Transcribed ,
Extract from
Captain Stormfield’s
Visit to Heaven
BY
Mark Twain
NEW YORK ANDLONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
Copyright, 1909, by Mark Twain Company
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
CHAPTER I
Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get alittle anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through spaceall that time, like a comet. Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course therewarn’t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, youknow, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of alasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for theHereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that wasgoing my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brushtogether. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because Isailed by them the same as if they were standing still. Anordinary comet don’t make more than about 200,000 miles aminute. Of course when I came across one of thatsort—like Encke’s and Halley’s comets, forinstance—it warn’t anything but just a flash and avanish, you see. You couldn’t rightly call it arace. It was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was atelegraph despatch. But after I got outside of ourastronomical system, I used to flush a comet occasionally thatwas something like. We haven’t got anysuch comets—ours don’t begin. One night I wasswinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim,and the wind in my favor—I judged I was going about amillion miles a minute—it might have been more, itcouldn’t have been less—when I flushed a mostuncommonly big one about three points off my starboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was bearing aboutnortheast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near mycourse that I wouldn’t throw away the chance; so I fell offa point, steadied my helm, and went for him. You shouldhave heard me whiz, and seen the electric fur fly! In abouta minute and a half I was fringed out with an electrical nimbusthat flamed around for miles and miles and lit up all space likebroad day. The comet was burning blue in the distance, likea sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he begun to growbigger and bigger as I crept up on him. I slipped up on himso fast that when I had gone about 150,000,000 miles I was closeenough to be swallowed up in the phosphorescent glory of hiswake, and I couldn’t see anything for the glare. Thinks I, it won’t do to run into him, so I shunted to oneside and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of histail. Do you know what it was like? It was like agnat closing up on the continent of America. I