Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/181

visit to the hospital the general made a curious communication to me. The hour for lunch on the steamer was 12.15. My friend, as he sat down to the table, said abruptly, "Your patient at Panama is dead. He has just died. He died at 12 o'clock." I naturally asked how he had acquired this knowledge, since we had called nowhere, there was no wireless installation on the ship, and we had received no message from any passing vessel. Apart from all this was the question of time, for the death, he maintained, had only just occurred. He replied, "I cannot say. I was not even thinking of the poor man. I only know that as the ship's bell was striking twelve I was suddenly aware that he had, at that moment, died." The general, I may say, was a man of sturdy common sense who had no belief in the supernatural, nor in emanations from the dying, nor in warnings, nor in what he called generally "all that nonsense." Telepathy—in which also he did not believe—was out of the question, since he and the dead man were entirely unknown to one another. My friend was merely aware that the news had reached him. It was useless for me to say that I did not think the patient could have died so soon, for the general remained unmoved. He only knew that