I seemed to see a room, or to be in a room about which I only noticed
that the floor was paved with mosaic in a pattern mostly red and white,
that there were no pictures on the walls and no fireplace, no sashes or
indeed panes in the window, and the moon was shining in very bright.
There was a table and a chest. Then I saw an old man, rather badly
shaved and bald, in a Roman dress, white for the most part, with a
purple stripe somewhere, and sandals. He looked by no means a wicked or
designing old man. I was glad of that. He opened the chest, took out my
box, and placed it carefully on the table in the moonlight. Then he went
to a part of the room I could not see, and I heard a sound of water
being poured into a metal basin, and he came into sight again, wiping
his hands on a white towel. He opened the box, took out a little silver
spoon and one of the jars, took off the lid and dipped the spoon in the
jar and touched first his right eye and then his left with it. Then he
put the jar and the spoon back, laid the lid on the box and put it back
in the chest. After that he went to the window and stood there looking
out, and seemed to be very much amused with what he saw. That was all.
"Hints for me," I remember thinking. "Perhaps it will be best not to
touch the box before the moon is up to-night, and always with washed
hands." I suppose I woke up immediately, for it was all very fresh in my
mind when I did.
It was something of a disappointment to have to put off my experiments
till the night came round. But it was all for the best, for letters came
by the post which I had to attend to: in fact, I was obliged to go to
the town a little way off to see someone and to send telegrams and so
on. I was a little doubtful about the seeing things underground, but I
soon found that unless I--so to say--turned on the tap, and specially
wished and tried to use the power, it did not interfere with my ordinary
seeing. When I did, it seemed to come forward from the back of my eyes,
and was stronger than the day before. I could see rabbits in their
burrows and followed the roots of one oak-tree very deep down. Once it
threatened to be awkward, when I stooped to pick up a silver coin in the
street, and grazed my knuckle against a paving stone, under which, of
course, it was.
So much for that. By the way, I had taken a look at the box after
breakfast, I found (not very much to my surprise) that the lid was as
tight on it as when I found it first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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