"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

kiosk. We rushed amid the crowd that surrounded it. They retreated, at
first, before us. They rallied, fought madly, and retreated again.
In the mean time we were borne far from the kiosk, and became
bewildered and entangled among the narrow streets of tall, overhanging
houses, into the recesses of which the sun had never been able to
shine. The rabble pressed impetuously upon us, harrassing us with
their spears, and overwhelming us with flights of arrows. These latter
were very remarkable, and resembled in some respects the writhing
creese of the Malay. They were made to imitate the body of a
creeping serpent, and were long and black, with a poisoned barb. One
of them struck me upon the right temple. I reeled and fell. An
instantaneous and dreadful sickness seized me. I struggled- I
gasped- I died."
"You will hardly persist now," said I smiling, "that the whole of
your adventure was not a dream. You are not prepared to maintain
that you are dead?"
When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally from
Bedloe in reply, but, to my astonishment, he hesitated, trembled,
became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked toward
Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair- his teeth chattered,
and his eyes were starting from their sockets. "Proceed!" he at length
said hoarsely to Bedloe.
"For many minutes," continued the latter, "my sole sentiment- my
sole feeling- was that of darkness and nonentity, with the
consciousness of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent and
sudden shock through my soul, as if of electricity. With it came the
sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I felt- not saw. In an
instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no
visible, audible, or palpable presence. The crowd had departed. The
tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative repose. Beneath me
lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple, the whole head greatly
swollen and disfigured. But all these things I felt- not saw. I took
interest in nothing. Even the corpse seemed a matter in which I had no
concern. Volition I had none, but appeared to be impelled into motion,
and flitted buoyantly out of the city, retracing the circuitous path
by which I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the
ravine in the mountains at which I had encountered the hyena, I
again experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery, the sense of
weight, of volition, of substance, returned. I became my original
self, and bent my steps eagerly homeward- but the past had not lost
the vividness of the real- and not now, even for an instant, can I
compel my understanding to regard it as a dream."
"Nor was it," said Templeton, with an air of deep solemnity, "yet it
would be difficult to say how otherwise it should be termed. Let us
suppose only, that the soul of the man of to-day is upon the verge
of some stupendous psychal discoveries. Let us content ourselves
with this supposition. For the rest I have some explanation to make.
Here is a watercolor drawing, which I should have shown you before,
but which an unaccountable sentiment of horror has hitherto
prevented me from showing."