Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/283

Charles Dickens] from the cloud in some new and terrible shape. But for a long time all he did was to rise up, chop with his jaws, and roll his eyes, then sink down into his cloud, and I could hear him chop, and feel he was rolling his eyes again Presently I noticed, that each time he sank down, he did not go so far down as before. I found this out first, by seeing the loop of his coat sticking up out of his cloud, when he had once dwarfed; next I saw his nose go down when he chopped; next I saw his chin come up, until at last, though he still kept up an uncertain jogging motion up and down, he remained a giant.

I wanted to know why he jogged. My other self knew, but would not tell me. Looking at him made me dizzy, and I felt I was jogging too, but why we both jogged I hadn't the remotest idea. I tried to stop jogging, but in vain. A dreadful feeling came over me as the jogs got worse. I had found it out. Idiot that I was, the bed that I had trusted in was no bed at all, but the back of a great bustard that was jogging and jolting along with me at a fearful speed, and the dreadful dwarf-giant was on the back of another, chasing me, and counting off every mile with a chop. I had awoke to my position too late. I was being hurried I knew not where. Wasn't I dreaming now, and hadn't I made a mistake? my other self asked. A mistake? And going a mile a moment, and feeling the wind cutting my face, like a scourge? Oh! it was too much: why I could hear the other bustard with the dwarf on it, not three paces behind. I could hear the bird breathing, snorting, snoring. Was it myself snoring? I don't snore. And was there any draught from a window enough to cut you in two? No, no. I was going, on my heaving, lurching, brute of a bird, goodness only knew where, at about the rate of a cannon-ball, so fast, that the dreadful dwarf was chopping an incessant tattoo with his teeth, to tick off the miles. Whether the road was earth, or air, or sky I could not tell; we were going too fast to have been able to see houses, trees, or people, had we passed any. There was nothing but a kind of dusty mist, that rose up and obscured whatever it was that brutal bird's feet were racing over. Then I thought I wouldn't put up with this treatment. Aware, however, that it was required of me for some inscrutable purpose to pursue my headlong career, I thought I would go to sleep on the bustard's back, and dream that I was being still hurried along and chopped after. With a sleepy kind of cunning it occurred to me, how this would swindle the power that was driving me, and the chopping dwarf, and the beastly bird, when they came to find they were only racing after a dream.

I went to sleep on the bustard's back and chuckled. But I felt I had been guilty of a mean piece of deception, and dreaded retribution. I then knew by some kind of intuition that the dreadful dwarf had a pistol, and was going to shoot me, as soon as his jogging bird would let him take aim. I didn't know whether still to keep on sleeping, or to be honest, and wake. I reflected, however, that if I only dreamed he shot me, I couldn't be killed, whilst if I woke up and was shot, it might be fatal, so I basely continued to dream. A horrible thought then took hold of me. If I still kept on sleeping, I might be killed in my sleep, and not know it! That would be awkward. It was essential I should think of some deep-laid scheme to prevent this. You see, I reasoned with myself, so long as your will has the power to direct your body to obedience, you can't be dead. As soon as he shoots, you repeat to yourself, "All right." If your tongue says it when you tell it to, and if your ears hear your tongue say it, you are not dead. Satisfied with this test, I continued to dream the bustard was still urging me wildly forward, and had the indescribable pleasure of feeling I was deceiving the bustard, and also old lobster chops, who didn't know but what I was really there, and not safe in dreamland out of his reach.

Crack! I heard the dwarf's pistol go. "All right," I said to myself. To my delight I heard myself say it. There was no mistake about it, I had circumvented him. Alas! it was a revolver. Crack! again. "All right" again. I was unmistakably alive. I can't tell you how proud I was of this test, so simple yet so effective. Crack! twice more. "All right" still. Of course, I thought, how could any one be killed in a dream? Absurd, you know.

Crack!

I had felt no pain. Bless me, how ever was it? Had I woke up by accident? I tried to pronounce my two reassuring words, but my tongue refused obedience; my ears couldn't hear it. I tried several times, but in vain. Then it occurred to me I was dead. Dead, the unfortunate victim of an erroneous theory. There could be no doubt that I was dead, for I immediately felt myself slowly rising, like a mist, through the air, and floating through the close-woven spiny foliage of two fir-trees, so dense you could not shoot an arrow through. I inhaled, in my vapoury form, the aromatic gums of the pine as I passed through the boughs; then, rising, found my mist had contracted and become pure spirit that glowed like fire, till I knew I was the tiny star, that had taken just half an hour to pass through the great top boughs of the fir-tree. I knew, moreover, that I, the star, would be visible to myself lying in my bed at the inn. I could also see my own dead body lying on its face beneath the fir-trees, and I saw the dreadful dwarf come and turn me over to see if I really was dead, and, being satisfied, saw him ride away on his bird, chopping. The last I saw of him in the horizon, when he was bird down and lobster chops down, was his loop, and it puzzled me still to think what that loop was for. It neither puzzled nor confused me to think I had three selfs—viz., my present, or star—self, my murdered self, and my still sleeping self at the inn.

Then I made a discovery I longed to impart to Professor Airy, Astronomer Royal. Stars, I