Intermere

I seemed to be passing through a vague twilight of sentient existence. Thought was rudimentary with me, if, indeed, there were any thoughts. They were mere sensations, perhaps, or impressions imperfectly shaped, but I remember them now as being so delightful, that I prayed, in a feeble way, that I might never be awakened from them. And then gradually the senses of sight, hearing, and full physical and mental existence returned to me.

At length I was able to determine that I lay on something like a hammock on the deck of a smoothly gliding vessel. Turning my head first to the right and then to the left, I imagined that I was indeed in Paradise, only the reality before me was so infinitely more beautiful than the most vivid poetic descriptions I had ever read of the longed for heaven of endless peace and happiness. But this could not be the Paradise of the disembodied souls, for I realized I was there in all my physical personal being.

I was sailing through a smooth, shimmering sea, thickly studded with matchlessly beautiful islands. They lay in charming profusion and picturesque irregularity of contour on the right and the left, each a distinct type of beauty and perfection. I could make out houses and gardens and farms and people on each of them.

Looking to the right I saw what appeared to be a mainland with majestic and softly modulated mountains and broad valleys, running from the distance down to the sands of the seashore. Above the mountains shone the unobscured sun, but not the burning orb I had known of old in the lower latitudes. It kissed me with a tenderness that was entrancing, filling my weakened frame with new life.

The breezes toyed with my tangled and unkempt locks, fanned my brow and whispered such things to me as did the zephyrs when I stood upon the threshold of guileless boyhood.

Finally I was able to frame a consecutive thought, in the interrogative form, and it was this:

"Where am I? Is this the Heaven my mother taught me to seek?"

I had as yet seen no one aboard the ship, or whatever it was, although I had heard the hum of what seemed to be conversation from some point beyond the line of vision. Again I silently repeated my mental question.

As if in response to my unuttered query, a being, or a man, of striking and pleasing appearance came to my side and laying his hand softly on my forehead, addressed me in a tongue at once familiar but wholly unknown, as paradoxical as that may sound.

I remained silent and he again addressed me.

I did not feel disconcerted or awed by his appearance and said: "I speak French and German imperfectly; English with some fluency."

His rejoinder was in English: "You speak English, but are not an Englishman except by partial descent. You are an American. Not a native of the eastern portion of the continent, but from west of the range of mountains which separate the Atlantic seaboard from the great central valley of the continent. You are from the tributary Ohio valley, and are, therefore, better fitted to comprehend what you will be permitted to see and hear, than the average habitant of the eastern seashore, especially of its great cities."

You can possibly imagine, in a faint way, my unbounded surprise to be thus addressed by one who was more than a stranger to me.

"You asked yourself two questions. I will answer the first: You are in Intermere."

"And where is Intermere?"

"It lies at your feet and expands on every hand about you. Let that suffice.

"No, this is not the Heaven to which your mother taught you to aspire. It is a part of your own planet, inhabited by beings sprung from the same parent stock as yourself, but differing from all other nations and peoples; a people who are many steps nearer to the higher and better life, and is, by comparison, the Paradise or Eden that masks the gateway of the true Heaven, in a sphere beyond in the great Universe."

He motioned to some one, and two persons appeared with refreshments.

"Partake," he said, "and renew your exhausted physical and mental powers."

The proffered refreshments and cordials seemed to be the acme of the gustatorial dreams of my former life: the suggestion of other things, yet unlike them. After I had partaken, a new life thrilled every nerve and fibre of my physical being and pulsated through every mental faculty.

I arose from my recumbent position and was conducted forward upon the softly carpeted deck and presented to a score of others who received me with every token of marked respect, unkempt and bedraggled as I was. They were men of unusual physique, a composite of the highest types of the human race I had ever seen or read of. Each possessed a distinctive mien and personality, as individuals, yet presenting a harmonious whole, taken collectively.

Xamas, as I afterward learned to know him, when I saw him presiding as First Citizen over this wonderful people, said to his fellows:

"This is Giles Henry Anderton, a citizen of the interior of the great Republic of North America. I have fathomed him and know that he is worthy our respect and considerate treatment. He has dreamed longingly of the things whereof we know, and which he has never even recognized as a possibility. It will be our mission to show him the grand possibilities of human life before we restore him to his kindred and friends.

"Not understanding that Nature had lain all treasures worth possessing in lavish profusion at his feet in his own land, and guided by merely commercial instincts, he sought for paltry gold in distant lands and seas, and, escaping the vortex of death, has been placed in our hands for some great purpose. He will be addressed in the English tongue until it is determined whether he is to be admitted to ours."

This was spoken in a language absolutely unknown to me, and not a word of which I was capable of framing, and yet I understood it as fully as though spoken in English. So great was my amazement that he should know my nativity, my name, my hopes, my ambitions and my purposes, I could scarcely reply to the salutations extended to me.

"Do not be surprised," said Xamas, reading my inmost thoughts, "at what I say, nor need you ask how I became possessed of your history. All that will be made plain to you hereafter."

Turning to one who stood near, he said: "Conduct Mr. Anderton to my apartments and see that he has proper 'tendance and is supplied with suitable clothing."

With that I was conducted below to a charming suite of apartments lying amidships, bathed, was massaged and shaven by an attendant, as lofty of mien as Xamas himself, and furnished with clothing suitable to the company with which I was to mingle, not more unlike the workmanship of my American tailor than his would be unlike the handiwork of his French, English or German fellow-craftsmen, and yet so unlike all of them as to fit perfectly into the ensemble of the habiliments of my new friends.

The ship, or Merocar, as I subsequently learned was its general designation, was a marvellous affair, unlike any water craft I had ever seen. Its length was fully one hundred and fifty feet, and its greatest breadth thirty, gently sloping both to stem and stern, where it rounded in perfect curves. The upper, or proper deck, extended over all. The lower deck was a succession of suites and apartments, richly but artistically furnished, opening from either side into a wide and roomy aisle. All the work was so light, both the woods, and the metals, that it seemed fragile and unsafe, but its great strength was shown by the fact that none of its parts yielded to the weight or pressure upon it.

There was not a mast, a spar nor a sail on board. The light and richly wrought hammocks swung on lithe and polished frames, apparently intended to sustain the weight of fifty pounds, yet capable of sustaining five or ten times as much. They were unprotected by awnings. Sunlight rather than shade was apparently the desideratum.

In some unaccountable way the long and lithe Merocar was propelled at any desired rate of speed, and was turned, as on a pivot, at the will of the man who acted as captain, pilot and engineer. There was no steam, no furnace belching black volumes of smoke, no whirr of machinery, no strain or creaking as the craft shot, sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, through the rippling water. Even motion was not perceptible to the physical senses.