Francis Worcester Doughty

“ Like Mr. Mirrikh’s face, half yellow, half black; yet inside of that body—and I seemed able to look inside without the slightest difficulty, I could see another man, perfect in every particular. This was Maurice De Veber as I knew him—there was no change.
When I first saw him I shouted his name aloud, but now finding that I could not make my presence known, I contented myself with simply looking at him and surveying his surroundings which were, of course, of the highest interest, for then I had not the slightest doubt that I was actually on the planet Mars. ”

“ Instinctively my gaze became riveted upon the planet. I forgot our danger; I heard not the Doctor’s violent exclamations, I was deaf even to Walla’s weeping; I could think only of Maurice—Maurice and the man Mirrikh—of the mighty mystery in which I had become involved.
Were they there? Were they actually there? Had I been there? Had I seen what I had seen, or was it all the outcome of the fearful strain to which my nervous system had been subjected? Perhaps it was hypnotism. Perhaps Padma to pacify me had made me see it? But no. There was the Doctor. He had seen it too. ”

“ I say, Maurice, how does it strike you?”
“I am listening,” answered Maurice, quietly.
“How long would it take?” inquired the Doctor.
“That,” replied Mr. Mirrikh, “would depend entirely upon how long you cared to remain in Mars; the passage through the realm of spirit cannot be measured by time; it would be no longer than a thought.”
“Oh! We go by way of the spirit world, do we?” Well, my friend, I want you to understand that I, as a clergyman, with every opportunity to inform myself, utterly deny the existence of the so-called soul of man after death.” ”

“ Out of the darkness behind us Walla was seen gliding. There was a peculiar calmness about her face; she tottered toward us and sank down upon the sand at Maurice’s feet.
“I will help you, my friend, my love!” she murmured. “If I cannot have your heart, at least I can relieve your suffering. Take my life! Take it! Let the woman who has your love have my body also. Then when my spirit is free I shall be able to remain ever at your side! Do it, Maurice! Oh, my love do it! I will be your wife in spirit! Let her have my body, and all will be well.” ”

“ Closing the drawer, Padma now led us to the altar and pointed to Maurice.
“Touch the face,” he said quietly, “You will find it like the other—yet he lives! ”
We both touched it. Here was the same clammy coldness, and my heart, which was beginning to feel a ray of hope, again sank in despair.
Could I doubt that Maurice was dead ? Could I credit the aged lama’s claim?
Meanwhile the flame in the dish was blazing away as brightly as ever, shooting upward in slender tongues of crimson light. ”

“ When at last I succeeded in pushing my way through the excited throng and found myself at the door of the American consulate, I discovered that I still held the little hand bag which had been dropped by the stranger and which I must have picked up, although I have no recollection of having done anything of the sort.
I was dazed—absolutely confounded.
What I had seen I had seen. In one moment that man with his peculiar face had stood before me; his eyes had looked into my eyes; he had spoke; he had pressed my hand; and in the next he had disappeared as completely as if he had never been. ”

“ Happenings which at the time seemed most momentous have dwindled into insignificance; seeming calamities are known to have been blessings; mighty problems, then apparently impossible of solution, are now seen as but trifles to be easily brushed away.
In some such way I look back upon my Thibetan experiences; but the time has not yet come when I can think calmly of the sight upon which my eyes rested as I gazed from the old, grey tower of the lamasery of Psam-dagong, when after that night of terror, the sunlight came at last. ”

“ By noon we were at Ballambong, where lies concealed in the very heart of the forest a minature Nagkon Wat, not lacking interest to the professed antiquarian, but to us it seemed decidedly tame.
We had gone into the jungle accompanied only by one old priest whom we had taken pains to propitiate by frequent gifts of brandy and tobacco. Although only three miles distant from Angkor, the journey had been a hard one, since every step of the way took us through a dense tropical tangle, keeping me in momentary dread of dangling pythons, prowling tigers and other pleasing diversions. ”

“ The moment Ronald Mason and his companion hurled Old and Young King Brady in the bed of quick-sand, they ran away.
Dodging behind the rocks, they hid themselves.
By this time the sun was rising.
Finding it impossible to extricate themselves from the deadly grip of the treacherous sand, the detectives ceased their struggles.
"It's useless, Harry," said the old sleuth, despairingly.
"If we remain passive, we'll soon sink beyond our depth, and perish."
"Yell at the top of your voice. Some one may hear us."
"Help! Help! Help!" shouted Harry. ”

“ If the teachings of this strange land are truth, then may they indeed be forgotten; for not only does the boy still live, but there awaits me in that land, where we know each other as we are, one whose heart will beat in perfect accord with my heart’s beatings: whose soul shall know no thought, no longing that is not in harmony with my own! ”

“ Let us admit, therefore, that a certain degree of intensity of thought may command the presence of the spirit of an absent living friend—I use the word spirit solely for want of another as expressive—why, then, may we not conclude that a still greater intensity of thought can produce the same phenomena on a grander scale? Why not admit that it can produce, not actual presence, perhaps—that would be levitation, and I don’t admit levitation—but something so nearly akin to it that not only is our sense of sight deceived, but our senses of hearing and feeling as well. ”

“ These are ministering angels taking her spirit away,” I thought; when all at once something white seemed to flit across my vision, and to my utter amazement I beheld the woman whom I had seen standing by the side of Maurice on Mars, settling down over Walla’s earthly form.
“It is Merzilla! She is seeking a body!” flashed over me, and I remembered Maurice’s words.
For an instant she appeared to hover over Walla, her fingers moving like lightning. To me it seemed as though she were drawing from her own brain a silvery thread which she conveyed to the brain of the corpse. ”

“ Meanwhile the loud cracking which had startled him was followed by a crash awful beyond all telling, and I saw the whole roof of the cavern break away. Great rocks were falling all about us; behind, a black gulf had opened; whirling down from snow-clad peaks now for the first time visible, a mighty wind came sweeping, splashing the rain about as though some bursting reservoir had been suddenly emptied out upon our devoted heads, but through it all that same strange calmness still held its sway.
“Hope!” I cried, flinging one arm about Maurice who was sinking slowly down upon the rocky ledge. ”

“ For the moment the adept did not answer, but just stood there with his eyes fixed on nothingness, an expression of unmistakable horror mingled with deep pity plainly pictured upon his face.
“What is it? What is the matter? Speak,” persisted Maurice.
He sighed and raised his head slowly. Then up came one hand which was brushed before his eyes.
“Gentlemen,” he said, with more agitation than I ever afterward saw him display, “we are needed outside. There is human life in peril; if there is yet time I propose to save it; who will go?” ”

“ Where is she, George?”
I felt a shiver pass over me. Was he mad?
“Do you mean Walla? She is here, Maurice.”
The girl stood facing him; her lips tightly set, her face as livid as the face of a corpse.
“No, no! I don’t mean Walla at all. You know very well who I mean, George Wylde. You saw her in Mars, Mirrikh told me so. Where is she, I say?”
“I do not understand you,” I replied. “Try and pull yourself together, old fellow. Your mind is wandering. Doctor, for God’s sake do something. He is mad! Unless there is help we shall lose him again.”
“What can I do?” groaned the Doctor. ”

“ As the roughs began to pile out of the darkened saloon, the false detective gave vent to a nervous laugh. He was afraid he would not be rescued, and yet did not see how it could be possible for me to retain him as a prisoner in the face of these friends of his.
I was, however, determined to do so.
I was considerably riled up just about then, and could have laid down my life rather than have let him escape.
I set my teeth.
Through them I hissed:
"Stanton, you cannot escape me! You know me well in private life, and know that I am a determined man—a man of my word. ”

“ Several times each day Tige would pass suddenly into the poor girl's presence, and no matter how composed Helen might have been a minute before, the sight of her torturer at once threw her into an excited state, at the same time inducing a fear that caused her to retreat into a corner, quivering and gasping for breath, while a cold dew that sprang from every pore would bathe her entire body. ”

“ Now the fire was blazing merrily and I lighted my pipe, and Maurice his cheroot—the Doctor sponging on my friend for his smoke as usual—and we all seated ourselves on the stone floor beside it, well satisfied with our snug retreat.
“We’re in for a night of it,” said Philpot, “and upon my soul we might have a worse place. Look at his nibs scowling down at us there! To think of men being fools enough to worship that block of stone.”
He was looking up at the big image which returned his gaze with a stony stare, as the flashes from the fire played grotesquely upon its battered face. ”

“ Thus, as Maurice De Veber truly remarked, I am incapable of comprehending the mystical; my mind and thought methods are unadapted to the tenets of Buddhist theology.
Even now that my knowledge has advanced in this direction; even now that I know of that knowledge and must believe because I know, because I have seen and heard, I find myself still incapable of so expressing my thoughts to others as to carry conviction with my statements. But after all, that is a gift, and one which few men possess.
Here was I brought face to face with a man and a mystery. ”

“ We stood on a rocky eminence about a hundred feet above the guard house, Dr. Philpot and I. Looking off we could see to an interminable distance on all sides, for we were at the very summit of the ridge, and our way lay down to the whitened plains below, where far, far in the distance, on the beginning of the next rise, we could faintly discern a cluster of low, square-built structures, with a gilded dome above them. This, our adept had informed us, was our destination—the lamasery of Psam-dagong. ”

“ ACROSS THE RIFT.
“Maurice! Maurice! Wake up!”
“What's the row?” muttered Maurice. “ ’Taint time for the breakfast bell yet, mother. Do leave a fellow alone.”
As space had been obliterated when my friend Mr. Mirrikh made me see Lh’asa, so now with Maurice was time without existence. His dreams were of his mother; he was a boy again; his spirit, untrammeled, was living in the so-called past. And what is the past to man but a mental condition—a state? Free to act, how perfectly the spirit is able to resuscitate it. Maurice certainly saw his mother—in his dream. ”

“ Clouds began to form where previously I had not perceived them, and my vision was in a measure obscured, but only for a moment; before I knew it, I had penetrated the clouds, and the roundness of the earth beneath me was lost. Now it was as I fancy an aeronaut must feel when gazing down from a height a few thousand feet.
“Maurice!” I shouted. “Oh, Maurice, it is glorious!”
He did not seem to hear me, for he never turned his head, though I could perceive by the expression on his face that he was fully alive to the beauties of the mighty panorama which was unrolling itself to my gaze. ”

“ The last camel had departed, the tail of the hindmost mule had vanished over the rocky ridge, a hundred feet or so above the inn, which formed the apex of the mountain pass, Zhad-uan; the shrill “sok! sok!” of the K’ambas was heard no more.
Inside the inn Maurice, Dr. Philpot, and your humble servant stood leaning against the k’ang, contemplating the lifeless body of Mr. Mirrikh, which, still enveloped in its sheepskin covering, lay upon its side at our feet. ”

“ Than that company of men in the so-called office, it would have been a next to impossible task to have found an equal number of deep-dyed scoundrels or red-handed villains.
There was a full moon, and the night was a clear one, and the river-pirates do not choose such nights in which to ply their vocation.
As men in honest callings in life will boast sometimes of what they have done or can do, so villains when in secret quarters, and believing themselves beyond prying ears, will boast of their rascally feats. ”

“ Poor Helen Dilt!
Better, much better, would it be for her to die at once, if she was to be called on to long endure the torments that were devised and executed by the ugly-faced hag who presided over that private mad-house.
The hag was literally a fiend.
And a fiend in human form at that.
We speak of the natural love that resides in the human heart, that is an indestructible part of it, that is born with it, and never departs until the member has ceased to pulse, and lies silent and heavy in the heart that contains it. ”

“ If one was a man, then so also was the other. Not an organ, not a muscle, not even the most minute fibre which was not perfectly reproduced.
“It is the spiritual man you behold,” said Mirrikh. “Until the heart ceases to beat, it remains enchained. Its life is eternal, it destruction as impossible as for you to tear one of yonder stars from heaven; and as it is with the Doctor, so also is it with every man on earth. But look now at Maurice and behold a mystery unfathomable to your Western schools of thought.”
Instantly my eyes were upon Maurice. ”

“ The realm of spirit is everywhere. Men may question its existence, but this can only be for a short time while they remain grossly material in their nature. As for your eternal rest, I cannot understand it any more than I can your notion of eternal punishment. Does the sun ever rest? Does the earth ever cease its revolutions, or the stars their own proper motion? Man is born to be useful, and rest, which is but a state of mind rather than a condition, can only come through constant activity in one’s sphere of use. ”