Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/26

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10
OCCULT JAPAN.

disappointed. At five the next morning we had hardly finished a shivery preprandial peep at the sunrise,—all below us a surging sea of cloud,—and turned once more into the hut, when there were the three indefatigables up and communing again by way of breakfast, for they took none other, and an hour later we came upon them before the tip-top shrine, hard at it for the fifth time. And all this between four o'clock one afternoon and six the next morning. The cycle was not always completed, one of the three being much better at possession than the other two, and one much worse, but there were safely ten trances in the few hours that fringed their sleep's oblivion.

And nobody, apparently, took any cognizance of what was going on, except us and the meteorologists, who came out to fraternize with us, and volunteered comments in a superior manner on the senselessness of the proceeding,—an imported attitude of mind not destitute of caricature.

Truly the gods were gracious thus to descend so many times; and truly devout their devotees to crave so much communion. Doubtless an inordinate desire for their