Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/239

Rh been a fall of live fishes at Benares, a shower of red substance at Furruckabad, a dark spot observed on the disk of the sun, an earthquake, "an unnatural darkness of some duration," and a luminous appearance in the sky that looked like an aurora borealis But there's more to this climax:

We are introduced to a new order of phenomena:

Visitors.

The Deputy Commissioner writes that, in the evening, after the fall of the Dhurmsalla meteorite, or mass of stone covered with ice, he saw lights. Some of them were not very high. They appeared and went out and reappeared. I have read many accounts of the Dhurmsalla meteorite—July 28, 1860—but never in any other of them a mention of this new correlate—something as out of place in the nineteenth century as would have been an aeroplane—the invention of which would not, in our acceptance, have been permitted, in the nineteenth century, though adumbrations to it were permitted. This writer says that the lights moved like fire balloons, but:

"I am sure that they were neither fire balloons, lanterns, nor bonfires, or any other thing of that sort, but bona fide lights in the heavens."

It's a subject for which we shall have to have a separate expression—trespassers upon territory to which something else has a legal right—perhaps someone lost a rock, and he and his friends came down looking for it, in the evening—or secret agents, or emissaries, who had an appointment with certain esoteric ones near Dhurmsalla—things or beings coming down to explore, and unable to stay down long

In a way, another strange occurrence during an earthquake is suggested. The ancient Chinese tradition—the marks like hoof marks in the ground. We have thought—with a low degree of acceptance—of another world that may be in secret communication with certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants—and of messages in symbols like hoof marks that are sent to some receptor, or special hill, upon this earth—and of messages that at times miscarry.

This other world comes close to this world—there are quakes—but advantage of proximity is taken, to send a message—the message, designed for a receptor, in India, perhaps, or in Central Europe, miscarries all the way to England—marks like the marks