Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/271

 imperturbable calm. To gaze intently upon him is to feel his condition gradually communicating itself to your own brain. That spinning figure with the unmoved countenance begins to exercise a disturbing effect upon you.

The world of sight must long have disappeared from his view; the whizzing universe would be a mere blur upon his retina were he to open his eyes. But does he see nothing beyond it through their closed lids? Has he really twirled himself in imagination to the gates of Paradise? Are the heavens opening in beatific vision to that human teetotum? After all, why not? Once overcome the feeling of giddiness which would probably lay an ordinary mortal prostrate before he had spun two minutes, and anything might happen. You sleep as a top is said to sleep, as this man is obviously sleeping; and "in that sleep of tops what dreams may come?" Who knows? Perhaps the incessant rotatory motion acts