The lock was quite crowded with boats when we capsized. I went down
backwards for some few feet before I started to swim, then I came
spluttering upwards towards the light; but, instead of reaching the
surface, I hit my head against the keel of a boat and went down again.
I struck out almost at once and came up, but before I reached the
surface my head crashed against a boat for the second time, and I
went right to the bottom. I was confused and thoroughly frightened.
I was desperately in need of air, and knew that if I hit a boat for
the third time I should never see the surface again. Drowning is a
horrible death, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary.
My past life never occurred to my mind, but I thought of many trivial
things that I might not do or see again if I were drowned. I swam up
in a slanting direction, hoping to avoid the boat that I had struck.
Suddenly I saw all the boats in the lock quite clearly just above me,
and every one of their curved varnished planks and the scratches and
chips upon their keels. I saw several gaps among the boats where I
might have swam up to the surface, but it did not seem worthwhile to
try and get there, and I had forgotten why I wanted to. Then all the
people leaned over the sides of their boats: I saw the light flannel
suits of the men and the coloured flowers in the women’s hats, and
I noticed details of their dresses quite distinctly. Everybody in
the boats was looking down at me; then they all said to one another,
‘We must leave him now,’ and they and the boats went away; and there
was nothing above me but the river and the sky, and on either side
of me were the green weeds that grew in the mud, for I had somehow
sunk back to the bottom again. The river as it flowed by murmured not
unpleasantly in my ears, and the rushes seemed to be whispering quite
softly among themselves. Presently the murmuring of the river took the
form of words, and I heard it say, ‘We must go on to the sea; we must
leave him now.’
Then the river went away, and both its banks; and the rushes whispered,
‘Yes, we must leave him now.’ And they too departed, and I was left
in a great emptiness staring up at the blue sky. Then the great sky
bent over me, and spoke quite softly like a kindly nurse soothing some
little foolish child, and the sky said, ‘Goodbye. All will be well.
Goodbye.’ And I was sorry to lose the blue sky, but the sky went away.
Then I was alone, with nothing round about me; I could see no light,
but it was not dark—there was just absolutely nothing, above me and
below me and on every side. I thought that perhaps I was dead, and
that this might be eternity; when suddenly some great southern hills
rose up all round about me, and I was lying on the warm, grassy slope
of a valley in England. It was a valley that I had known well when I
was young, but I had not seen it now for many years. Beside me stood
the tall flower of the mint; I saw the sweet-smelling thyme flower and
one or two wild strawberries. There came up to me from fields below
me the beautiful smell of hay, and there was a break in the voice
of the cuckoo. There was a feeling of summer and of evening and of
lateness and of Sabbath in the air; the sky was calm and full of a
strange colour, and the sun was low; the bells in the church in the
village were all a-ring, and the chimes went wandering with echoes up
the valley towards the sun, and whenever the echoes died a new chime
was born. And all the people of the village walked up a stone-paved
path under a black oak porch and went into the church, and the chimes
stopped and the people of the village began to sing, and the level
sunlight shone on the white tombstones that stood all round the church.
Then there was a stillness in the village, and shouts and laughter came
up from the valley no more, only the occasional sound of the organ and
of song. And the blue butterflies, those that love the chalk, came and
perched themselves on the tall grasses, five or six sometimes on a
single piece of grass, and they closed their wings and slept, and the
grass bent a little beneath them. And from the woods along the tops
of the hills the rabbits came hopping out and nibbled the grass, and
hopped a little further and nibbled again, and the large daisies closed
their petals up and the birds began to sing.
Then the hills spoke, all the great chalk hills that I loved, and with
a deep and solemn voice they said, ‘We have come to you to say Goodbye.’
Then they all went away, and there was nothing again all round about
me upon every side. I looked everywhere for something on which to rest
the eye. Nothing. Suddenly a low grey sky swept over me and a moist air
met my face; a great plain rushed up to me from the edge of the clouds;
on two sides it touched the sky, and on two sides between it and the
clouds a line of low hills lay. One line of hills brooded grey in the
distance, the other stood a patchwork of little square green fields,
with a few white cottages about it. The plain was an archipelago of
a million islands each about a yard square or less, and everyone of
them was red with heather. I was back on the Bog of Allen again after
many years, and it was just the same as ever, though I had heard that
they were draining it. I was with an old friend whom I was glad to see
again, for they had told me that he died some years ago. He seemed
strangely young, but what surprised me most was that he stood upon a
piece of bright green moss which I had always learned to think would
never bear. I was glad, too, to see the old bog again, and all the
lovely things that grew there—the scarlet mosses and the green mosses
and the firm and friendly heather, and the deep silent water. I saw a
little stream that wandered vaguely through the bog, and little white
shells down in the clear depths of it; I saw, a little way off, one of
the great pools where no islands are, with rushes round its borders,
where the duck love to come. I looked long at that untroubled world
of heather, and then I looked at the white cottages on the hill, and
saw the grey smoke curling from their chimneys and knew that they
burned turf there, and longed for the smell of burning turf again.
And far away there arose and came nearer the weird cry of wild and
happy voices, and a flock of geese appeared that was coming from the
northward. Then their cries blended into one great voice of exultation,
the voice of freedom, the voice of Ireland, the voice of the Waste;
and the voice said ‘Goodbye to you. Goodbye!’ and passed away into the
distance; and as it passed, the tame geese on the farms cried out to
their brothers up above them that they were free. Then the hills went
away, and the bog and the sky went with them, and I was alone again, as
lost souls are alone.
Then there grew up beside me the red brick buildings of my first school
and the chapel that adjoined it. The fields a little way off were full
of boys in white flannels playing cricket. On the asphalt playing
ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon, Achilles, and
Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but Hector stepped down
out of a ground-floor window, and in the schoolroom were all Priam’s
sons and the Achæans and fair Helen; and a little farther away the
Ten Thousand drifted across the playground, going up into the heart
of Persia to place Cyrus on his brother’s throne. And the boys that I
knew called to me from the fields, and said ‘Goodbye,’ and they and the
fields went away; and the Ten Thousand said ‘Goodbye,’ each file as
they passed me marching swiftly, and they too disappeared. And Hector
and Agamemnon said ‘Goodbye,’ and the host of the Argives and of the
Achæans; and they all went away and the old school with them, and I was
alone again.
The next scene that filled the emptiness was rather dim: I was being
led by my nurse along a little footpath over a common in Surrey. She
was quite young. Close by a band of gypsies had lit their fire, near
them their romantic caravan stood unhorsed, and the horse cropped
grass beside it. It was evening, and the gypsies muttered round their
fire in a tongue unknown and strange. Then they all said in English,
‘Goodbye’. And the evening and the common and the campfire went away.
And instead of this a white highway with darkness and stars below it
that led into darkness and stars, but at the near end of the road were
common fields and gardens, and there I stood close to a large number of
people, men and women. And I saw a man walking alone down the road away
from me towards the darkness and the stars, and all the people called
him by his name, and the man would not hear them, but walked on down
the road, and the people went on calling him by his name. But I became
irritated with the man because he would not stop or turn round when so
many people called him by his name, and it was a very strange name. And
I became weary of hearing the strange name so very often repeated, so
that I made a great effort to call him, that he might listen and that
the people might stop repeating this strange name. And with the effort
I opened my eyes wide, and the name that the people called was my own
name, and I lay on the river’s bank with men and women bending over me,
and my hair was wet.