I hesitate to tell what followed. But as I am trying to record the sensations experienced at the time of receiving a head wound, I will describe the next experience simply, and leave the reader to form his own conclusions.
I was blind then, as I am now; but the blackness which was then before me underwent a change. A voice from somewhere behind me said: "This is death; will you come?"
Then gradually the blackness became more intense. A curtain seemed to be slowly falling; there was space; there was darkness, blacker than my blindness; everything was past. There was a peacefulness, a nothingness; but a happiness indescribable.
I seemed for a moment somewhere in the emptiness looking down at my body, lying in the shell-hole, bleeding from the temple. I was dead! and that was my body; but I was happy.
But the voice I had heard seemed to be waiting for an answer. I seemed to exert myself by a frantic effort, like one in a dream who is trying to awaken.
I said: "No, not now; I won't die." Then the curtain slowly lifted; my body moved and I was moving it. I was alive!
There, my readers, I have told you, and I have hesitated to tell it before. More than that, I will tell you that I was not unconscious; neither did I lose consciousness until several minutes later, and then unconsciousness was quite different.
I have told you how clear was my brain the moment I was hit, and I tell you also that after the sensation I have just related, my brain was equally clear, as I will show you, until I became unconscious.
Call it a hallucination, a trick of the brain, or what you will. I make no attempt to influence you; I merely record the incident—but my own belief I will keep to myself.
Whatever it was, I no longer feel there is any mystery about death. Nor do I dread it.