A Strange Awakening

: The Chamber Of Life

My first sensation was one of sudden and intense cold--a chill that shot

through my body and engulfed it like a charge of electricity. For a

moment I was conscious of nothing else. Then I knew that I was sinking

in cold water, and that I was fighting instinctively against the need to

gasp and breathe fresh air. I kicked weakly and convulsively. I opened

my eyes, and squeezed them as the bright green water stung them. Then I
< r /> hung for an instant as if suspended over the depths, and began to rise.

It seemed hours before I shot up into the open air again, and was

drinking it deeply and thankfully into my tortured lungs. The sun

touched my head warmly like the hand of a benign god.



Floating gently, I lay there for a long while before I even looked about

me. There was a vague confusion in my head, as if I had just awakened

from a long sleep. Some memory seemed to be fading away, something I

could still feel but couldn't understand. Then it was gone, and I was

alone and empty, riding on the water.



I glanced about, puzzled. Only a few yards away rose the gray stone side

of the embankment, with its low parapet, and behind that the Drive.

There was no one in sight--not even a car--and the open windows of the

apartment houses across the Drive seemed very quiet. People slept behind

them.



It was only a little after dawn. The sun, blazing and tinted with pink,

had hardly risen from the horizon. The lake was still lined with dark

shadows behind glittering ridges of morning sunlight, and a cool breeze

played across my face, coming in from the east. Over the city, the sound

of a street car rumbling into motion, rising and dying away, was like

the crowing of a rooster in the country.



I shivered, and began to swim. A few strokes brought me to the

embankment, and I clambered up, almost freezing as I left the water. I

was fully clothed, but without a hat. Perhaps I had lost it in the lake.

I stood there, dripping and chill, and suddenly I realized that I had

just waked up in the water. I had no recollection of falling in, nor

even of being there. I could remember nothing of the previous night.



A glance along the Drive told me where I was, at the corner of

Fifty-third street. My apartment was only a few blocks away. Had I been

walking in my sleep? My mind was a blank, with turbulent, dim

impressions moving confusedly under the surface.



* * * * *



Trembling in the chill air, I started up the Drive. I must go home and

change at once. Something came back to me--a memory of talking to some

friends at the Club. But was that last night? Or months ago? It was as

though I had slept for months. We had had a few drinks--could I have

been drunk, and fallen into the lake on my way home? But I never took

more than two or three drinks. Something had happened.



Then I remembered the stranger. We had all been sitting about the

lounge, talking of something. What had we been discussing? Franklin had

mentioned Einstein's new theory--we had played with that for a while,

none of us with the least idea what it was about. Then the conversation

had shifted slowly from one topic to another, all having to do with

scientific discoveries.



Somewhere in the midst of it, Barclay had come in. He brought with him a

guest--a straight, fine-looking man with a military carriage, about

fifty years old. Barclay had introduced him as Mr. Melbourne. He spoke

with a slight southern accent.



In some way Melbourne and I gravitated into a corner. We went on with

the conversation while the others left it. They drifted into politics,

drawing together about the table where the whisky stood, leaving us

alone.



Melbourne had been a fascinating man to talk to. He discussed topics

ranging from theories of matter to the early Cretan culture, and related

them all to one dominant scientific thread. He spoke like a man of wide

knowledge and experience.... As I walked up the Drive, bits of his

conversation came disjointedly back to me with the clarity and

significance of sentences from Spengler.



An early-morning taxi went by slowly as I crossed the Drive to my

apartment. The driver stopped a moment, and looked at me in

astonishment.



"What's the matter, buddy," he said, "you look all wet. Fall in the

lake?" I smiled, embarrassed.



"Looks that way, doesn't it?" I answered.



"Can I take you anywhere?"



"No," I said, "I live here." He grinned, and started off again.



"Wish I'd been in on that party!" he called back, as he drove away.



I frowned, once more with that puzzled feeling, and went in.