Phosphor/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
I carefully calculated the strength of the human powers of resisting poisons, and compared it to that possessed by animals, and found that from the curious nature of the antidote it might take longer to work its effect on a man than an animal.
I then wrote a letter to my valet requesting him to procure a certain doctor (a friend of mine) and to be sure I was dead before burying me, also to see that my body was kept as long as possible.
My coffin was to be made of very thin light wood, and holes were to be bored in the end where my head would be.
And finally I was to he buried in a vault, the letter stating where to find money to buy one.
To make doubly certain that my instructions should be carried out, I also wrote to the doctor setting forth what they were.
I then sent one letter to him, and placed the other in a prominent position on the mantelpiece so that it could not fail to attract attention.
After carefully preparing the antidote, on the 13th of July, I allowed one of the cobras to bite me on the arm. Thirty seconds afterwards I swallowed the antidote and walked rapidly up and down the room to promote circulation.
After a few moments the room seemed to move round, and I felt a great inclination to sleep.
For some minutes I succeeded in combating this desire, and then my legs gave way beneath me and I fell on the door in a paralysed state.
A state in which I had not the power to move a muscle; my sight was gone, only my brain and powers of hearing remained active.
I felt as if descending into chasms, lower and lower, depth below depth, and then seemed to rise again.
My brain became perfectly clear.
I comprehended where I was and reckoned my chances.
How awful were the thoughts that possessed me.
Supposing that I had made a mistake in the quantity of antidote?
If they found me like this and buried me!
Perhaps this was death, and the dead know all that is done to them—even to being buried without the power of moving.
I remembered cases I had read of premature burial, of persons having been found turned in their coffins, their hair dragged out, and the nails dug into their skin, showing how terrible the awakening must have been.
Now that I was on the point of death, perhaps dead, I had no wish to die.
Life seemed all that was beautiful; the grave horrible, repulsive, awful.
I had no idea of time; space swelled and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity.
I seemed to have been in this state for years.
My valet knocked at the door, and receiving no answer he opened it.
Seeing me on the floor, he screamed, and the other servant came in.
I could hear them talking. They carried me to my bedroom, placed me on a bed, and one of them went for a doctor.
He came, and pronounced me dead.
Whilst he was with me, my valet came into the room with the letter, showed it to him, and they discussed its contents.
The doctor, who, by-the-bye, was not my friend, remarked that I must have been mad, that it was a pity I had been so foolish, and left, promising to send an undertaker to measure me for my coffin.
The servants washed me, and laid me out; all this I knew without being able to feel it, or make the slightest movement; then, covering me up, they left me.
The undertaker came and measured me for my coffin.
I heard my valet giving my instructions to him respecting the make of it, and purchase of the vault.
He undertook to make the coffin as directed.
My valet went to my bureau. I could hear the chink of money as he removed it from the drawers.
The cook came in and together they ransacked my trunks and boxes, coolly appropriating my jewels and other articles they took a fancy to.
Imagine my feelings? Within a few feet, yet unable to prevent them.
The coffin came, I was placed in it.
They screwed the lid down.
I had no idea of time; every minute seemed a year of hideous, appalling agony.
Presently, they carried me to the hearse and put me in.
Supposing they had not been able to purchase a vault, and buried me in the ground?
How awful, if this was death, to be in the ground for eternity, and know it!
And yet, how much more horrible if I was still alive and should wake, to die that death, one of the most awful the human mind can conceive!
Again mid again I pictured to myself what I should pass through, enclosed within these narrow hoards.
How powerfully, with what concentrated efforts of my brain, I willed my limbs to move, but to no purpose!
Only my brain was alive, and in it I suffered more than the agonies of the damned.
Oh! Why had I not the power to kill my brain, and thus escape this uncertainty?
Perhaps the brain was the soul, and instead of the soul leaving the body, it remained with it; and by feeling and knowing all the horrors the body was subjected to, suffered for the sins it had committed on earth.
What had I ever done that I should undergo this cruciation?
They placed the coffin on the ground and read the burial service over me.
When it was finished, they lifted the coffin, and carried it to a vault.
Thank God! they were not going to bury me in the earth.
Then they put me on a shelf, and left.
I could hear the iron door slam as they shut and locked it.
I was alone.
How long I remained like this I know not, but suddenly felt as if a single needle had been run in my left side, then as if several pierced my heart.
The pricks extended; it seemed as if innumerable small sharp instruments were being plunged into every portion of my body.
Now and then I felt one of my muscles twitch.
I breathed.
My blood began to circulate, slowly at first, and then more rapidly, traversing my veins like molten lead, and causing excruciating pain.
I moved.
Never shall I forget the supreme ecstasy of that moment.
Again I felt alive.
I tried to call out, but my throat was too dry, and I only succeeded in making a low, husky sound.
Then I thought, supposing, that instead of following my instructions, thinking me mad when I wrote the letter, they had made the coffin of thick wood.
In that case my chances of breaking through were small and I should die in it of starvation.
They had evidently carried out my wishes in respect to boring the holes, as I found no difficulty in breathing, and though the air was heavy with the pestilential odour arising from those bodies from which the coffins had rotted away, I thought I had never inhaled any so delicious.
After a time I moved again, with a little more control over my limbs.
Raising my hands I felt the boards above me and tore the waxed paper, with which the coffin was lined, from my face.
Each time I moved I gained more control over my muscles.
Perspiration oozed from the pores of my skin.
My voice returned to me.
I yelled, struggled, and beat the boards above me without making any impression on them.
I stopped for a moment, then, with the strength of despair, drew my knees up as far as I could.
The board cracked.
Again and again did I exert my utmost strength, until at last with a mighty effort I succeeded in splitting it, and with the force of my movement rolled off the shelf on to the floor, bringing the coffin with me.
Exhausted nature gave way.
I fainted.
On recovering consciousness I could see nothing; total darkness environed me.
Crawling to the side of the vault I tried to discover the door, but without success.
Becoming calm I started to walk round the vault, in my course knocking down the coffins with which it was lined.
I could hear the bones of the skeletons rattle, and the thud of more recent corpses that fell from the coffins, as they broke on the floor.
Occasionally I tripped and fell amongst them, and could feel as I put out my hands to save myself, their dried skin and bones, or rotten flesh.
The stench emanating from them was awful.
I sat down on a coffin to rest myself.
Scenes and incidents, long forgotten, paraded before me in the darkness.
Scenes that I should not have known were connected with myself but for the strange incidents that led up to them in the exact manner in which they had occurred, and explained them with such distinctness, that my mind was forced to grasp and to recognise them instantaneously.
Surely there could be no greater hell to a bad man than his conscience; and if we accept the belief that the soul does not perish, and has the power of thought, we at once create a hell far more terrible than mere bodily suffering.
I remembered a passage of De Quincey's in which he says:—
"I feel assured there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind; accidents of the same sort will also rend away the veil; but alike whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, when as, in fact, we all know that it is the light that is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscuring daylight shall be withdrawn."
These, and a thousand other anxious speculations crowded my brain.
The tension was so great that I felt that something was on the point of snapping and that I should go mad.
Arising, I again commenced to pace the vault. I found it was about 30ft. wide by almost 20ft. in breadth; near the sides my head sometimes touched the roof; this led me to think that it had been formed out of a natural cavern.
It might be one of a succession of caverns, and divided from others by, perhaps, only a few inches of dirt or stone.
I picked up a large bone and commenced to tap the sides, as I walked round.
After making the circuit of the cave several times, I noticed, that at one corner, the wall had a hollow sound.
I struck it again.
Yes! there could be no doubt the sound was different from that given by other parts.
The hollowness extended for about three feet in each direction.
I felt reanimated, and set to work with the bone to try and pierce the wall.
The bone was too short, and I had to tear part of the earth, near the hole, away, to let me get my arm in.
Indescribable joy!
The bone passed through, and a current of cool, fresh air played on my face, wet with sweat, caused by my exertions and the suspense I had undergone.
The air, after that of the vault, was like a draught of fresh water to me, and revived my shattered energies amazingly.
With renewed strength I tore at the hole until I had made an opening large enough to get through.
What horrors might I not meet on the other side? But anything was better than the vault with its hideous corpses, so I knelt down and crawled into the hole.
I put my hands out but could feel nothing.
What was I to do? Return to the vault?
Never! I would rather die than return to that fearful stench.
The thought flashed through my mind—why not kill myself?
Anything was better than this awful darkness.
I crawled through and hung on to the side of the hole, then muttering a prayer, let go my hold.
For a second I was in the air, then, I touched the ground, and felt myself rolling down and down a steep incline.
Something hit me on the head and I became unconscious.