Love's Eternal Altar Now of all these happenings I said very little to Bastin and Bickley.The former would not have understood them, and the latter attributed what I did tell him to mental delusions following on my illness.To Yva I did speak about them, however, imploring her to explain their origin and to tell me whether or not they were but visions of the night.
She listened to me, as I thought not without anxiety, from which I gathered that she too feared for my mind.It was not so, however, for she said:
"I am glad, O Humphrey, that your journeyings are done, since such things are not without danger.He who travels far out of the body may chance to return there no more.""But were they journeyings, or dreams?" I asked.
She evaded a direct answer.
"I cannot say.My father has great powers.I do not know them all.It is possible that they were neither journeyings nor dreams.Mayhap he used you as the sorcerers in the old days used the magic glass, and after he had put his spell upon you, read in your mind that which passes elsewhere."I understood her to refer to what we call clairvoyance, when the person entranced reveals secret or distant things to the entrancer.This is a more or less established phenomenon and much less marvelous than the actual transportation of the spiritual self through space.Only I never knew of an instance in which the seer, on awaking, remembered the things that he had seen, as in my case.There, however, the matter rested, or rests, for I could extract nothing more from Yva, who appeared to me to have her orders on the point.
Nor did Oro ever talk of what I had seemed to see in his company, although he continued from time to time to visit me at night.But now our conversation was of other matters.As Bastin had discovered, by some extraordinary gift he had soon learned how to read the English language, although he never spoke a single word in that tongue.Among our reference books that we brought from the yacht, was a thin paper edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which he borrowed when he discovered that it contained compressed information about the various countries of the world, also concerning almost every other matter.My belief is that within a month or so that marvelous old man not only read this stupendous work from end to end, but that he remembered everything of interest which it contained.At least, he would appear and show the fullest acquaintance with certain subjects or places, seeking further light from me concerning them, which very often I was quite unable to give him.
An accident, as it chanced, whereof I need not set out the details, caused me to discover that his remarkable knowledge was limited.Thus, at one period, he knew little about any modern topic which began with a letter later in the alphabet than, let us say, C.A few days afterwards he was acquainted with those up to F, or G; and so on till he reached Z, when he appeared to me to know everything, and returned the book.Now, indeed, he was a monument of learning, very ancient and very new, and with some Encyclopedia-garnered facts or deductions of what had happened between.
Moreover, he took to astronomical research, for more than once we saw him standing on the rock at night studying the heavens.On one of these occasions, when he had the two metal plates, of which I have spoken, in his hands, I ventured to approach and ask what he did.He replied that he was checking his calculations that he found to be quite correct, an exact period of two hundred and fifty thousand years having gone by since he laid himself down to sleep.Then, by aid of the plates, he pointed out to me certain alterations that had happened during that period in the positions of some of the stars.
For instance, he showed me one which, by help of my glasses, Irecognised as Sirius, and remarked that two hundred and fifty thousand years ago it was further away and much smaller.Now it was precisely in the place and of the size which he had predicted, and he pointed to it on his prophetic map.Again he indicated a star that the night-glass told me was Capella, which, I suppose, is one of the most brilliant stars in the sky, and showed me that on the map he had made two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, it did not exist, as then it was too far north to appear thereon.Still, he observed, the passage of this vast period of time had produced but little effect upon the face of the heavens.To the human eye the majority of the stars had not moved so very far.