Tempo:
dream which has all the authentic trimmings of etheric travel.
Adrian Wise, in 1919, just gazetted as a youth of nineteen to a Dogra regiment still in Palestine, found himself in charge of a company of Sikhs in a dreary little fort on the North-West Frontier.
Exhausted, by weeks with a shade temperature touching 1300, he had fallen asleep under his mosquito-net on the roof of the Fort, when he seemed to float away from his bed to a point of vantage somewhere in mid-air, from which he could see by the light of the setting moon, the whole of the Fort laid out like a plan under the clear starlit night.
Then, of a sudden, he caught sight of a Pathan sniper crawling along the adjoining Rest-house roof, dragging his jezail after him, and realized at once that the sniper's objective was his own abandoned body asleep under the mosquito-net.
Unable to warn the guard, he watched the sniper's movement in an agony of apprehension, and then saw one of the sleeping Sepoys rise slowly as if to get himself a drink, but instead, pick up his bugle, and blow a call, a quick rhythmical succession of eight high Gs in 2-4 time. The whole Fort sprang to life, two shots rang out, the bugler fell dead, shot through the head, and the sniper succumbed to a sentry's rifle fired through a loophole.
Now this incident of the sniper and the bugler didn't happen. Wise regained his waking consciousness under the mosquito-net, could see no sign of the dead bugler, but the pressure of that strange "dream forced him to believe in imminent danger, and, not daring to rise and thus precipitate the dreaded shot, he rolled out of his bed on the far side, and crawled to the shelter of a bastion. He was barely clear when the shot was fired, and the bullet, passing through his pillow, hit the roof behind him.
Adrian Wise, in 1919, just gazetted as a youth of nineteen to a Dogra regiment still in Palestine, found himself in charge of a company of Sikhs in a dreary little fort on the North-West Frontier.
Exhausted, by weeks with a shade temperature touching 1300, he had fallen asleep under his mosquito-net on the roof of the Fort, when he seemed to float away from his bed to a point of vantage somewhere in mid-air, from which he could see by the light of the setting moon, the whole of the Fort laid out like a plan under the clear starlit night.
Then, of a sudden, he caught sight of a Pathan sniper crawling along the adjoining Rest-house roof, dragging his jezail after him, and realized at once that the sniper's objective was his own abandoned body asleep under the mosquito-net.
Unable to warn the guard, he watched the sniper's movement in an agony of apprehension, and then saw one of the sleeping Sepoys rise slowly as if to get himself a drink, but instead, pick up his bugle, and blow a call, a quick rhythmical succession of eight high Gs in 2-4 time. The whole Fort sprang to life, two shots rang out, the bugler fell dead, shot through the head, and the sniper succumbed to a sentry's rifle fired through a loophole.
Now this incident of the sniper and the bugler didn't happen. Wise regained his waking consciousness under the mosquito-net, could see no sign of the dead bugler, but the pressure of that strange "dream forced him to believe in imminent danger, and, not daring to rise and thus precipitate the dreaded shot, he rolled out of his bed on the far side, and crawled to the shelter of a bastion. He was barely clear when the shot was fired, and the bullet, passing through his pillow, hit the roof behind him.
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