I Roused Myself And Drew
Aside The Silk That Covered My Eyes, And Plunged My Bare Face Into
The Light.
Then at least I was well enough wakened, but still
those old Marlen bells rung on, not ringing for joy, but properly,
prosily, steadily, merrily ringing "for church." After a while the
sound died away slowly.
It happened that neither I nor any of my
party had a watch by which to measure the exact time of its
lasting, but it seemed to me that about ten minutes had passed
before the bells ceased. I attributed the effect to the great heat
of the sun, the perfect dryness of the clear air through which I
moved, and the deep stillness of all around me. It seemed to me
that these causes, by occasioning a great tension, and consequent
susceptibility, of the hearing organs had rendered them liable to
tingle under the passing touch of some mere memory that must have
swept across my brain in a moment of sleep. Since my return to
England it has been told me that like sounds have been heard at
sea, and that the sailor becalmed under a vertical sun in the midst
of the wide ocean has listened in trembling wonder to the chime of
his own village bells.
At this time I kept a poor shabby pretence of a journal, which just
enabled me to know the day of the month and the week according to
the European calendar, and when in my tent at night I got out my
pocket-book I found that the day was Sunday, and roughly allowing
for the difference of time in this longitude, I concluded that at
the moment of my hearing that strange peal the church-going bells
of Marlen must have been actually calling the prim congregation of
the parish to morning prayer.
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