THE EQUINOX
I had now almost come to the conclusion that I was
absolutely unsusceptible of the hasheesh influence. Without
any expectation that this last experiment would be more
successful than the former ones, and indeed with no realisa-
tion of the manner in which the drug affected those who did
make the experiment successfully, I went to pass the evening
at the house of an intimate friend. In music and conversation
the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding
me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and
as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared. I was provoked
to think that this trial was as fruitless as its predecessors.
Ha! what means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some
unimagined vital force, shoots without warning through my
entire frame, leaping to my fingers’ ends, piercing my brain,
startling me till I almost spring from my chair.
I could not doubt it. I was in the power of the hasheesh
influence. My first emotion was one of uncontrollable terror—
a sense of getting something which I had not bargained for.
That moment I would have given all I had or hoped to have
to be as I was three hours before.
No pain anywhere—not a twinge in any fibre—yet a cloud
of unutterable strangeness was settling upon me, and wrapping
me impenetrably in from all that was natural or familiar.
As I heard once more the alien and unreal tones of my
own voice, I became convinced that it was some one else who
spoke, and in another world. I sat and listened; still the
voice kept speaking. Now for the first time I experienced
that vast change which hasheesh makes in all measurements
of time. The first word of the reply occupied a period suffi-
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