I looked toward
Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair- his teeth chattered,
and his eyes were starting from their sockets. "Proceed!" he at length
said hoarsely to Bedloe.
"For many minutes," continued the latter, "my sole sentiment- my
sole feeling- was that of darkness and nonentity, with the
consciousness of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent and
sudden shock through my soul, as if of electricity. With it came the
sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I felt- not saw. In an
instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no
visible, audible, or palpable presence. The crowd had departed. The
tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative repose. Beneath me
lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple, the whole head greatly
swollen and disfigured. But all these things I felt- not saw. I took
interest in nothing. Even the corpse seemed a matter in which I had no
concern. Volition I had none, but appeared to be impelled into motion,
and flitted buoyantly out of the city, retracing the circuitous path
by which I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the
ravine in the mountains at which I had encountered the hyena, I
again experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery, the sense of
weight, of volition, of substance, returned.
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