The Perfume of Egypt by C. W. Leadbeater (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Well,” cried Granville, “this is the strangest trick of all.”

Cameron and I exchanged glances, but Granville, not observing us, rushed on deck and demanded of the head boatman where the Major was.

“Sahib,” replied the man, “I have not seen him since he left with you this morning.”

“Why, what do you mean?” roared Granville; “he came on board this barge not a minute before we did, and I saw you put down a plank for him to cross with your own hands!”

“Sir,” answered the man, exhibiting the greatest astonishment, “you certainly mistake; you were yourself the first person to come on board, and I laid down the plank because I saw you coming; as for the Major Sahib, I have not set eyes upon him since morning.”

We could do nothing but stare at one another in blank amazement, not unmingled with awe; and I heard Cameron mutter as if to himself:

“He is dead, then, as I feared, and the vision was for him after all.”

“There is something very strange about all this,” said Beauchamp, “something which I cannot at all understand; but one thing is clear. We must at once go back to the place where we left the Major this morning, and search for him. Some accident may have happened.”

We explained to the head boatman where we had parted from the Major, and found that he at once shared our worst fears.

“That is a very dangerous place, Sahib,” be said; “there was once a village there, and there are two or three deep wells whose mouths are entirely overgrown by bushes and weeds; and the Major Sahib, being so short-sighted, would be very likely to fall into one of them.”

This intelligence naturally increased our apprehensions tenfold, and we lost no time in setting off, taking with us three of the boatmen and a coil of stout rope. As may be imagined, it was not without a shudder that we plunged again into the wood where we had heard those mysterious sounds which we had now so much reason to fear might have been in some inexplicable way intended as warnings to us of a calamity impending, or perhaps even then taking place. But the conversation turned chiefly on the latest marvel — the appearance and disappearance of what we could hardly help calling the Major’s ghost.

We carefully compared notes, and ascertained beyond a doubt that all five of us had clearly seen him. We had all observed his hurried manner; we had all noticed that, though still wearing the top-boots, he had no hat upon his head and was no longer carrying his gun; we had all seen him descend the stairs on board the boat, and we were all perfectly certain that it would have been impossible for him, if a man in the flesh, to escape us unobserved. Sceptics though some of us had been as to supernatural visitations, I think none of us now ventured to hope that we should find him alive; and perhaps it is no discredit to our prowess as soldiers to confess that we kept very close together as we retraced our steps through those woods, and that we spoke chiefly in whispers, except when at intervals we stopped, let off our pieces, and all shouted together, so that if the Major were lying disabled anywhere in the neighbourhood he would be aware of our approach.

However, we met with nothing unusual on our way, and found without difficulty the place where we had crossed the ditch, and the tree under which we had left the Major. From this spot the boatmen easily tracked his footsteps for a few hundred yards, till one of them, running forward, picked up the hat and gun of the missing man — “the very articles,” whispered Cameron to me, “which he had not when we saw him just now.” We now felt certain that some terrible accident had occurred — probably close to the very spot where we stood; and sure enough the natives pointed out to us only a few yards off the concealed mouth of one of those old wells of which they had warned us. Alas! at its edge there were the unmistakable marks of slipping feet; and from the blackness of the depth into which we looked, we could hardly doubt that our poor friend must have been fatally injured, even if not at once killed, by the fall.

The sun was already setting, and night comes on so rapidly in the tropics that we had but little time to lose; so, as no answer came to our shouts, we hastily passed our rope round the branch of a tree which hung over the mouth of the well, and by its means one of the boatmen descended. Soon from an immense depth a shout came up; the man had reached the bottom, and had discovered a body, but was unable to tell us whether it was the Major’s or not. We directed him to attach it to the rope, and with fast-beating hearts drew it to the surface of the earth.

Never shall I forget the ghastly sight that met our eyes in the rapidly-fading light. The corpse was indeed the Major’s, but it was only by the clothes and the top-boots that we could identify it; scarcely anything of human shape was left in it, and the face was swollen and crushed past all recognition, as Cameron had seen it in his vision. Death must have been instantaneous, for evidently as he fell down the well, the head must have struck more than once against the rough rocky projections which we could see as we peered into it. Horrible to relate, entangled in the rope which had been so hurriedly tied round the corpse was also the mangled, but yet warm and palpitating body of Beauchamp’s dog, which had rushed so madly into the jungle but an hour before! Sick with horror, we twined together a rude litter of branches, laid the Major’s remains upon it with averted eyes, and bore it silently back to our boat.

So ends my gruesome story, and few will wonder that a permanent effect was produced upon the life of each one of its witnesses. Since then I have borne my part in many a battle-field, and faced death calmly enough in its most dreadful forms (for familiarity breeds contempt); but yet there are times when that unearthly bell, that spectral figure, that awful corpse rise once more before my mind, and a great horror falls upon me, and I dread to be alone.

One more fact I ought to mention to make my tale complete. When, on the following evening, we arrived at our destination, and our melancholy deposition had been taken down by the proper authorities, Cameron and I went out for a quiet walk, to endeavour with the assistance of the soothing influence of nature to shake off something of the gloom which paralysed our spirits. Suddenly he clutched my arm, and pointing through some rude railings, said in a trembling voice:

“Yes, there it is! that is the burial-ground I saw yesterday.”

And when later on we were introduced to the chaplain of the post, I noticed, though my friends did not, the irrepressible shudder with which Cameron took his hand, and I knew that he had recognised the clergyman of his vision.

*

Such is my great-grandfather’s story. As for its occult rationale, I presume Cameron’s vision to have been a pure case of second-sight, and if so, the fact that the two men who were evidently nearest to him (certainly one and probably both actually touching him) participated in it to the limited extent of hearing the concluding volley, while the others who were not so close did not, would show that the intensity with which the vision impressed itself upon the seer occasioned a disturbance in his aura which was communicated to that of each person in contact with him, as in ordinary thought-transference.

The bell sounds seem to have been an exceedingly powerful manifestation, probably produced by the dead Major, as an attempt to apprise his friends of the accident which had befallen him. It frequently happens that a dead man, unaccustomed to his new surroundings and unacquainted with the methods of wielding super-physical forces, plunges wildly about in his desperate efforts to communicate somehow with the world that he has left, and in doing so produces results as unexpected to himself as to his friends on earth. I have not heard of another instance of their taking exactly this form, but I have heard of others quite as tremendous; so I agree with Granville in holding the Major responsible for that weird signal, though I do not know exactly how he caused it.

From what we hear of the Major’s extreme punctuality, it is probable that the idea of keeping his promise to reach the boat at the time arranged may have been prominent in his mind immediately before death, and that prominent idea is enough to account for the apparition. The fact that the officers all saw it, and the boatmen did not, might be attributed to the intense excitement under which the former were laboring, in addition to the fact that they, as constant companions, would be much more en rapport with the deceased. The dog, as often happens, realised the character of the appearance sooner than the men did; but perhaps the most extraordinary point of the whole story is the discovery of its body along with the Major’s. I can only suppose that in an additional attempt to turn the attention of his friends in the right direction, the Major may have drawn it back to the scene of the accident, though he could not draw them, and being unable to check itself in its headlong rush, it met with its death as he had done; but I offer this only as a conjecture.

By C. W. Leadbeater

How long I had slept I cannot say; but in a moment, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning, I passed from unconsciousness to complete and vivid consciousness. I gave a quick glance round my chamber; everything was visible clearly enough in the subdued light of my lamp, turned low for the night. All seemed as usual — nothing out of place, nothing to account in any way for that sudden awakening.

But the next moment there thrilled through my soul the well-known voice of that Teacher whom I revere and love above all else in the world. That voice uttered but one word:

“Come!”

Ere I could spring from my couch in glad obedience I was seized with a feeling which it would be hopeless to attempt to describe so as to give any one else an adequate conception of it. Every nerve in my body seemed strained to the breaking-point by some hitherto-unsuspected force within; after a moment of excruciating pain this sensation focused itself in the upper part of the head, something there seemed to burst, and — I found myself floating in the air! One glance I cast behind me, and saw myself — or my body rather — lying soundly asleep upon the bed; and then I soared out into the open air.

It was a dark tempestuous night, and lowering clouds were driving rapidly across the sky; and it seemed to me as if the whole air were full of living creatures, shadowy and indistinctly seen through the darkness — creatures like wreaths of mist or smoke, and yet somehow living and powerful — creatures which seemed perpetually rushing towards me and yet retired before me; but I swept on unheeding.

The room in which I had been sleeping is on the bank of a river, and across this my