Confessions of an English Hachish-Eater/Chapter 4
IV. A Strange Journey.
WHEN I was a young and comparatively inexperienced hachish-eater, I once called upon a surgeon who lived at Hammersmith and who had promised to show me a new apparatus which he had devised and manufactured for the administration of ether to patients about to undergo severe operations. When he had exhibited and explained his handiwork we went to his sanctum, and, while we were smoking together, our conversation fell upon opiates and narcotics in general. I mentioned cannabis indica, and he derided it. "It is of no practical value,” he said; "I have used it and it has always disappointed me."
"You think, then," I said, "that it produces no narcotic effects?"
"I have never seen any," he returned.
"Well, take some of mine!" I urged, as I offered him a little box of the drug that I had in my pocket.
He begged to be excused. "I am unaccustomed to it—it might incapacitate me," he objected. "But do you take a dose. I should like to see its effects."
And so, to amuse him, although I was more than a mile away from home and could not remain with him for many hours on account of his other engagements, I swallowed a portion.
I only narrate these circumstances be cause they led up to a curious experience, involving a marvellous realisation of what has been called "levitation."
We dined together the drug began to exercise its accustomed influence; and I was already in Elysium, when my friend had to leave his house. Having still some slight will-power left, I made up my mind to walk home.
It was a summer evening, and the sun had just set as I shook hands with my host at his door, and descended the steps. No sooner did I reach the pavement of the street than I suddenly lost my normal consciousness, and was apparently liberated from the ordinary shackles of the body. In a moment I was passing through the warm air at a height varying from four to ten feet from the earth; and around and below me the people were staring at my strange performance. I paid no heed to them, however, unless, indeed, I scornfully regarded them as inferior beings. To me my method of progress did not seem to be in the slightest degree abnormal. I skated rather than walked, and moved without any effort and I have a vivid recollection of all my sensations. I was in the Kensington Road: the gas-lamps were being lighted; and, as I went along, I recognised the faces of many people whom I knew by sight. To one man, who was sitting beside the driver of an omnibus, I nodded, and waved a hand; and, while I was turning round to do so, I came into contact with another being who, like myself, seemed to be flying through the air. He was a friend of mine, and, for that matter, is so still. The encounter was extraordinary; but I simply shook hands with him, murmured something to the effect that I was in a hurry to get home, and sped on as before.
And here I may say, in parenthesis, that, when next I met him, he told me that he had remarked nothing unusual in my demeanour, and had not seen anything peculiarly grotesque in my hasty exclamation: "Sorry I can't stop to talk. You see I am flying home too."
I had made good progress, and was within a few hundred yards of my house when I became aware that I was being pursued. I heard behind me footfalls like the patter which one makes when one throws a handful of shingle upon the smooth surface of a lake; and, spinning round in my course, I confronted one of the strangest arrays that the imagination can conceive. A thousand little sprites of as many different forms were dancing in the air, giggling, smiling, playing all kinds of antics, and ever and anon bursting out into regular Homeric laughter. With one accord they beckoned me to join them, and, when I turned and did so, they flew upon me, like a swarm of bees, and began caressing and tickling me. I, too, laughed their deformed little faces were so absurdly comical that I could not help myself. One fellow had a face like that of one of Reynolds's children—a plump, spiritual, dimpled, rosy face that would have been the joy of any mother, only that, unfortunately, instead of a chubby nose, it had a large red, curiously forked, carrot-like proboscis, which it moved at will, just as the octopus moves its tentacles. This fellow particularly attracted my attention. Flying before me, and carrying in his hand a huge eye that gave forth a phosphorescent light, he beckoned me onwards and onwards, until at last we had left his companions far behind in the increasing darkness. By this time I had mounted to a great height in the air, and found myself hovering over an immense and silent sea, in the glassy bosom of which all the stars were brilliantly reflected. No living being save my quaint conductor was visible. I was enjoying the novelty of the situation and the freedom of my position when I noticed an alteration in the appearance of the sprite. He had become stationary in mid-air, and, as I gazed at him, his fat legs began to lengthen downwards towards the earth. They grew rapidly and became apparently hard and sinewy; yet, without any astonishment, I watched the feet descend lower and lower until they were hidden from my sight by the quiet waters beneath me. Then I looked up: the body and face of my guide had not materially increased in size, but the carrot-like proboscis was growing at a wonderful rate, and shooting out new tentacles with great speed and at very frequent intervals. These tentacles were of a bright orange colour, and, in shape, much like attenuated spoons, the bowls being, however, flattened and covered on both sides with round white spots. I was not frightened; but my curiosity seemed to deprive me of my powers of locomotion, and I also became stationary. When the growth ceased, my guide remained swaying on his miraculous legs, like a bulrush in a wayward breeze, and ducking and twisting his head as if in search of something. At last one of the wandering tentacles touched me, and in a moment the others were wound around me, and I was tenderly enclosed in a sort of living and pulsating network, which did not squeeze or crush me, but merely retained me as in a covered basket of open work. When I had lost my powers of movement I had for an instant contemplated the horrible possibility of falling through space to the distant sea, but now I felt perfectly safe again. My ability to move was restored, too, though, instead of floating through the air, I trod upon the mass of twisted tentacles. My first impulse was to explore my extra-ordinary place of refuge. It was ovoid in shape. At one end the extremities of the orange feelers were matted and knotted together into a hard firm mass; but at the other I discovered an immense opening which I immediately recognised as the mouth-by this time greatly increased in size of my elastic conductor. I entered it, walking boldly over the warm, smooth lower-lip, climbing with some difficulty over the palisade of white and shining teeth, and jumping down, at some risk of breaking a limb, on to the rough red tongue that heaved like the bosom of the Atlantic after a bad storm. In front, but far away, was the cavernous throat guarded by two imminent throbbing tonsils. I pressed on and passed beneath them into a comparatively narrow downward tunnel that glistened like the interior of a well-kept gun-barrel, and seemed to have no ending and no turning. The rugosities of the way enabled me to descend without much trouble, but at last my feet slipped, and, falling headlong for a short distance, I became doubled up and jammed. Immediately a convulsion began. Evidently efforts were being made to expel me. My capacious guide was palpably choking, and I experienced a fearful uncertainty as to what would happen next. What did happen I do not exactly know. Everything around me seemed to give way and burst with a noise like that which is made by the cracking of a carter's whip. I was free once more, but I was in pieces: and each piece took its own way through the air. Then ensued a most remarkable and ludi-crous chase. My head floated speedily after an arm or leg, and, having captured the truant, hurried off to capture some other limb, but, in the process, again lost what it had already captured. It was tantalising in the extreme, but very amusing. After a time, however, I grew tired of it and, when I had ceased to make any efforts and had quietly resigned myself to my divided lot, lo, all my fragments of their own accord clustered around me thrust themselves back into their proper places, and made a man of me once more. But what kind of a man? Outwardly, I daresay, I was as I usually am; but I was no longer of real flesh and blood. I was entirely composed of wax. Fortunately my aërial travels had come to an end, for, in my new condition, I felt exceedingly timorous lest I might, by some mischance, break or dent myself. There was no danger of that, however. I was on a bed of cotton-wool, and I should have been perfectly comfortable had not the air quickly become filled with crowds of fire-flies. First I thought: "They will settle on me and melt me." But a much worse fear soon took possession of me. I thought: "Ah! I am lying in gun-cotton: I know that it is gun-cotton. They will ignite it, and I shall be blown up!" And no sooner had the idea entered my brain than, with a flame and a roar, that which I had feared came to pass, and I disappeared in a cloud of ill-smelling smoke.
The reader may reasonably imagine that these experiences must at the time have been very dreadful. But such was not the case. If I had any terrors, they speedily gave way to a kind of resignation that, I imagine, very nearly resembled the Oriental abandonment to Kismet. Even when I was thus blown up and scattered to the four winds of heaven, the sense of the inconvenience of my position was instantaneously extinguished by the reflection that no man can for ever avoid dissolution. And, moreover, I was immediately compensated for that fleeting period of discomfort. I existed, it is true, no longer in body; but I was in a state of complete and absolute bliss that did not permit me to feel my loss. I was in a garden full of pleasant sights and sounds, tended and fed with delicious fruits by yet more delicious sylphs. All the delights of the senses were still mine. There was merely no body to become satiated and weary. And in "keef" I remained, until the almost inevitable sequel brought my experience to a close and aroused me.
I was in my own room and in bed. It was barely eleven o'clock. The lamp on my table was lighted; and I afterwards found that I had not only lighted it but also trimmed its wick. Since my return I had spoken to members of my family, and they had noticed nothing amiss with me. I had only complained of great sleepiness, and had at once gone upstairs. But, when I awoke, I was so little inclined to turn round and seek for real and rational slumber that I rose and dressed myself, and lost no time in jotting down some notes of my sensations. I discovered that I had undressed myself in my usual way. had wound up my watch, and had even put my boots outside my door before going to bed. But I know nothing more; nor can I trace much connection between my dreams and my actions after leaving the house of my friend at Hammersmith.
