The river was some 60 m. from the hut, and one had to go down a steep bank to reach the water. My throat was parched from the high fever, so I called Antonio, who was near me, to give me a glass of water. Antonio never budged, but called to white Filippe, some way off, to bring the water. Filippe called to the man X, repeating my order to him. The man X continued fishing without taking the slightest notice.
So that, exhausted as I was, I had to struggle down to the river myself, as those men, for whom I had almost died, reciprocated my sacrifice in so graceful a fashion.
I think that I might as well mention here a curious case of telepathy which occurred during those terrible days of starvation.
Naturally, when one has before one the prospect of leaving this world at any moment, and one is working under a severe mental strain, one generally thinks deeply of one's beloved parents and relatives. Thus my father, mother and sister were before me all the time in my imagination. Sometimes when I was half-dazed I could see them so vividly that I could almost believe they were so close that I could touch them. I never thought that I should see them again, in reality, although I never actually lost hope of doing so; but I was thinking incessantly of them, and of the anxiety I was causing them, as I had had no possible way of communicating with them for months and months.
There would be nothing extraordinary in that, but the amazing part of it all was that my parents and my sister—who had no idea whatever that I was exploring, as I always take the greatest care not to let them know—actually during that time of starvation saw me in their imagination lying unconscious in the forest, dying of hunger, swarming all over with ants and surrounded by crocodiles.
When I reached Rio de Janeiro in April of the following year I found there a number of letters which had been written to me by my parents and my sister during the month of September, in which they told me of those constant visions repeating themselves daily, especially between the dates of September 8th and September 24th. Those letters were written long before anybody knew that I had ever suffered from starvation in the forest. It is quite remarkable that, except the crocodiles—which, of course, were not to be found in the forest—they reproduced the conditions with wonderful faithfulness, the telepathic connection having in that case been established vividly at a distance of several thousand miles.
Colonel R. P. Brazil and his Charming Wife.
