Narrow Shaves D EATH, the destroyer of forms, often comes close,
to remind us of the continuing reality behind the world of appearancei, but he never takes us before the time appointed. Sometimes apparent miracles are accom- plished to keep us alive ; then finally we succumb to some trifle like a fit of sneezing. Personally, I think the miracles are due only to our partial apprehension of reality, and that if we knew more we would know that nothing happens by chance. Occasionally, during the actual progress of some disaster, I have found that my mind has slipped backwards and forwards with delightful speed and precision, so that I could see links previously invisible in a chain of events extending on both sides of the Present. For instance, in the course of a polo match, I once fell under a pony which put one hoof on my spine and the other on my arm. In this situation, all the incidents— extending back for years—which led, even although re appantly indirectly, to my balancing the greater part of a large animal between my right wrist and my one and only neck, passed in review before me. Not only that, but I was in no doubt at all which part of me would give way. I saw myself walking off the field with a broken arm and felt it being set. When the bone cracked, it seemed already ancient history although it could only have been a fifth of a second after the fall. My impression is that somewhere in space and time this little event had been shaping itself even before I went to India. The strangest, because the suddenest, time that the shadow of death has fallen across my path, was when I narrowly escaped being mangled, pressed, starched, glazed and converted into a dress shirt. This occurred at the Angora Palace Hotel. I was in my bedroom, with door locked so as not to be disturbed, writing an article for the Spectator. Outside the room there was a strip of pavement about two yards wide, with skylights to the hotel laundry two stories below. Access to this veranda (or whatever it can be called) can only be obtained by climbing out of the window, the sill of which is of the normal height—about up to a man's waist. I rose and went to the window to look at the view, As I tapped out my cigarette-holder on the sill the end came off and rolled away along the veranda. I vaulted out after it recovered it, took one step back to the window, and as I did so I felt myself sinking and sinking as one does in a nightmare. I had stepped on a skylight, and it had broken. For an instant .I had been falling towards the linen of the more elegant citizens of the Turkish capital. I grabbed the window-sill, of course, and pulled myself back with no bruise or scratch, except that the heel of my left shoe had been sliced elf, as if by a razor. • Hardly had I grasped the fact that I Might have been caught in those rollers and irresses rumbling beloW me, when the . housemaid began battering at my door, thinking I was committing suicide in some complicated and costly way. One more adventure I will give, out of many, because it also happened last year and may make others as careful as I now am on the road. It was a fine night in August and I was driving at thirty-two miles an houi along the Great West road. A motor-cyclist with pillion rider was coming fast towards me : I have- a distinct impression that his face looked anxious and ashy grey and that I saw the girl's very .white stockings and black pleated skirt, but in viev, of what happened next this may be a trick of memory. The road seemed clear, but a large limousine-crept up behind, flashed by like a streak, but no sooner had it passed than either one or both of its riders cried out in a terrible voice. My foot was already on the brake when pieces of metal came clanging across my front wheels. Then I heard the crashing of glass. For a moment I thought that in some strange way my own machine was falling to bits, but when I turned I saw a hideous thing : It lay on the road. Both it and the motor bicycle were twisted and torn beyond hope of assembly, having smashed and streaked themselves along the side of the oncoming car. The girl, fortunately, had been thrown dear, and lay moaning in a kind of dream, with both legs broken. There is more, obviously, in this picture than I care to paint. Only the necessary details have been given, to remind us all of how busily at work is the Principle of Change upon the summer roads of England. A dozen times a day some citizen is converted , . I was merely passing when it happened.* F. YEATS-BROWN.
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