I, too, bow to the gods, to all gods, for I do believe in all gods, else how came all gods to be?”
She flung herself so that my hungry arms were empty of her, and we stood apart and listened to the uproar of the street as Jesus and the soldiers emerged and started on their way.
And my heart was sore in that so great a woman could be so foolish. She would save God.
She would make herself greater than God.
“You do not love me,” she said slowly, and slowly grew in her eyes a promise of herself too deep and wide for any words.
“I love you beyond your understanding, it seems,” was my reply. “I am proud to love you, for I know I am worthy to love you and am worth all love you may give me.
But Rome is my foster-mother, and were I untrue to her, of little pride, of little worth would be my love for you.”
The uproar that followed about Jesus and the soldiers died away along the street.
And when there was no further sound of it Miriam turned to go, with neither word nor look for me.
I knew one last rush of mad hunger for her.
I sprang and seized her.
I would horse her and ride away with her and my men into Syria away from this cursed city of folly.
She struggled.
I crushed her.
She struck me on the face, and I continued to hold and crush her, for the blows were sweet.
And there she ceased to struggle.
She became cold and motionless, so that I knew there was no woman’s love that my arms girdled.
For me she was dead.
Slowly I let go of her.
Slowly she stepped back.
As if she did not see me she turned and went away across the quiet room, and without looking back passed through the hangings and was gone. * * * * *
I, Ragnar Lodbrog, never came to read nor write.
But in my days I have listened to great talk.
As I see it now, I never learned great talk, such as that of the Jews, learned in their law, nor such as that of the Romans, learned in their philosophy and in the philosophy of the Greeks.
Yet have I talked in simplicity and straightness, as a man may well talk who has lived life from the ships of Tostig Lodbrog and the roof of Brunanbuhr across the world to Jerusalem and back again.
And straight talk and simple I gave Sulpicius Quirinius, when I went away into Syria to report to him of the various matters that had been at issue in Jerusalem.
CHAPTER XVIII
Suspended animation is nothing new, not alone in the vegetable world and in the lower forms of animal life, but in the highly evolved, complex organism of man himself.
A cataleptic trance is a cataleptic trance, no matter how induced.
From time immemorial the fakir of India has been able voluntarily to induce such states in himself.
It is an old trick of the fakirs to have themselves buried alive.
Other men, in similar trances, have misled the physicians, who pronounced them dead and gave the orders that put them alive under the ground.
As my jacket experiences in San Quentin continued I dwelt not a little on this problem of suspended animation.
I remembered having read that the far northern Siberian peasants made a practice of hibernating through the long winters just as bears and other wild animals do.
Some scientist studied these peasants and found that during these periods of the “long sleep” respiration and digestion practically ceased, and that the heart was at so low tension as to defy detection by ordinary layman’s examination.
In such a trance the bodily processes are so near to absolute suspension that the air and food consumed are practically negligible.
On this reasoning, partly, was based my defiance of Warden Atherton and Doctor Jackson.
It was thus that I dared challenge them to give me a hundred days in the jacket.
And they did not dare accept my challenge.
Nevertheless I did manage to do without water, as well as food, during my ten-days’ bouts.
I found it an intolerable nuisance, in the deeps of dream across space and time, to be haled back to the sordid present by a despicable prison doctor pressing water to my lips.
So I warned Doctor Jackson, first, that I intended doing without water while in the jacket; and next, that I would resist any efforts to compel me to drink.
Of course we had our little struggle; but after several attempts Doctor Jackson gave it up.
Thereafter the space occupied in Darrell Standing’s life by a jacket-bout was scarcely more than a few ticks of the clock.
Immediately I was laced I devoted myself to inducing the little death.
From practice it became simple and easy.
I suspended animation and consciousness so quickly that I escaped the really terrible suffering consequent upon suspending circulation.
Most quickly came the dark.
And the next I, Darrell Standing, knew was the light again, the faces bending over me as I was unlaced, and the knowledge that ten days had passed in the twinkling of an eye.
But oh, the wonder and the glory of those ten days spent by me elsewhere!