I had rather an odd experience that night. I was lying asleep in my berth, when all of a sudden, although I was asleep, I became conscious that something was happening. I suppose everyone knows how, sometimes, one realises that a dream is a dream realises it in the middle of one’s sleep. All of a sudden there came to me the idea that I must be dreaming a dream which was just beginning. I had an eerie notion that something was touching me so softly, imperceptibly, that I could not even feel the touch, as sometimes is the case in dreams. And yet I was unhappy. An intangible something seemed to be passing right over my body not in the least degree painfully; yet I was afraid. I hoped, still sleeping one does do that sometimes that I was not going to have a nightmare. The touch kept on; the od
