Thus far I had experienced absolutely no change in my sensations.
I turned to Ah Schow and told him to ask Padma what the matter was; but, strange to say, Ah Schow did not seem to hear.
I spoke louder—louder still—I shouted. It had no effect whatever upon my servant.
They stood there looking at me; and then, to my utter amazement, I was looking at myself. There I was lying upon the stone floor beside the altar, in the precise spot where Maurice had lain before me. I saw the two lamas approach, lift me up and carry me to the trap. I saw them put me head first into the shute; I saw myself disappear like a flash. And yet I solemnly affirm that so far as my own consciousness went, I was precisely the same George Wylde I had been before.
I was a man; a living man, with every atom of my personality perfect; every member of my body, every stitch of my clothing intact; yet when I spoke, no one heard; when I moved about I seemed to pass directly through the forms around me. Already I had forgotten Padma’s injunction. I had not fixed my thoughts upon my body. How could I be expected to do so when to me it seemed as though I were in my body still?
My first thought after the disappearance of my body, was one of curiosity to know how the flood was progressing. I thought of the big tree in the courtyard beneath which I had passed through that strange experience with Walla, and instantly I was there.
Now for a moment terror seized me, for the courtyard was a lake; the water was pouring over the wall in torrents. But I soon perceived that I was no longer as I had been. I seemed to float above the water, and when I thought wonderingly of what was beyond the wall, I rose higher. I could look over it, and my eyes rested upon a vast sea, extending in every direction.
“Will it never end?” I thought. “Is there more still to come? What is its source? Has it not been exhausted yet? Would that I were at this wonderful Dshambi-nor.”
Suddenly I seemed to shoot through the air with incredible swiftness, and before I could at all realize the situation, I was approaching those distant mountain peaks which had seemed so far away. The next I knew I was among them,
