PHANTASTIC DREAMS – Dream II: AN ISLET

I dreamed one night I left my material body, which I saw lying stretched before me on the bed, and that after patting it affectionately on the head; I mounted the window-sill and dived head first into the blackness of the night. Down, down, down I went, the cold air whistling and humming about my ears till I thought the drums would burst.Down, down, eternally down, till all became hushed and silent as the grave, and I perceived to my amazement that the earth was fast disappearing in the distance, and that I was rapidly approaching one of the other planets. Dropping gently, I alighted on a tiny hillock, and discovered I was on an islet that lay in the midst of a sparkling, amethyst ocean. All around me were flowers; pink and white roses, pansies, forget-me-nots, carnations, and many others known only in Dreamland. A breeze, laden with scents suggestive of all the charms of an idyllic summer; made me long to linger there for ever, and, in an ecstasy of delight, I flew from flower to flower, filling my lungs with their soul-inspiring nectar. While engaged in this entrancing pastime, I heard the joyful utterance of a bird, and on looking up, perceived a lark. With a movement of its little head, which plainly bade me follow, it flew slowly away, and, obeying its injunction I speedily found myself on the banks of a stream where a boat lay moored. Springing into it and taking up the oars, I pushed out into the middle of the current, the lark still continuing to be my guide.The stream, in whose marvellous pellucid depths was reflected the red green of the foliage that lined its shores, took a thousand turns, so that one could never see any great stretch of its gleaming surface at a time, and a very few sweeps of the oars sufficed to shoot my skiff from one angle to another.The character of my surroundings changed as I advanced; the banks and trees grew in height until little of the sky could be seen; the rapidity of the stream ceased, and the waters became deep and tranquil; whilst over and above all hung a silence that brought with it an exquisite sense of rest, intermingled with which was a faint suggestiveness of something bizarre and ghoulish. An unusually abrupt bend, round which the boat subtly glided, laid before me a spectacle so extraordinary that for some seconds I was almost dazed. I had emerged into a gigantic circular basin of several miles in diameter, and entirely composed of glittering white marble. All around it were steps that led down, down, down, until they were lost to sight in the immensity of the distance, the water in some miraculous manner having disappeared altogether.I was deliberating what I had better do, when an enormously tall, nude figure not unlike a human being brushed past me, and, turning round, laid one of its long, gleaming fingers against its nose and smiled knowingly. Fascinated beyond measure, I immediately followed this strange being, and, almost before I was aware of what was happening, found myself racing down the marble steps in close pursuit of it. The peculiarity of its antics increased the further we descended, and at length reached a climax. Suddenly halting on the very margin of a step, it stood on its head and revolved at such a terrific speed that, overcome with dizziness, I fell. I have a vague notion that the figure caught me in its arms as I whizzed past it, and then all was lost in a blinding, deafening, suffocating rush through the air, a rush which terminated not in any conscious temporary stage, but in my suddenly finding myself in a thickly wooded glade, sitting close beside a waterfall and watching my recent conductor, who was standing on the brink of a deep pool immediately beneath the cascade, bending slowly backwards and forwards, and assuming, every now and then, the most grotesque and extravagant attitude. I was wondering what he meant by these attitudes, when he came to an abrupt pause, and, stooping slightly forward, craned his neck in my direction, and began contorting his face in every conceivable shape, till at last he appeared all mouth. Rushing at me he was about to swallow me, when I awoke. I had this dream prior to a time when my affairs were singularly prosperous all round, which condition of things was undoubtedly presaged by the lark (a bird of exceptional good omen), by the carnations, pansies, forget-me-nots, and pink and white roses, by the clearness of the water in the river, and by the deep blue of the sea. I cannot attach any meaning to the figure and its strange antics; they form one of those apparently insoluble enigmas that so frequently occur in fantastic phantomania.