CHAPTER XII

PEACOCK'S FEATHERS--THE SKELETON HAND AT MONTE CARLO

A sea voyage once provided me with a wonderfully lucky experience, inasmuch as it saved me from an extremely bad accident.

I was returning quite alone from the East in a ship crammed full of women and children, most of them soldiers' wives and families going home to escape the hot weather. Many of them were attended by ayahs.

Two days out we ran into a raging storm, and everything was battened down. Owing to the weather, and the excessive crowding, the conditions below soon became very unpleasant, and I asked the captain if I might take possession of the ladies' summer drawing-room on the upper deck and close to the bridge. Seeing that it would not be used by any one else for some time to come he kindly agreed, and I at once settled myself in my eyrie with a few books, and prepared for some days of solitude.

But as the storm did not abate the suffering women and children below claimed my attention. They were confined in an atmosphere which was appalling, they were all terribly ill and utterly helpless. The mothers were unable to attend to their children, most of whom were infants, and the ayahs suffered horribly. Having no cabins they lay groaning on the floors of the corridors, drenched with water as the ship was awash from stem to stern, and tossed hither and thither as she rolled heavily.

It was never easy to descend from my perch aloft, but the sufferers had to be aided, and day after day I never knew a dry moment till I lay down at night. So far the summer drawing-room remained fairly water-tight in spite of being swept continually by heavy seas, but the noise of the elements was absolutely deafening, and when the captain called upon me we had to shout in each other's ears.

With his connivance I got a shelter rigged up on what appeared to be the only dry spot on board. It was about twelve feet square and walled in with sailcloth, and there the sailors helped to carry a number of tiny children. They were to remain there during the best hours of the day, until their mothers and nurses were capable of attending to them once more.

I took charge at first and found my task no light one. The babies did not seem to appreciate my blandishments. They cried persistently, but luckily their voices were drowned in the roaring of the wind.

At last a cabin boy chanced to look in, and at once sized up the situation. He signaled to me that he knew of something that would ease the tension and then he disappeared. In five minutes he was back brandishing a large bunch of peacock's feathers. These he shook in the face of each infant in turn, at the same time making the most hideous grimaces at them. It was an anxious moment for me, but luckily the effect was electrical. The babies suddenly forgot to yell, they stiffly maintained their equilibrium and stared in a sort of indignant amazement. Then, gradually, as the boy kept going round the circle repeating the process, smiles and dimples began to appear, and in five minutes more the whole crêche was laughing.

I applied for permission to annex that boy; he was indeed a treasure, and the joy in the peacock's feathers never palled. His gutta-percha face had an infinite variety of expression, which he could instantly turn on to suit all occasions. It was a fascinating sight to see him going round the group feeding each baby out of the same bottle, one of the old-fashioned horrors with a long indiarubber tube and teat. Those infants who had contemptuously rejected all my offers of nourishment now sat expectantly agape waiting their turn. The scene always reminded me of the artificial feeding of fowls, by the man who goes round the pens squirting liquid down each gaping throat.

When we landed at Marseilles there was a wonderful parting between the babies and the cabin boy. They clung to him to the last, and howled dismally when they were carried off by their haggard mothers.

One night, during the height of the storm I was asleep on the fixed red velvet seat running round the walls of the summer drawing-room. I lay just under a porthole, to which was attached a rope. The other end of the rope was tied round my arm to prevent my being thrown to the floor by the rolling of the ship.

At five o'clock in the morning I was suddenly awakened by hearing my husband's voice shouting in my ear. (My husband not being on board, but in our home in the North of Scotland.)

"Sit up! Sit up!" shouted his voice commandingly.

Considerably startled I threw myself into a sitting position, and as I did so a gigantic wave shattered the porthole, and the heavy fragments of glass fell on to the pillow where a second before my face had lain.

Of course, the water poured in and over me in volumes, and stopped my wrist watch at five a. m., but I had got used to salt water, and in a few minutes the weary captain had waded in, and was disentangling me from my rope and congratulating me on my lucky escape.

I told him how it was that I had escaped, and he was not in the least skeptical. On the contrary, he said that he had known some curious things happen in his time, for which there was no accounting; but he always kept a black cat on board.

Had the safety of his ship not claimed his whole attention I believe he would have told me some of his experiences, but when, at last, the weather abated he was too much in need of rest to be bothered by any one.

My husband had no knowledge of the service he had rendered me. At five a. m. that morning he was asleep at home, and had no premonition of danger, or any recollection on waking of the rôle his astral counterpart had undoubtedly played.

What is this astral counterpart of man? His soul and spirit dwells in a shroud of flesh, and the feat of getting out of that shroud of flesh at will is the aim of all occultists. It is to the astral world they go, soul and spirit encased in the astral sheath we term the astral body.

During sleep, or in trance, when the normal physical senses are in abeyance, when the body is unconscious in sleep, the mind continues to act in the realm corresponding to the suggestions given when awake. The world at large is open to the highly developed man, and he will sometimes bring back from his astral plane expeditions memories of what he has seen and heard.

In deep slumber the physical body in healthful repose remains where it has lain down to rest, but the man's higher principles, the astral body encasing the soul and spirit, is invariably withdrawn, and in underdeveloped persons hovers in the immediate neighborhood. In such cases the higher principles, the astral body, soul and spirit of St. Paul's Gospel, are not sufficiently developed to roam, and remain near the physical body in a brooding sleep. All cultured persons in the present day have their astral senses fairly well developed, and have the power during sleep to go where they will, but as yet few have the power to retain the memory of it when returning to the body.

In some cases the astral man during sleep is specially attracted to some one point, and he invariably travels towards it; in other cases he will drift aimlessly about on the astral currents, meeting with experience of all sorts and with people in a similar condition whom he knows. Is there anything very extraordinary in all this, and is not the condition of deep unconscious sleep a demonstration in itself that the physical consciousness has departed elsewhere? As it is no longer functioning on the Physical plane clearly it has found another realm in which it can temporarily exercise its activities.

My husband once had a rather interesting experience of his own, on the Astral plane. He was in bed and asleep on the Physical plane, and he believes that the time must have been between eleven p. m. and twelve a.