Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/411

 a truly awful spectacle met my gaze. We had already entered the upper storm region, and were dashing through it at such a pace that in a few more minutes, nay, possibly but some few more seconds, we should be passing through the centre of the spot opening. Then, directing my eye to that quarter, I could see, through the flitting intermediate clouds, that the terrible facula had made most portentous progress towards that centre, so that it seemed only an even balance as to which of us was to be there first. We were well aware that but one touch of the very skirts of this facula, and all our cross-electric protection was at once dissolved, and ourselves destroyed—burnt up—the next instant. What, then, would White do? I turned imploringly to him, but the reckless man heeded me not. Resolute purpose was in his unswerving eye. I became desperate, and had a project of seizing the ruffian by the throat, when, horror upon horror, I saw the madman grasp, and slash out to its very fullest, the third electric!

Thereupon it seemed as though, by this fresh shock, I had been wrenched asunder into a thousand fragments, and, body and mind alike, irrecoverably dissipated over surrounding space. Was I left conscious, or unconscious? I know not; but, at any rate, there seemed, curiously, to succeed to this terrible convulsion the silence and stillness of the very grave. That particular simile the more readily occurred to me, because I seemed really to have passed the ordeal of the narrow home, and to have actually entered the next world, wherever that might be. But presently a sweet silvery cadence fell upon my ear. I might have thought that it savoured of the peace of Paradise,