Jack London. Before Adam -
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was lying on my back. In this position it seemed that I spent
many hours, watching the play of sunlight on the foliage and
the stirring of the leaves by the wind. Often the nest itself
moved back and forth when the wind was strong.
But always, while so lying in the nest, I was mastered as
of tremendous space beneath me. I never saw it, I never peered
over the edge of the nest to see; but I KNEW and feared that
space that lurked just beneath me and that ever threatened me
like a maw of some all-devouring monster.
This dream, in which I was quiescent and which was more
like a condition than an experience of action, I dreamed very
often in my early childhood. But suddenly, there would rush
into the very midst of it strange forms and ferocious
happenings, the thunder and crashing of storm, or unfamiliar
landscapes such as in my wake-a-day life I had never seen. The
result was confusion and nightmare. I could comprehend nothing
of it. There was no logic of sequence.
You see, I did not dream consecutively. One moment I was a
wee babe of the Younger World lying in my tree nest; the next
moment I was a grown man of the Younger World locked in combat
with the hideous Red-Eye; and the next moment I was creeping
carefully down to the water-hole in the heat of the day.
Events, years apart in their occurrence in the Younger World,
occurred with me within the space of several minutes, or
seconds.
It was all a jumble, but this jumble I shall not inflict
upon you. It was not until I was a young man and had dreamed
many thousand times, that everything straightened out and
became clear and plain. Then it was that I got the clew of
time, and was able to piece together events and actions in