I stood up hackneyed and forlorn. Had I not done everything I could? Had
I not kept my promise? I heard the voices below me; one, that musical
tone, that made the color come and go upon my cheeks, and as I turned
hastily to descend to them while the breathing earth seemed to send
upward its powerful sensitizing odors that turn energy into languorous
desire, and touch the senses with indolence; at that moment the Morse
register spoke!
Could my ears have deceived me? No! It was running, running, running,
intelligible, strong, definite; it seemed to me of almost piercing
loudness, although just audible. I bent over, seized my pad and wrote.
The Abyss of Death was bridged! From behind the veil of that inexorable
silence which lies beyond the grave came a voice--and what a voice! The
clicking of a telegraphic register in signals, that the whole world knew
and used. I was quiet, preternaturally so, I think, as I took down the
message. I became almost aged in the intense rigidity of my absorption.
I was told the Dodans came up and saw me, heard the telltale clicks of
the register, and unnoticed left me. Still I wrote on, unheeding the
time. My assistants, pale with wonder, stood around me. The measured
tappings were the ghostly voices of another world. This message began at
10 a.m., Sept. 25, 1893. It ended at 10 p.m. on the same day. It came
quite evenly, though slowly, and was unmistakably intended to be
inerrantly recorded, as indeed it was.
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