space not leaving the earth: the earth was leaving me_, and the earth but the whole solar system was streaming past And about me in space, invisible , scattered wake earth upon its journey, an innumerable multitude of souls, stripped like myself material, stripped like myself passions individual generous emotions gregarious brute, naked intelligences, things of new-born wonder and thought, marvelling strange release that had suddenly come on them !