{"id":845,"date":"2020-03-19T19:07:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T19:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jefferson-sciencefictionandfantasy\/?post_type=chapter&p=845"},"modified":"2020-03-19T19:07:06","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T19:07:06","slug":"h-g-wells-the-sleeper-awakes","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-jefferson-sciencefictionandfantasy\/chapter\/h-g-wells-the-sleeper-awakes\/","title":{"raw":"H. G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes","rendered":"H. G. Wells, The Sleeper Awakes"},"content":{"raw":"

THE SLEEPER AWAKES<\/h2>\r\n

CHAPTER I. \u2014 INSOMNIA<\/h2>\r\nOne afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and staring before him, and his face was wet with tears.\r\n\r\nHe glanced round at Isbister\u2019s footfall. Both men were disconcerted, Isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that the weather was hot for the time of year.\r\n\r\n\u201cVery,\u201d answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a colourless tone, \u201cI can\u2019t sleep.\u201d\r\n\r\nIsbister stopped abruptly. \u201cNo?\u201d was all he said, but his bearing conveyed his helpful impulse.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt may sound incredible,\u201d said the stranger, turning weary eyes to Isbister\u2019s face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, \u201cbut I have had no sleep\u2014no sleep at all for six nights.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHad advice?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They are all very well for the run of people. It\u2019s hard to explain. I dare not take ... sufficiently powerful drugs.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat makes it difficult,\u201d said Isbister.\r\n\r\nHe stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. Clearly the man wanted to talk. An idea natural enough under the circumstances, prompted him to keep the conversation going. \u201cI\u2019ve never suffered from sleeplessness myself,\u201d he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, \u201cbut in those cases I have known, people have usually found something\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI dare make no experiments.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men were silent.\r\n\r\n\u201cExercise?\u201d suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his interlocutor\u2019s face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast, day after day\u2014from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork\u2014trouble. There was something\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.\r\n\r\n\u201cI am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I have no part. I am wifeless\u2014childless\u2014who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless\u2014I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set myself to do.\r\n\r\n\u201cI said, I will<\/i> do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I\u2019ve had enough of drugs! I don\u2019t know if you<\/i> feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind\u2014time\u2014life! Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies\u2014or irritations. We have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man\u2019s day is his own\u2014even at the best! And then come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill rest\u2014black coffee, cocaine\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI see,\u201d said Isbister.\r\n\r\n\u201cI did my work,\u201d said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd this is the price?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a little while the two remained without speaking.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel\u2014a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady\u2014\u201d He paused. \u201cTowards the gulf.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must sleep,\u201d said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy discovered. \u201cCertainly you must sleep.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMy mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am drawing towards the vortex. Presently\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity\u2014down\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut,\u201d expostulated Isbister.\r\n\r\nThe man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. \u201cI shall kill myself. If in no other way\u2014at the foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles down. There at any rate is ... sleep.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s unreasonable,\u201d said Isbister, startled at the man\u2019s hysterical gust of emotion. \u201cDrugs are better than that.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere at any rate is sleep,\u201d repeated the stranger, not heeding him.\r\n\r\nIsbister looked at him. \u201cIt\u2019s not a cert, you know,\u201d he remarked. \u201cThere\u2019s a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove\u2014as high, anyhow\u2014and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day\u2014sound and well.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut those rocks there?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOne might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?\u201d\r\n\r\nTheir eyes met. \u201cSorry to upset your ideals,\u201d said Isbister with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance. \u201cBut a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist\u2014\u201d He laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s so damned amateurish.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut the other thing,\u201d said the sleepless man irritably, \u201cthe other thing. No man can keep sane if night after night\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHave you been walking along this coast alone?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSilly sort of thing to do. If you\u2019ll excuse my saying so. Alone! As you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder; walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day long, and then, I suppose, you go to bed and try very hard\u2014eh?\u201d\r\n\r\nIsbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.\r\n\r\n\u201cLook at these rocks!\u201d cried the seated man with a sudden force of gesture. \u201cLook at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever! See the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And this blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It is your world. You accept it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports and delights you. And for me\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. \u201cIt is the garment of my misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery.\u201d\r\n\r\nIsbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about them and back to that face of despair. For a moment he was silent.\r\n\r\nHe started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. \u201cYou get a night\u2019s sleep,\u201d he said, \u201cand you won\u2019t see much misery out here. Take my word for it.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. Only half an hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment the bare thought of which, was righteous self-applause. He took possession forthwith. The first need of this exhausted being was companionship. He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the motionless seated figure, and threw out a skirmishing line of gossip.\r\n\r\nHis hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only in answer to Isbister\u2019s direct questions\u2014and not to all of those. But he made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.\r\n\r\nHe seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister, feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they should reascend the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging the view into Blackapit, he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talking to himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. \u201cWhat can be happening?\u201d he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. \u201cWhat can be happening? Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stood with his hand circling.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, old chap,\u201d said Isbister with the air of an old friend. \u201cDon\u2019t worry yourself. Trust to me,\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man dropped his hand and turned again. They went over the brow and to the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless man gesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning his whirling brain. At the headland they stood by the seat that looks into the dark mysteries of Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his companion interrupted him again.\r\n\r\n\u201cMy head is not like what it was,\u201d he said, gesticulating for want of expressive phrases. \u201cIt\u2019s not like what it was. There is a sort of oppression, a weight. No\u2014not drowsiness, would God it were! It is like a shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across something busy. Spin, spin into the darkness. The tumult of thought, the confusion, the eddy and eddy. I can\u2019t express it. I can hardly keep my mind on it\u2014steadily enough to tell you.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped feebly.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t trouble, old chap,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI think I can understand. At any rate, it don\u2019t matter very much just at present about telling me, you know.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them. Isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had a fresh idea. \u201cCome down to my room,\u201d he said, \u201cand try a pipe. I can show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you\u2019d care?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.\r\n\r\nSeveral times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his movements were slow and hesitating. \u201cCome in with me,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cand try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you take alcohol?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of his actions. \u201cI don\u2019t drink,\u201d he said slowly, coming up the garden path, and after a moment\u2019s interval repeated absently, \u201cNo\u2014I don\u2019t drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes\u2014spin\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one who sees nothing.\r\n\r\nThen he sat down heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost to fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and became motionless. Presently he made a faint sound in his throat.\r\n\r\nIsbister moved about the room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little remarks that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to his portfolio, placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019d care to have supper with me,\u201d he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand\u2014his mind troubled with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. \u201cOnly cold mutton, you know, but passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe.\u201d He repeated this after momentary silence.\r\n\r\nThe seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding him.\r\n\r\nThe stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put down unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. \u201cPerhaps,\u201d he whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to the figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his companion after each elaborate pace.\r\n\r\nHe closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at the corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had not moved.\r\n\r\nA number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the artist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt that possibly his circumspect attitude and position looked peculiar and unaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipe and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly.\r\n\r\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. \u201cAt any rate one must give him a chance.\u201d He struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.\r\n\r\nHe heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit from the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped her at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in explaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. She retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed and less at his ease.\r\n\r\nLong after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister\u2019s mind; he started, and leaning over the table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction. Astonishment seized him and became\u2014dread!\r\n\r\nNo sound of breathing came from the seated figure!\r\n\r\nHe crept slowly and noiselessly round the table, pausing twice to listen. At last he could lay his hand on the back of the armchair. He bent down until the two heads were ear to ear.\r\n\r\nThen he bent still lower to look up at his visitor\u2019s face. He started violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.\r\n\r\nHe looked again and saw that they were open and with the pupils rolled under the lids. He was afraid. He took the man by the shoulder and shook him. \u201cAre you asleep?\u201d he said, with his voice jumping, and again, \u201cAre you asleep?\u201d\r\n\r\nA conviction took possession of his mind that this man was dead. He became active and noisy, strode across the room, blundering against the table as he did so, and rang the bell.\r\n\r\n\u201cPlease bring a light at once,\u201d he said in the passage. \u201cThere is something wrong with my friend.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe returned to the motionless seated figure, grasped the shoulder, shook it, shouted. The room was flooded with yellow glare as his landlady entered with the light. His face was white as he turned blinking towards her. \u201cI must fetch a doctor,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is either death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER II. \u2014 THE TRANCE<\/h2>\r\nThe state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then it was his eyes could be closed.\r\n\r\nHe was removed from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted every attempt at reanimation. After a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were discontinued. For a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and still\u2014neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by a ray of thought or sensation, a dreamless inanition, a vast space of peace. The tumult of his mind had swelled and risen to an abrupt climax of silence. Where was the man? Where is any man when insensibility takes hold of him?\r\n\r\n\u201cIt seems only yesterday,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI remember it all as though it happened yesterday\u2014clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday.\u201d\r\n\r\nIt was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a young man. The hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of the fashionable length, was iron grey and clipped close, and the face that had been pink and white was buff and ruddy. He had a pointed beard shot with grey. He talked to an elderly man who wore a summer suit of drill (the summer of that year was unusually hot). This was Warming, a London solicitor and next of kin to Graham, the man who had fallen into the trance. And the two men stood side by side in a room in a house in London regarding his recumbent figure.\r\n\r\nIt was a yellow figure lying lax upon a water-bed and clad in a flowing shirt, a figure with a shrunken face and a stubby beard, lean limbs and lank nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. This glass seemed to mark off the sleeper from the reality of life about him, he was a thing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality. The two men stood close to the glass, peering in.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe thing gave me a shock,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI feel a queer sort of surprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you know, rolled up. Coming here again brings it all back to me.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHave you never seen him since that time?\u201d asked Warming.\r\n\r\n\u201cOften wanted to come,\u201d said Isbister; \u201cbut business nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I\u2019ve been in America most of the time.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf I remember rightly,\u201d said Warming, \u201cyou were an artist?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWas. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and white, very soon\u2014at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGood posters,\u201d admitted the solicitor, \u201cthough I was sorry to see them there.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cLast as long as the cliffs, if necessary,\u201d exclaimed Isbister with satisfaction. \u201cThe world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty years ago, I was down at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. I didn\u2019t expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land\u2019s End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he\u2019s not looking.\u201d\r\n\r\nWarming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. \u201cI just missed seeing you, if I recollect aright.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria\u2019s Jubilee, because I remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Diamond Jubilee, it was,\u201d said Warming; \u201cthe second one.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAh, yes! At the proper Jubilee\u2014the Fifty Year affair\u2014I was down at Wookey\u2014a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My landlady wouldn\u2019t take him in, wouldn\u2019t let him stay\u2014he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor\u2014it wasn\u2019t the present chap, but the G.P. before him\u2014was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you mean\u2014he was stiff and hard?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cStiff!\u2014wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he\u2019d have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this\u201d\u2014he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head\u2014\u201cis quite different. And the little doctor\u2014what was his name?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSmithers?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSmithers it was\u2014was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. The things he did! Even now it makes me feel all\u2014ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little things, not dynamos\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCoils.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and him<\/i>\u2014stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.\u201d\r\n\r\nPause.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a strange state,\u201d said Warming.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s a sort of complete absence,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cHere\u2019s the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It\u2019s like a seat vacant and marked \u2018engaged.\u2019 No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart\u2014not a flutter. That<\/i> doesn\u2019t make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it\u2019s more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even the hair has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the hair will go on growing\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI know,\u201d said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.\r\n\r\nThey peered through the glass again. Graham was indeed in a strange state, in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance unprecedented in medical history. Trances had lasted for as much as a year before\u2014but at the end of that time it had ever been a waking or a death; sometimes first one and then the other. Isbister noted the marks the physicians had made in injecting nourishment, for that had been resorted to to postpone collapse; he pointed them out to Warming, who had been trying not to see them.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd while he has been lying here,\u201d said Isbister, with the zest of a life freely spent, \u201cI have changed my plans in life; married, raised a family, my eldest lad\u2014I hadn\u2019t begun to think of sons then\u2014is an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There\u2019s a touch of grey in my hair. And this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than I was in my downy days. It\u2019s curious to think of.\u201d\r\n\r\nWarming turned. \u201cAnd I have grown old too. I played cricket with him when I was still only a boy. And he looks a young man still. Yellow perhaps. But that is<\/i> a young man nevertheless.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd there\u2019s been the War,\u201d said Isbister.\r\n\r\n\u201cFrom beginning to end.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd these Martians.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve understood,\u201d said Isbister after a pause, \u201cthat he had some moderate property of his own?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is so,\u201d said Warming. He coughed primly. \u201cAs it happens\u2014I have charge of it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAh!\u201d Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: \u201cNo doubt\u2014his keep here is not expensive\u2014no doubt it will have improved\u2014accumulated?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt has. He will wake up very much better off\u2014if he wakes\u2014than when he slept.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAs a business man,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cthat thought has naturally been in my mind. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he knows what he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he had lived straight on\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI doubt if he would have premeditated as much,\u201d said Warming. \u201cHe was not a far-sighted man. In fact\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe differed on that point. I stood to him somewhat in the relation of a guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain friction\u2014. But even if that was the case, there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts. Apparently he is sliding slowly, very slowly and tediously, down a long slope, if you can understand me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt will be a pity to lose his surprise. There\u2019s been a lot of change these twenty years. It\u2019s Rip Van Winkle come real.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere has been a lot of change certainly,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAnd, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man.\u201d\r\n\r\nIsbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have thought it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI was forty-three when his bankers\u2014you remember you wired to his bankers\u2014sent on to me.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI got their address from the cheque book in his pocket,\u201d said Isbister.\r\n\r\n\u201cWell, the addition is not difficult,\u201d said Warming.\r\n\r\nThere was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. \u201cHe may go on for years yet,\u201d he said, and had a moment of hesitation. \u201cWe have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall some day into the hands of\u2014someone else, you know.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most constantly before my mind. We happen to be\u2014as a matter of fact, there are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and unprecedented position.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cRather,\u201d said Isbister.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt seems to me it\u2019s a case of some public body, some practically undying guardian. If he really is going on living\u2014as the doctors, some of them, think. As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two public men about it. But, so far, nothing has been done.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body\u2014the British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe difficulty is to induce them to take him.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cRed tape, I suppose?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPartly.\u201d\r\n\r\nPause. \u201cIt\u2019s a curious business, certainly,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cAnd compound interest has a way of mounting up.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt has,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAnd now the gold supplies are running short there is a tendency towards ... appreciation.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve felt that,\u201d said Isbister with a grimace. \u201cBut it makes it better for him<\/i>.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf<\/i> he wakes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf he wakes,\u201d echoed Isbister. \u201cDo you notice the pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?\u201d\r\n\r\nWarming looked and thought for a space. \u201cI doubt if he will wake,\u201d he said at last.\r\n\r\n\u201cI never properly understood,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cwhat it was brought this on. He told me something about overstudy. I\u2019ve often been curious.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical\u2014a Socialist\u2014or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic\u2014flighty\u2014undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote\u2014a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is of unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. If ever a waking comes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019d give anything to be there,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cjust to hear what he would say to it all.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSo would I,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAye! so would I,\u201d with an old man\u2019s sudden turn to self pity. \u201cBut I shall never see him wake.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. \u201cHe will never awake,\u201d he said at last. He sighed. \u201cHe will never awake again.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER III. \u2014 THE AWAKENING<\/h2>\r\nBut Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.\r\n\r\nWhat a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity\u2014the self! Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as it happens to most of us after the night\u2019s sleep, so it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber. A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, a cloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent, faint, but alive.\r\n\r\nThe pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. Gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name\u2014he could not tell what name\u2014that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes....\r\n\r\nGraham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar thing.\r\n\r\nIt was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. He moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went up beyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did it matter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a dark depression. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and footsteps hastily receding.\r\n\r\nThe movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical weakness. He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley\u2014but he could not recall that white edge. He must have slept. He remembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He recalled the cliff and Waterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to a passer-by....\r\n\r\nHow long had he slept? What was that sound of pattering feet? And that rise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out a languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit to place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. This was so unexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak\u2014and amazed.\r\n\r\nHe rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear\u2014evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm\u2014and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow\u2014was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below. And this bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for the most part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum thermometer was recognisable.\r\n\r\nThe slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surrounded him on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was a vast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and simple white archway facing him. Close to the walls of the cage were articles of furniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like the side of a fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number of dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. He realised that he was intensely hungry.\r\n\r\nHe could see no one, and after a period of hesitation scrambled off the translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his little apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however, and staggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him to steady himself. For a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward like a distended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished\u2014a pricked bubble. He reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatly astonished. He caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of the glasses to the floor\u2014it rang but did not break\u2014and sat down in one of the armchairs.\r\n\r\nWhen he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the bottle and drank\u2014a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with a pleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support and stimulus. He put down the vessel and looked about him.\r\n\r\nThe apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that the greenish transparency that had intervened was removed. The archway he saw led to a flight of steps, going downward without the intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage ran between polished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviating droning note. He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the viands in his attention.\r\n\r\nThen with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about him for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.\r\n\r\nHis mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and had been removed in his sleep. But where? And who were those people, the distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.\r\n\r\nWhat was this place?\u2014this place that to his senses seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed. \u201cBeat, beat,\u201d that sweeping shadow had a note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.\r\n\r\nHe would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat. Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved himself by catching at one of the blue pillars.\r\n\r\nThe passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. Beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural forms. The tumult of voices rose now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backs to him, gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft colourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the balcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once some brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the air perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded like English, there was a reiteration of \u201cWake!\u201d He heard some indistinct shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.\r\n\r\n\u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d laughed one\u2014a red-haired man in a short purple robe. \u201cWhen the Sleeper wakes\u2014When<\/i>!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.\r\n\r\nSuddenly Graham\u2019s knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER IV. \u2014 THE SOUND OF A TUMULT<\/h2>\r\nGraham\u2019s last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses, he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed from his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still about him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was altogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.\r\n\r\nRemote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly closed.\r\n\r\nGraham moved his head. \u201cWhat does this all mean?\u201d he said slowly. \u201cWhere am I?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.\r\n\r\nThe man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper\u2019s ears. \u201cYou are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep. It is quite safe. You have been here some time\u2014sleeping. In a trance.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe said, something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phial was handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment increased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.\r\n\r\n\u201cBetter?\u201d asked the man in violet, as Graham\u2019s eyes reopened. He was a pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have heard? Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure you everything is well.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose. His eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. They were regarding him strangely. He knew he ought to be somewhere in Cornwall, but he could not square these things with that impression.\r\n\r\nA matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments at Boscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. He cleared his throat.\r\n\r\n\u201cHave you wired my cousin?\u201d he asked. \u201cE. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?\u201d\r\n\r\nThey were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. \u201cWhat an odd blurr<\/i> in his accent!\u201d whispered the red-haired man. \u201cWire, sir?\u201d said the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe means send an electric telegram,\u201d volunteered the third, a pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a cry of comprehension. \u201cHow stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall be done, sir,\u201d he said to Graham. \u201cI am afraid it would be difficult to\u2014wire<\/i> to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don\u2019t trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the important thing is to get over that, sir.\u201d (Graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it \u201cSire<\/i>.\u201d)\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Graham, and became quiet.\r\n\r\nIt was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar dress knew what they were about. Yet they were odd and the room was odd. It seemed he was in some newly established place. He had a sudden flash of suspicion! Surely this wasn\u2019t some hall of public exhibition! If it was he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely had that character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not have discovered himself naked.\r\n\r\nThen suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some processes of thought-reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion. It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not. A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the moment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding them silently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly.\r\n\r\nThey gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2014that makes me feel better,\u201d he said hoarsely, and there were murmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made to speak again, and again he could not.\r\n\r\nHe pressed his throat and tried a third time. \u201cHow long?\u201d he asked in a level voice. \u201cHow long have I been asleep?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSome considerable time,\u201d said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly at the others.\r\n\r\n\u201cHow long?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA very long time.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes\u2014yes,\u201d said Graham, suddenly testy. \u201cBut I want\u2014Is it\u2014it is\u2014some years? Many years? There was something\u2014I forget what. I feel\u2014confused. But you\u2014\u201d He sobbed. \u201cYou need not fence with me. How long\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles and sat waiting for an answer.\r\n\r\nThey spoke in undertones.\r\n\r\n\u201cFive or six?\u201d he asked faintly. \u201cMore?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cVery much more than that.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMore!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMore.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles of his face. He looked his question.\r\n\r\n\u201cMany years,\u201d said the man with the red beard.\r\n\r\nGraham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from his face with a lean hand. \u201cMany years!\u201d he repeated. He shut his eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing to another.\r\n\r\n\u201cHow many years?\u201d he asked.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must be prepared to be surprised.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMore than a gross of years.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was irritated at the strange word. \u201cMore than a what<\/i>?\u201d\r\n\r\nTwo of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about \u201cdecimal\u201d he did not catch.\r\n\r\n\u201cHow long did you say?\u201d asked Graham. \u201cHow long? Don\u2019t look like that. Tell me.\u201d\r\n\r\nAmong the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: \u201cMore than a couple of centuries.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat<\/i>?\u201d he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. \u201cWho says\u2014? What was that? A couple of centuries<\/i>!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man with the red beard. \u201cTwo hundred years.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.\r\n\r\n\u201cTwo hundred years,\u201d he said again, with the figure of a great gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, \u201cOh, but\u2014!\u201d\r\n\r\nThey said nothing.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2014did you say\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTwo hundred years. Two centuries of years,\u201d said the man with the red beard.\r\n\r\nThere was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had heard was indeed true.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut it can\u2019t be,\u201d he said querulously. \u201cI am dreaming. Trances\u2014trances don\u2019t last. That is not right\u2014this is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me\u2014some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of Cornwall\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\nHis voice failed him.\r\n\r\nThe man with the flaxen beard hesitated. \u201cI\u2019m not very strong in history, sir,\u201d he said weakly, and glanced at the others.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was it, sir,\u201d said the youngster. \u201cBoscastle, in the old Duchy of Cornwall\u2014it\u2019s in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. I have been there.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBoscastle!\u201d Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. \u201cThat was it\u2014Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep\u2014somewhere there. I don\u2019t exactly remember. I don\u2019t exactly remember.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe pressed his brows and whispered, \u201cMore than two hundred years<\/i>!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold within him. \u201cBut if it is<\/i> two hundred years, every soul I know, every human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be dead.\u201d\r\n\r\nThey did not answer him.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s a comfort! Is there London?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is<\/i> London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian; assistant-custodian. And these\u2014? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe sat with a gaunt stare on his face. \u201cBut why am I here? No! Don\u2019t talk. Be quiet. Let me\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. Directly he had taken it he began to weep naturally and refreshingly.\r\n\r\nPresently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a little foolishly. \u201cBut\u2014two\u2014hun\u2014dred\u2014years!\u201d he said. He grimaced hysterically and covered his face again.\r\n\r\nAfter a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found him on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. \u201cWhat are you doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will suffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed? All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told. Has he been told anything?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard returned to the man with the flaxen beard. \u201cThese others,\u201d he said in a voice of extreme irritation. \u201cYou had better go.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGo?\u201d said the red-bearded man.\r\n\r\n\u201cCertainly\u2014go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. A long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the newcomer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.\r\n\r\nFor a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but proceeded to interrogate the other\u2014obviously his subordinate\u2014-upon the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases only partially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matter of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently profoundly excited.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must not confuse his mind by telling him things,\u201d he repeated again and again. \u201cYou must not confuse his mind.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper with an ambiguous expression.\r\n\r\n\u201cFeel queer?\u201d he asked.\r\n\r\n\u201cVery.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose so, now.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn the first place, hadn\u2019t I better have some clothes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey\u2014\u201d said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. \u201cYou will very speedily have clothes,\u201d said the thickset man.\r\n\r\n\u201cIs it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred\u2014?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter of fact.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, \u201cIs there a mill or dynamo near here?\u201d He did not wait for an answer. \u201cThings have changed tremendously, I suppose?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is that shouting?\u201d he asked abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cNothing,\u201d said the thickset man impatiently. \u201cIt\u2019s people. You\u2019ll understand better later\u2014perhaps. As you say, things have changed.\u201d He spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man trying to decide in an emergency. \u201cWe must get you clothes and so forth, at any rate. Better wait here until they can be procured. No one will come near you. You want shaving.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham rubbed his chin.\r\n\r\nThe man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly, listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the woven tumult.\r\n\r\nThen he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: \u201cShow us the Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.\r\n\r\n\u201cWild!\u201d he cried. \u201cHow do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was perhaps an answer.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can\u2019t come,\u201d said the thickset man; \u201cI have him<\/i> to see to. But shout from the balcony.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was an inaudible reply.\r\n\r\n\u201cSay he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe came hurrying back to Graham. \u201cYou must have clothes at once,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot stop here\u2014and it will be impossible to\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a moment he was back.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can\u2019t tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes\u2014in a moment. And then I can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut those voices. They were shouting\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSomething about the Sleeper\u2014that\u2019s you. They have some twisted idea. I don\u2019t know what it is. I know nothing.\u201d\r\n\r\nA shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote noises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliances in the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball of crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the wall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like a curtain, and he stood waiting.\r\n\r\nGraham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the restoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couch and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credit his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.\r\n\r\nThe man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is the tailor,\u201d said the thickset man with an introductory gesture. \u201cIt will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot understand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapid as possible?\u201d he said to the tailor.\r\n\r\nThe man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the bed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. \u201cYou will find the fashions altered, Sire,\u201d he said. He glanced from under his brows at the thickset man.\r\n\r\nHe opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees. \u201cYou lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical\u2014the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now\u2014\u201d He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold\u2014a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. \u201cThat is my conception of your immediate treatment,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nThe thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have very little time,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cTrust me,\u201d said the tailor. \u201cMy machine follows. What do you think of this?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked the man from the nineteenth century.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn your days they showed you a fashion-plate,\u201d said the tailor, \u201cbut this is our modern development. See here.\u201d The little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. \u201cOr this,\u201d and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift as he did these things.\r\n\r\nIt rumbled again, and a crop-haired anemic lad with features of the Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.\r\n\r\nThe thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made some connexion and the machine became energetic and swift.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is that doing?\u201d asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. \u201cIs that\u2014some sort of force\u2014laid on?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man with the flaxen beard.\r\n\r\n\u201cWho is that<\/i>?\u201d He indicated the archway behind him.\r\n\r\nThe man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an undertone, \u201cHe is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire\u2014it\u2019s a little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian and assistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. In order that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorways for the first time. But I think\u2014if you don\u2019t mind, I will leave him to explain.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOdd!\u201d said Graham. \u201cGuardian? Council?\u201d Then turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, \u201cWhy is this man glaring<\/i> at me? Is he a mesmerist?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMesmerist! He is a capillotomist.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCapillotomist!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes\u2014one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.\u201d\r\n\r\nIt sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an unsteady mind. \u201cSixdoz lions?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are our monetary units.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut what was that you said\u2014sixdoz?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system\u2014tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose so,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut about this cap\u2014what was it?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.\r\n\r\n\u201cHere are your clothes!\u201d he said. Graham turned round sharply and saw the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had arrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. \u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say\u2014!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cJust made,\u201d said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet of Graham, walked to the bed, on which Graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass. As he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. The man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by the archway.\r\n\r\nThe tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back from the corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from the balcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing had an unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came a complex garment of bluish white, and Graham, was clothed in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable unprecedented way graceful.\r\n\r\n\u201cI must shave,\u201d he said regarding himself in the glass.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn a moment,\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\nThe persistent stare ceased. The young man closed his eyes, reopened them, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then he stopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him.\r\n\r\n\u201cA seat,\u201d said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham. \u201cSit down, please,\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the glint of steel.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t you understand, Sire?\u201d cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried politeness. \u201cHe is going to cut your hair.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d cried Graham enlightened. \u201cBut you called him\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA capillotomist\u2014precisely! He is one of the finest artists in the world.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The capillotomist came forward, examined Graham\u2019s ears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for Howard\u2019s audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham\u2019s chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his hair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pair of shoes.\r\n\r\nSuddenly a loud voice shouted\u2014it seemed from a piece of machinery in the corner\u2014\u201cAt once\u2014at once. The people know all over the city. Work is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures it seemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptly he went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the little crystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from the archway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mighty sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if receding swiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. He glanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strides he was down the steps and in the passage, and in a score he was out upon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER V. \u2014 THE MOVING WAYS<\/h2>\r\nHe went to the railings of the balcony and stared upward. An exclamation of surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of people came from the great area below.\r\n\r\nHis first impression was of overwhelming architecture. The place into which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite fagade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham\u2019s heart into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion of anything else. Then suddenly he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at all, as Graham understood such things, for in the nineteenth century the only roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostling rivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway was three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle, the lowest part. For a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. Then he understood. Under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to Graham\u2019s right, an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth century express train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping slats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures of the street. Upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks, but they swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. From this nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the centre of the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower than the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to permit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk uninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. Beyond this middle way was another series of endless platforms rushing with varying pace to Graham\u2019s left. And seated in crowds upon the two widest and swiftest platforms, or stepping from one to another down the steps, or swarming over the central space, was an innumerable and wonderfully diversified multitude of people.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must not stop here,\u201d shouted Howard suddenly at his side. \u201cYou must come away at once.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham made no answer. He heard without hearing. The platforms ran with a roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girls with flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the breasts. These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived that the dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that the tailor\u2019s boy had worn. He became aware of cries of \u201cThe Sleeper. What has happened to the Sleeper?\u201d and it seemed as though the rushing platforms before him were suddenly spattered with the pale buff of human faces, and then still more thickly. He saw pointing fingers. He perceived that the motionless central area of this huge arcade just opposite to the balcony was densely crowded with blue-clad people. Some sort of struggle had sprung into life. People seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on either side, and carried away against their will. They would spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of the confusion, and run back towards the conflict.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper,\u201d shouted voices. \u201cThat is never the Sleeper,\u201d shouted others. More and more faces were turned to him. At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings, pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with people ascending out of them and descending into them. The struggle it seemed centred about the one of these nearest to him. People were running down the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform to platform. The clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to divide their interest between this point and the balcony. A number of sturdy little figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodically together, were employed it seemed in preventing access to this descending staircase. About them a crowd was rapidly accumulating. Their brilliant colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their antagonists, for the struggle was indisputable.\r\n\r\nHe saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm. And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.\r\n\r\nHe perceived that the cries of \u201cThe Sleeper!\u201d grew in volume, and that the people on the nearer platform were standing up. The nearer platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: \u201cThe Sleeper! The Sleeper!\u201d and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and cries of \u201cStop the Ways!\u201d They were also crying another name strange to Graham. It sounded like \u201cOstrog.\u201d The slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.\r\n\r\n\u201cStop the Ways,\u201d they cried. Agile figures ran up from the centre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him, shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the central way. One thing he distinguished: \u201cIt is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the Sleeper,\u201d they testified.\r\n\r\nFor a space Graham stood motionless. Then he became vividly aware that all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderful popularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his arm. He was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. The tumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. He became aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men in trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behind him, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; he suddenly perceived that his guardian Howard was back again and gripping his arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear.\r\n\r\nHe turned, and Howard\u2019s face was white. \u201cCome back,\u201d he heard. \u201cThey will stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars behind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and all these people had anxious eager faces.\r\n\r\n\u201cGet him away,\u201d cried Howard.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut why?\u201d said Graham. \u201cI don\u2019t see\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must come away!\u201d said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face and eyes were resolute, too. Graham\u2019s glances went from face to face, and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life, compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....\r\n\r\nHe was being dragged away. It seemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts that had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into the passages of the great building behind him. Marvelling and confused, feeling an impotent desire to resist, Graham was half led, half thrust, along the passage of blue pillars, and suddenly he found himself alone with Howard in a lift and moving swiftly upward.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER VI. \u2014 THE HALL OF THE ATLAS<\/h2>\r\nFrom the moment when the tailor had bowed his farewell to the moment when Graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely five minutes. As yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung about him, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all in this remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of the irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He was still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in life. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre. \u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat was the trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have our troubles,\u201d said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham\u2019s enquiry. \u201cThis is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking just now, has a sort of connexion\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt will be clearer later,\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\nHe glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift slow.\r\n\r\n\u201cI shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a little,\u201d said Graham puzzled. \u201cIt will be\u2014it is bound to be perplexing. At present it is all so strange. Anything seems possible. Anything. In the details even. Your counting, I understand, is different.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very long passage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of tubes and big cables.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat a huge place this is!\u201d said Graham. \u201cIs it all one building? What place is it?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and so forth.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWas it a social trouble\u2014that\u2014in the great roadway place? How are you governed? Have you still a police?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSeveral,\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\n\u201cSeveral?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAbout fourteen.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cVery probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex to you. To tell you the truth, I don\u2019t understand it myself very clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps\u2014bye and bye. We have to go to the Council.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s attention was divided between the urgent necessity of his inquiries and the people in the passages and halls they were traversing. For a moment his mind would be concentrated upon Howard and the halting answers he made, and then he would lose the thread in response to some vivid unexpected impression. Along the passages, in the halls, half the people seemed to be men in the red uniform. The pale blue canvas that had been so abundant in the aisle of moving ways did not appear. Invariably these men looked at him, and saluted him and Howard as they passed.\r\n\r\nHe had a clear vision of entering a long corridor, and there were a number of girls sitting on low seats, as though in a class. He saw no teacher, but only a novel apparatus from which he fancied a voice proceeded. The girls regarded him and his conductor, he thought, with curiosity and astonishment. But he was hurried on before he could form a clear idea of the gathering. He judged they knew Howard and not himself, and that they wondered who he was. This Howard, it seemed, was a person of importance. But then he was also merely Graham\u2019s guardian. That was odd.\r\n\r\nThere came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hung so that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and fro thereon, but no more of them. Then vague impressions of galleries and of casual astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two of them with their red-clad guard.\r\n\r\nThe stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. He was speedily fatigued by this excessive haste. He asked Howard to slacken his speed. Presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the great street space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were too high for him to see the moving platforms below. But he saw people going to and fro along cables and along strange, frail-looking bridges.\r\n\r\nThence they passed across the street and at a vast height above it. They crossed by means of a narrow bridge closed in with glass, so clear that it made him giddy even to remember it. The floor of it also was of glass. From his memory of the cliffs between New Quay and Boscastle, so remote in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him that they must be near four hundred feet above the moving ways. He stopped, looked down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes, minute and foreshortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards the little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he had so recently been standing. A thin haze and the glare of the mighty globes of light obscured everything. A man seated in a little openwork cradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrow bridge, rushing down a cable as swiftly almost as if he were falling. Graham stopped involuntarily to watch this strange passenger vanish below, and then his eyes went back to the tumultuous struggle.\r\n\r\nAlong one of the faster ways rushed a thick crowd of red spots. This broke up into individuals as it approached the balcony, and went pouring down the slower ways towards the dense struggling crowd on the central area. These men in red appeared to be armed with sticks or truncheons; they seemed to be striking and thrusting. A great shouting, cries of wrath, screaming, burst out and came up to Graham, faint and thin. \u201cGo on,\u201d cried Howard, laying hands on him.\r\n\r\nAnother man rushed down a cable. Graham suddenly glanced up to see whence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network of cables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vanes of windmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. Then Howard had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a little narrow passage decorated with geometrical patterns.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to see more of that,\u201d cried Graham, resisting.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d cried Howard, still gripping his arm. \u201cThis way. You must go this way.\u201d And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce his orders.\r\n\r\nSome negroes in a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that had seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham found himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. The attendant in black and yellow crossed this, thrust up a second shutter and stood waiting.\r\n\r\nThis place had the appearance of an ante-room. He saw a number of people in the central space, and at the opposite end a large and imposing doorway at the top of a flight of steps, heavily curtained but giving a glimpse of some still larger hall beyond. He perceived white men in red and other negroes in black and yellow standing stiffly about those portals.\r\n\r\nAs they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, \u201cThe Sleeper,\u201d and was aware of a turning of heads, a hum of observation. They entered another little passage in the wall of this ante-chamber, and then he found himself on an iron-railed gallery of metal that passed round the side of the great hall he had already seen through the curtains. He entered the place at the corner, so that he received the fullest impression of its huge proportions. The black in the wasp uniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valve behind him.\r\n\r\nCompared with any of the places Graham had seen thus far, this second hall appeared to be decorated with extreme richness. On a pedestal at the remoter end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was a gigantic white figure of Atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon his bowed shoulders. It was the first thing to strike his attention, it was so vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. Save for this figure and for a dais in the centre, the wide floor of the place was a shining vacancy. The dais was remote in the greatness of the area; it would have looked a mere slab of metal had it not been for the group of seven men who stood about a table on it, and gave an inkling of its proportions. They were all dressed in white robes, they seemed to have arisen that moment from their seats, and they were regarding Graham steadfastly. At the end of the table he perceived the glitter of some mechanical appliances.\r\n\r\nHoward led him along the end gallery until they were opposite this mighty labouring figure. Then he stopped. The two men in red who had followed them into the gallery came and stood on either hand of Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must remain here,\u201d murmured Howard, \u201cfor a few moments,\u201d and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut, why<\/i>\u2014?\u201d began Graham.\r\n\r\nHe moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of the men in red. \u201cYou have to wait here, Sire,\u201d said the man in red.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy<\/i>?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOrders, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhose orders?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOur orders, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham looked his exasperation.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat place is this?\u201d he said presently. \u201cWho are those men?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are the lords of the Council, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat Council?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe<\/i> Council.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Graham, and after an equally ineffectual attempt at the other man, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, who stood watching him and whispering together.\r\n\r\nThe Council? He perceived there were now eight, though how the newcomer had arrived he had not observed. They made no gestures of greeting; they stood regarding him as in the nineteenth century a group of men might have stood in the street regarding a distant balloon that had suddenly floated into view. What council could it be that gathered there, that little body of men beneath the significant white Atlas, secluded from every eavesdropper in this impressive spaciousness? And why should he be brought to them, and be looked at strangely and spoken of inaudibly? Howard appeared beneath, walking quickly across the polished floor towards them. As he drew near he bowed and performed certain peculiar movements, apparently of a ceremonious nature. Then he ascended the steps of the dais, and stood by the apparatus at the end of the table.\r\n\r\nGraham watched that visible inaudible conversation. Occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When he looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the white-robed men rapping the table.\r\n\r\nThe conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham\u2019s sense. His eyes rose to the still giant at whose feet the Council sat. Thence they wandered to the walls of the hall. It was decorated in long painted panels of a quasi-Japanese type, many of them very beautiful. These panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of dark metal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, and the great structural lines of the interior. The facile grace of these panels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centre of the scheme. Graham\u2019s eyes came back to the Council, and Howard was descending the steps. As he drew nearer his features could be distinguished, and Graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out his cheeks. His countenance was still disturbed when presently he reappeared along the gallery.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis way,\u201d he said concisely, and they went on in silence to a little door that opened at their approach. The two men in red stopped on either side of this door. Howard and Graham passed in, and Graham, glancing back, saw the white-robed Council still standing in a close group and looking at him. Then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, and for the first time since his awakening he was in silence. The floor, even, was noiseless to his feet.\r\n\r\nHoward opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous chambers furnished in white and green. \u201cWhat Council was that?\u201d began Graham. \u201cWhat were they discussing? What have they to do with me?\u201d Howard closed the door carefully, heaved a huge sigh, and said something in an undertone. He walked slantingways across the room and turned, blowing out his cheeks again. \u201cUgh!\u201d he grunted, a man relieved.\r\n\r\nGraham stood regarding him.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must understand,\u201d began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham\u2019s eyes, \u201cthat our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of fact\u2014it is a case of compound interest partly\u2014your small fortune, and the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you\u2014and certain other beginnings\u2014have become very considerable. And in other ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of significance\u2014of very considerable significance\u2014involved in the world\u2019s affairs.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have grave social troubles.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThings have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to seclude you here.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cKeep me prisoner!\u201d exclaimed Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWell\u2014to ask you to keep in seclusion.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham turned on him. \u201cThis is strange!\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo harm will be done you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo harm!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut you must be kept here\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhile I learn my position, I presume.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPrecisely.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cVery well then. Begin. Why harm<\/i>?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNot now.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is too long a story, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAll the more reason I should begin at once. You say I am a person of importance. What was that shouting I heard? Why is a great multitude shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in white in that huge council chamber?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAll in good time, Sire,\u201d said Howard. \u201cBut not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening\u2014no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat council?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Council you saw.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham made a petulant movement. \u201cThis is not right,\u201d he said. \u201cI should be told what is happening.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must wait. Really you must wait.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham sat down abruptly. \u201cI suppose since I have waited so long to resume life,\u201d he said, \u201cthat I must wait a little longer.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is better,\u201d said Howard. \u201cYes, that is much better. And I must leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the Council.... I am sorry.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.\r\n\r\nGraham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly, made the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remained sitting for some time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of chambers and passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed through these strange ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men beneath the colossal Atlas, Howard\u2019s mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind\u2014a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied\u2014of some unprecedented importance and opportunity. What had he to do? And this room\u2019s secluded silence was eloquent of imprisonment!\r\n\r\nIt came into Graham\u2019s mind with irresistible conviction that this series of magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.\r\n\r\nPresently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of the two small rooms in which he found himself.\r\n\r\nIn a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but pleasing manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment he did not perceive this was himself.\r\n\r\nA flash of laughter came with the recognition. \u201cTo call on old Warming like this!\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cand make him take me out to lunch!\u201d\r\n\r\nThen he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few familiar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his amusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died many score of years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly; he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a white consternation.\r\n\r\nThe tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge fagade of that wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes came back clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councillors in white. He felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual, pitifully conspicuous. And all about him, the world was\u2014strange<\/i>.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER VII. \u2014 IN THE SILENT ROOMS<\/h2>\r\nPresently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived, was high, and its ceiling dome shaped, with an oblong aperture in the centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vanes seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As these vanes sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.\r\n\r\nThis drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows on the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?\r\n\r\nAnd another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole city uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. \u201cThe world has changed indeed,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nHe observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so.\r\n\r\nThe lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed like Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain of the words.\r\n\r\n\u201cThi Man huwdbi Kin\u201d forced itself on him as \u201cThe Man who would be King.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPhonetic spelling,\u201d he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. \u201cThe Heart of Darkness\u201d he had never heard of before nor \u201cThe Madonna of the Future\u201d\u2014no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.\r\n\r\nHe puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it.\r\n\r\nOn the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham. \u201cI have worked,\u201d said the man, \u201cbut what have you been doing?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard \u201cwhen the Sleeper wakes,\u201d used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed himself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knew those two people like intimate friends.\r\n\r\nAt last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again.\r\n\r\nIt was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.\r\n\r\nHe started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.\r\n\r\nHe stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. The clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; it had not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the Sleeper. He had to recall precisely what they had said....\r\n\r\nHe walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals of the revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noise of machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the little intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue\u2014black almost, with a dust of little stars....\r\n\r\nHe resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of opening the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. His feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh sensations.\r\n\r\nHe went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled out the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognised what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not go to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? A dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer.\r\n\r\nHe became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour of strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He liked it less as it proceeded.\r\n\r\nHe had a revulsion of feeling. These were no pictures, no idealisations, but photographed realities. He wanted no more of the twenty-second century Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenth century art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung and convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day to replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found the apparatus broken....\r\n\r\nHe struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years of life he had never tried to shape a picture of these coming times. \u201cWe were making the future,\u201d he said, \u201cand hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst of it all?\u201d The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And the systematised sensuality of a class of rich men!\r\n\r\nHe thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had so oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia, no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the ancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of Howard, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What country was he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely \u201cun-English.\u201d His mind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.\r\n\r\nHe prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animal might do. He was very tired, with that feverish exhaustion that does not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to catch some distant echo of the tumults he felt must be proceeding in the city.\r\n\r\nHe began to talk to himself. \u201cTwo hundred and three years!\u201d he said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. \u201cThen I am two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven\u2019t reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. \u2018Tis a great age! Ha ha!\u201d He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving foolishly. \u201cSteady,\u201d he said. \u201cSteady!\u201d\r\n\r\nHis pacing became more regular. \u201cThis new world,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it. Why<\/i>? ... But it is all why<\/i>!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and remember just how it began.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his first thirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most part trivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. His boyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school books and certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salient features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and betrayers, of the decision of this issue and that, and then of his last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again; dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening misery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out of a life that had become intolerable....\r\n\r\nHe reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts in vain. It became an inextricable tangle. He saw the sky through the ventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark recesses of his memory. \u201cI must sleep,\u201d he said. It appeared as a delightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing pain and heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay down and was presently asleep....\r\n\r\nHe was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartments before he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. During that time no one, except Howard, entered the rooms. The marvel of his fate mingled with and in some way minimised the marvel of his survival. He had awakened to mankind it seemed only to be snatched away into this unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and nutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham. He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail he was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the great issues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond the sound-proof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded, as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs in the outer world.\r\n\r\nAnd in those three days Graham\u2019s incessant thoughts went far and wide. All that he had seen, all this elaborate contrivance to prevent him seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possible interpretation of his position he debated\u2014even as it chanced, the right interpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him at last credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of his release arrived, it found him prepared....\r\n\r\nHoward\u2019s bearing went far to deepen Graham\u2019s impression of his own strange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed to admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries became more definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests and difficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened to have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion. \u201cTo explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,\u201d protested Howard.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe thing is this,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou are afraid of something I shall do. In some way I am arbitrator\u2014I might be arbitrator.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is not that. But you have\u2014I may tell you this much\u2014the automatic increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with your eighteenth century notions.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNineteenth century,\u201d corrected Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWith your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every feature of our State.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAm I a fool?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou were never expected to act at all. No one counted on your awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that you were dead\u2014a mere arrest of decay. And\u2014but it is too complex. We dare not suddenly\u2014-while you are still half awake.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt won\u2019t do,\u201d said Graham. \u201cSuppose it is as you say\u2014why am I not being crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom of the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than two days ago, if it is two days, when I awoke?\u201d\r\n\r\nHoward pulled his lip.\r\n\r\n\u201cI am beginning to feel\u2014every hour I feel more clearly\u2014a system of concealment of which you are the face. Is this Council, or committee, or whatever they are, cooking the accounts of my estate? Is that it?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat note of suspicion\u2014\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\n\u201cUgh!\u201d said Graham. \u201cNow, mark my words, it will be ill for those who have put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and more vigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I want to live<\/i>\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cLive<\/i>!\u201d\r\n\r\nHoward\u2019s face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an easy confidential tone.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless. Naturally\u2014an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious that everything you may desire\u2014every desire\u2014every sort of desire ... There may be something. Is there any sort of company?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe paused meaningly.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham thoughtfully. \u201cThere is.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAh! Now<\/i>! We have treated you neglectfully.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe crowds in yonder streets of yours.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat,\u201d said Howard, \u201cI am afraid\u2014But\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him. The implication of Howard\u2019s suggestion was only half evident to Graham. Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of company<\/i>? Would there be any possibilities of gathering from the conversation of this additional person some vague inkling of the struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? He meditated again, and the suggestion took colour. He turned on Howard abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat do you mean by company?\u201d\r\n\r\nHoward raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. \u201cHuman beings,\u201d he said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. \u201cOur social ideas,\u201d he said, \u201chave a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this\u2014by feminine society, for instance. We think it no scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary class, no longer despised\u2014discreet\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stopped dead.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt would pass the time,\u201d said Howard. \u201cIt is a thing I should perhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe indicated the exterior world.\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo<\/i>!\u201d he shouted.\r\n\r\nHe began striding rapidly up and down the room. \u201cEverything you say, everything you do, convinces me\u2014of some great issue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as you call it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense\u2014and Death! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked out that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a multitude\u2014. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses. His gestures had the quality of physical threats.\r\n\r\n\u201cI do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no good purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the consequences. Once I come at my power\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.\r\n\r\n\u201cI take it this is a message to the Council,\u201d said Howard.\r\n\r\nGraham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stun him. It must have shown upon his face; at any rate Howard\u2019s movement was quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the nineteenth century was alone.\r\n\r\nFor a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he flung them down. \u201cWhat a fool I have been!\u201d he said, and gave way to his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses.... For a long time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his anger\u2014because he was afraid of fear.\r\n\r\nPresently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms\u2014new legal forms\u2014of the time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian generation. It was not likely they would be less\u2014humane. Yet they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as chastity?\r\n\r\nHis imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him. The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. \u201cWhy should anything be done to me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf the worst comes to the worst,\u201d he found himself saying at last, \u201cI can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don\u2019t they ask me for it instead of cooping me up?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe returned to his former preoccupation with the Council\u2019s possible intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard\u2019s behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And besides, how could anyone escape from these rooms?\r\n\r\n\u201cHow can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe thought of the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also a Council had said:\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER VIII. \u2014 THE ROOF SPACES<\/h2>\r\nAs the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated and permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby. And Graham, standing underneath, was startled by the sound of a voice.\r\n\r\nHe peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim, the face and shoulders of a man regarding him. Then a dark hand was extended, the swift vane struck it, swung round and beat on with a little brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently.\r\n\r\nGraham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.\r\n\r\nHe remained motionless\u2014his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness. He became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. They came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.\r\n\r\nGraham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He saw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering. Then a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vanes stopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before they touched the floor. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d said a voice.\r\n\r\nGraham stood under the vane. \u201cWho are you?\u201d he whispered.\r\n\r\nFor a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. His face appeared nearly inverted to Graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakes of snow upon it. His arm went up into the darkness holding something unseen. He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his forehead were swollen. He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his position.\r\n\r\nFor several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou were the Sleeper?\u201d said the stranger at last.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat do you want with me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI come from Ostrog, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was towards Graham. He appeared to be listening. Suddenly there was a hasty exclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the sweep of the released fan. And when Graham peered up there was nothing visible but the slowly falling snow.\r\n\r\nIt was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and tremulously excited.\r\n\r\n\u201cWho are you? What do you want?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe want to speak to you, Sire,\u201d said the intruder. \u201cWe want\u2014I can\u2019t hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you\u2014these three days.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIs it rescue?\u201d whispered Graham. \u201cEscape?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes, Sire. If you will.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are my party\u2014the party of the Sleeper?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\nThere was a struggle. The stranger\u2019s arm appeared, and his hand was bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. \u201cStand away from me,\u201d he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and one shoulder at Graham\u2019s feet. The released ventilator whirled noisily. The stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to a bruised shoulder, and with his bright eyes on Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are indeed the Sleeper,\u201d he said. \u201cI saw you asleep. When it was the law that anyone might see you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI am the man who was in the trance,\u201d said Graham. \u201cThey have imprisoned me here. I have been here since I awoke\u2014at least three days.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly at the door, and suddenly left Graham and ran towards it, shouting quick incoherent words. A bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and he began tap, tap, a quick succession of blows upon the hinges. \u201cMind!\u201d cried a voice. \u201cOh!\u201d The voice came from above.\r\n\r\nGraham glanced up, saw the soles of two feet, ducked, was struck on the shoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. He fell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. He knelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him.\r\n\r\n\u201cI did not see you, Sire,\u201d panted the man. He rose and assisted Graham to rise. \u201cAre you hurt, Sire?\u201d he panted. A succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham\u2019s face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat upon the floor.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator. \u201cWho are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cStand back,\u201d said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe want you to come, Sire,\u201d panted the newcomer, and Graham glancing at his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood starting therefrom. \u201cYour people call for you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCome where? My people?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTo the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided\u2014this very day\u2014either to drug or kill you. And everything is ready. The people are drilled, the Wind-Vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearers are with us. We have the halls crowded\u2014shouting. The whole city shouts against the Council. We have arms.\u201d He wiped the blood with his hand. \u201cYour life here is not worth\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut why arms?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind the opening door.\r\n\r\nAs he did so Howard appeared, a little tray in one hand and his heavy face downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the tray tilted side-ways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. He went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of the outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.\r\n\r\n\u201cYour poison!\u201d said a voice in Graham\u2019s ear.\r\n\r\nThen abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights had been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three knelt on the vane. Some dim thing\u2014a ladder\u2014was being lowered through the opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.\r\n\r\nHe had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment. And his people awaited him!\r\n\r\n\u201cI do not understand,\u201d he said. \u201cI trust. Tell me what to do.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man with the cut brow gripped Graham\u2019s arm. \u201cClamber up the ladder,\u201d he whispered. \u201cQuick. They will have heard\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel.\r\n\r\nHe shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Half a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and face and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastly violet white, and then everything was dark again.\r\n\r\nHe saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks.\r\n\r\nAll this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood about him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward.\r\n\r\nBefore his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. \u201cThis way,\u201d said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Graham across the flat roof in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Graham obeyed.\r\n\r\n\u201cMind!\u201d said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. \u201cBetween them and not across them,\u201d said the voice. And, \u201cWe must hurry.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere are the people?\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe people you said awaited me?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe stranger did not answer. He left Graham\u2019s arm as the path grew narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a minute he found himself running. \u201cAre the others coming?\u201d he panted, but received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on. They came to a sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the direction they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. Graham looked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others.\r\n\r\n\u201cCome on!\u201d said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill spinning high in the air. \u201cStoop,\u201d said Graham\u2019s guide, and they avoided an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. \u201cThis way!\u201d and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow, between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. \u201cI will go first,\u201d said the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed. Then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the side once and the gulf was black. For a moment he regretted his flight. He dared not look again, and his brain spun as he waded through the half liquid snow.\r\n\r\nThen out of the gutter they clambered and hurried across a wide flat space damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstable looking substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came to and clambered up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass. Round this they went. Far below a number of people seemed to be dancing, and music filtered through the dome.... Graham fancied he heard a shouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new spurt of haste. They clambered panting to a space of huge windmills, one so vast that only the lower edge of its vanes came rushing into sight and rushed up again and was lost in the night and the snow. They hurried for a time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and came at last above a place of moving platforms like the place into which Graham had looked from the balcony. They crawled across the sloping transparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on hands and knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall.\r\n\r\nFor the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon it all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way to vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. Far below, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he could not move. \u201cCome on!\u201d cried his guide, with terror in his voice. \u201cCome on!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.\r\n\r\nOver the ridge, following his guide\u2019s example, he turned about and slid backward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalanche of snow. While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle deep in slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse.\r\n\r\nThrough the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vast windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels was pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling of extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every point of the compass.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey have missed us already!\u201d cried Graham\u2019s guide in an accent of terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.\r\n\r\nAbove the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared vast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in illimitable vistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate the snowfall they glared.\r\n\r\n\u201cGet on this,\u201d cried Graham\u2019s conductor, and thrust him forward to a long grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly sloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham\u2019s benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it.\r\n\r\n\u201cCome on!\u201d shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the next range of wind-wheels. Graham, recovering from his astonishment, followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture....\r\n\r\nIn a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham\u2019s conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and vanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge support. In another moment Graham was beside him.\r\n\r\nThey cowered panting and stared out.\r\n\r\nThe scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze. Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution, passed upward and downward into the black. And with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey will be chasing us,\u201d cried the leader. \u201cWe are scarcely halfway there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space\u2014at least until it snows more thickly again.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis teeth chattered in his head.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere are the markets?\u201d asked Graham staring out. \u201cWhere are all the people?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe other made no answer.\r\n\r\n\u201cLook<\/i>!\u201d whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.\r\n\r\nThe snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and large and very swift. It came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide wings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rose with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow. And, through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to him, with field glasses. For a second they were clear, then hazy through a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow<\/i>!\u201d cried his companion. \u201cCome!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe pulled Graham\u2019s sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of iron-work beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It extended as far as he could see right and left. It seemed to cut off their progress in either direction.\r\n\r\n\u201cDo as I do,\u201d whispered his guide. He lay down and crawled to the edge, thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung. He seemed to feel for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the gulf. His head reappeared. \u201cIt is a ledge,\u201d he whispered. \u201cIn the dark all the way along. Do as I did.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and peered into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courage neither to go on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felt his guide\u2019s hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding over the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a slushy gutter, impenetrably dark.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis way,\u201d whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel his hands and feet.\r\n\r\nThe gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feet below the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end of a cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and dropping into impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against his guide\u2019s. \u201cStill<\/i>!\u201d whispered the latter very softly.\r\n\r\nHe looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machine gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band of snow-flecked grey-blue sky. In a moment it was hidden again.\r\n\r\n\u201cKeep still; they were just turning.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor awhile both were motionless, then Graham\u2019s companion stood up, and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some indistinct tackle.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\nThe only answer was a faint cry. The man crouched motionless. Graham peered and saw his face dimly. He was staring down the long ribbon of sky, and Graham, following his eyes, saw the flying machine small and faint and remote. Then he saw that the wings spread on either side, that it headed towards them, that every moment it grew larger. It was following the edge of the chasm towards them.\r\n\r\nThe man\u2019s movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into Graham\u2019s hand. Graham could not see them, he ascertained their form by feeling. They were slung by thin cords to the cable. On the cord were hand grips of some soft elastic substance. \u201cPut the cross between your legs,\u201d whispered the guide hysterically, \u201cand grip the holdfasts. Grip tightly, grip!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham did as he was told.\r\n\r\n\u201cJump,\u201d said the voice. \u201cIn heaven\u2019s name, jump!\u201d\r\n\r\nFor one momentous second Graham could not speak. He was glad afterwards that darkness hid his face. He said nothing. He began to tremble violently. He looked sideways at the swift shadow that swallowed up the sky as it rushed upon him.\r\n\r\n\u201cJump! Jump\u2014in God\u2019s name! Or they will have us,\u201d cried Graham\u2019s guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.\r\n\r\nGraham tottered convulsively, gave a sobbing cry, a cry in spite of himself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forward into the pit of that darkness, seated on the cross wood and holding the ropes with the clutch of death. Something cracked, something rapped smartly against a wall. He heard the pulley of the cradle hum on its rope. He heard the aeronauts shout. He felt a pair of knees digging into his back.... He was sweeping headlong through the air, falling through the air. All his strength was in his hands. He would have screamed but he had no breath.\r\n\r\nHe shot into a blinding light that made him grip the tighter. He recognised the great passage with the running ways, the hanging lights and interlacing girders. They rushed upward and by him. He had a momentary impression of a great round mouth yawning to swallow him up.\r\n\r\nHe was in the dark again, falling, falling, gripping with aching hands, and behold! a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. The people! His people! A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt he was travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. He distinguished shouts of \u201cSaved! The Master. He is safe!\u201d The stage rushed up towards him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then\u2014\r\n\r\nHe heard the man clinging behind him shout as if suddenly terrified, and this shout was echoed by a shout from below. He felt that he was no longer gliding along the cable but falling with it. There was a tumult of yells, screams, and cries. He felt something soft against his extended hand, and the impact of a broken fall quivering through his arm....\r\n\r\nHe wanted to be still and the people were lifting him. He believed afterwards he was carried to the platform and given some drink, but he was never sure. He did not notice what became of his guide. When his mind was clear again he was on his feet; eager hands were assisting him to stand. He was in a big alcove, occupying the position that in his previous experience had been devoted to the lower boxes. If this was indeed a theatre.\r\n\r\nA mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a countless multitude. \u201cIt is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Sleeper is with us! The Master\u2014the Owner! The Master is with us. He is safe.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham had a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. He saw no individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of waving arms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering. Across the nearer space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut by the men of the flying machine at its upper end, and had crumpled down into the hall. Men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. But the whole effect was vague, the very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of the voices.\r\n\r\nHe stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him by one arm. \u201cLet me go into a little room,\u201d he said, weeping; \u201ca little room,\u201d and could say no more. A man in black stepped forward, took his disengaged arm. He was aware of officious men opening a door before him. Someone guided him to a seat. He staggered. He sat down heavily and covered his face with his hands; he was trembling violently, his nervous control was at an end. He was relieved of his cloak, he could not remember how; his purple hose he saw were black with wet. People were running about him, things were happening, but for some time he gave no heed to them.\r\n\r\nHe had escaped. A myriad of cries told him that. He was safe. These were the people who were on his side. For a space he sobbed for breath, and then he sat still with his face covered. The air was full of the shouting of innumerable men.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER IX. \u2014 THE PEOPLE MARCH<\/h2>\r\nHe became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon his attention, looked up and discovered this was a dark young man in a yellow garment. He took the dose forthwith, and in a moment he was glowing. A tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder, and pointed to the half open door into the hall. This man was shouting close to his ear and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the great theatre. Behind the man was a girl in a silvery grey robe, whom Graham, even in this confusion, perceived to be beautiful. Her dark eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, were fixed on him, her lips trembled apart. A partially opened door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall, and admitted a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping and shouting that died away and began again, and rose to a thunderous pitch, and so continued intermittently all the time that Graham remained in the little room. He watched the lips of the man in black and gathered that he was making some explanation.\r\n\r\nHe stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.\r\n\r\n\u201cTell me!\u201d he cried. \u201cWho am I? Who am I?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe others came nearer to hear his words. \u201cWho am I?\u201d His eyes searched their faces.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey have told him nothing!\u201d cried the girl.\r\n\r\n\u201cTell me, tell me!\u201d cried Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. \u201cI have been awake three days\u2014a prisoner three days. I judge there is some struggle between a number of people in this city\u2014it is London?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the younger man.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd those who meet in the great hall with the white Atlas? How does it concern me? In some way it has to do with me. Why<\/i>, I don\u2019t know. Drugs? It seems to me that while I have slept the world has gone mad. I have gone mad.... Who are those Councillors under the Atlas? Why should they try to drug me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTo keep you insensible,\u201d said the man in yellow. \u201cTo prevent your interference.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut why<\/i>?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause you<\/i> are the Atlas, Sire,\u201d said the man in yellow. \u201cThe world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could not hear each other shout.\r\n\r\nGraham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard. \u201cThe Council,\u201d he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a name that had struck him. \u201cBut who is Ostrog?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe is the organiser\u2014the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader\u2014in your name.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn my name?\u2014And you? Why is he not here?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe\u2014has deputed us. I am his brother\u2014his half-brother, Lincoln. He wants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him. That is why he has sent. He is at the wind-vane offices directing. The people are marching.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn your name,\u201d shouted the younger man. \u201cThey have ruled, crushed, tyrannised. At last even\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn my name! My name! Master?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder, indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy moustache. \u201cNo one expected you to wake. No one expected you to wake. They were cunning. Damned tyrants! But they were taken by surprise. They did not know whether to drug you, hypnotise you, kill you.\u201d\r\n\r\nAgain the hall dominated everything.\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog is at the wind-vane offices ready\u2014. Even now there is a rumour of fighting beginning.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. \u201cOstrog has it planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the flying stages\u2014. Even now he may be doing that. Then\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThis public theatre,\u201d bawled the man in yellow, \u201cis only a contingent. We have five myriads of drilled men\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have arms,\u201d cried Lincoln. \u201cWe have plans. A leader. Their police have gone from the streets and are massed in the\u2014\u201d (inaudible). \u201cIt is now or never. The Council is rocking\u2014They cannot trust even their drilled men\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHear the people calling to you!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds, now dark and hopeless, now clear and ghastly. He was Master of the Earth, he was a man sodden with thawing snow. Of all his fluctuating impressions the dominant ones presented an antagonism; on the one hand was the White Council, powerful, disciplined, few, the White Council from which he had just escaped; and on the other, monstrous crowds, packed masses of indistinguishable people clamouring his name, hailing him Master. The other side had imprisoned him, debated his death. These shouting thousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him. But why these things should be so he could not understand.\r\n\r\nThe door opened, Lincoln\u2019s voice was swept away and drowned, and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. \u201cShow us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!\u201d was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for \u201cOrder! Silence!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham glanced towards the open doorway, and saw a tall, oblong picture of the hall beyond, a waving, incessant confusion of crowded, shouting faces, men and women together, waving pale blue garments, extended hands. Many were standing, one man in rags of dark brown, a gaunt figure, stood on the seat and waved a black cloth. He met the wonder and expectation of the girl\u2019s eyes. What did these people expect from him. He was dimly aware that the tumult outside had changed its character, was in some way beating, marching. His own mind, too, changed. For a space he did not recognise the influence that was transforming him. But a moment that was near to panic passed. He tried to make audible inquiries of what was required of him.\r\n\r\nLincoln was shouting in his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music of an organ, a woven texture of sounds, full of trumpets, full of flaunting banners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war. And the feet of the people were beating time\u2014tramp, tramp.\r\n\r\nHe was urged towards the door. He obeyed mechanically. The strength of that chant took hold of him, stirred him, emboldened him. The hall opened to him, a vast welter of fluttering colour swaying to the music.\r\n\r\n\u201cWave your arm to them,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cWave your arm to them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThis,\u201d said a voice on the other side, \u201che must have this.\u201d Arms were about his neck detaining him in the doorway, and a black subtly-folding mantle hung from his shoulders. He threw his arm free of this and followed Lincoln. He perceived the girl in grey close to him, her face lit, her gesture onward. For the instant she became to him, flushed and eager as she was, an embodiment of the song. He emerged in the alcove again. Incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon his appearing, and flashed up into a foam of shouting. Guided by Lincoln\u2019s hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the people.\r\n\r\nThe hall was a vast and intricate space\u2014galleries, balconies, broad spaces of amphitheatral steps, and great archways. Far away, high up, seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity. The whole multitude was swaying in congested masses. Individual figures sprang out of the tumult, impressed him momentarily, and lost definition again. Close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman, carried by three men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. Next this group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, a great cavity of toothless mouth. A voice called that enigmatical word \u201cOstrog.\u201d All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling song. The multitude were beating time with their feet\u2014marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The green weapons waved, flashed and slanted. Then he saw those nearest to him on a level space before the stage were marching in front of him, passing towards a great archway, shouting \u201cTo the Council!\u201d Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout \u201cMarch!\u201d His mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the archway, shouting \u201cOnward!\u201d They were no longer marking time, they were marching; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. In that host were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering robed bare-armed women, girls. Men and women of the new age! Rich robes, grey rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue. A monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. He perceived a blue-clad negro, a shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tall fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. He noted two Chinamen. A tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth, white clad from top to toe, clambered up towards the platform shouting loyally, and sprang down again and receded, looking backward. Heads, shoulders, hands clutching weapons, all were swinging with those marching cadences.\r\n\r\nFaces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there, eyes met his and passed and vanished. Men gesticulated to him, shouted inaudible personal things. Most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastly white. And disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean. Men and women of the new age! Strange and incredible meeting! As the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages. Men and women mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. The garments waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly.\r\n\r\nTramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln\u2019s pressure he turned towards the archway, walking unconsciously in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture and song, all moved in that direction, the flow of people smote downward until the upturned faces were below the level of his feet. He was aware of a path before him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and Lincoln on his right hand. Attendants intervened, and ever and again blotted out the sight of the multitude to the left. Before him went the backs of the guards in black\u2014three and three and three. He was marched along a little railed way, and crossed above the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath, and shouting up to him. He did not know whither he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER X. \u2014 THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS<\/h2>\r\nHe was no longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.\r\n\r\nThe song roared up to Graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways.\r\n\r\nAbruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on the opposite side of the way seemed deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were empty and shadowy. It came into Graham\u2019s mind that these also should have swarmed with people.\r\n\r\nHe felt a curious emotion\u2014throbbing\u2014very fast! He stopped again. The guards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw anxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had something to do with the lights. He too looked up.\r\n\r\nAt first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply, an isolated phenomenon, having no bearing on the things below. Each huge globe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation.\r\n\r\nGraham became aware that this strange behaviour of the lights had to do with the people below. The appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vivid lights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing with steady swiftness\u2014to leap suddenly back and return reinforced. The song and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of \u201cThe lights!\u201d Voices were crying together one thing. \u201cThe lights!\u201d cried these voices. \u201cThe lights!\u201d He looked down. In this dancing death of the lights the area of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes became purple-white, purple with a reddish glow, flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering myriads of men.\r\n\r\nHe felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, \u201cIt is all right\u2014all right.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his forehead against Lincoln\u2019s and bawled, \u201cWhat is this darkness?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must wait\u2014stop. The people will go on. They will\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHis voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, \u201cSave the Sleeper. Take care of the Sleeper.\u201d A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him as his mind reached out to grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. There were suddenly a succession of piercing screams close beneath them.\r\n\r\nA voice bawled in his ear, \u201cThe red police,\u201d and receded forthwith beyond his questions.\r\n\r\nA crackling sound grew to distinctness, and therewith a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant\u2019s dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain.\r\n\r\nA glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething expanse of struggling men confused his mind. A shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. He looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung far overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness back.\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of red a little way along the vista caught his eye. He saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed on the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edge of the contest, and other heads replaced them, the little flashes from the green weapons became little jets of smoky grey while the light lasted.\r\n\r\nAbruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness once more, a tumultuous mystery.\r\n\r\nHe felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the gallery. Someone was shouting\u2014it might be at him. He was too confused to hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a number of people blundered past him. It seemed to him that his guards were struggling with one another.\r\n\r\nSuddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again, and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer; its apex was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle. And raising his eyes Graham saw that a number of these men had also appeared now in the darkened lower galleries of the opposite building, and were firing over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning of these things dawned upon him. The march of the people had come upon an ambush at the very outset. Thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights they were now being attacked by the red police. Then he became aware that he was standing alone, that his guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in the direction along which he had come before the darkness fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly, running back towards him. A great shouting came from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red-clad men. And they were pointing over to him and shouting. \u201cThe Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!\u201d shouted a multitude of throats.\r\n\r\nSomething struck the wall above his head. He looked up at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felt his arm gripped. Then, pat, pat; he had been missed twice.\r\n\r\nFor a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden, everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.\r\n\r\nLincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery. \u201cBefore the next light!\u201d he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham\u2019s instinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis of his incredulous astonishment. He became for a time the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare came close on its predecessors. With it came a great shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The white fagade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council attempting to recapture him.\r\n\r\nLucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that the whole opposite fagade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was crowded and bawling and firing at him.\r\n\r\nDown went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt the writhing body.\r\n\r\nIn another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a black passage, and incontinently someone, coming, it may be, in a transverse direction, blundered violently into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. He heard shouts of \u201cThey are coming!\u201d and a muffled cry close to him. His foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under foot. He heard shouts of \u201cThe Sleeper!\u201d but he was too confused to speak. He heard the green weapons crackling. For a space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrust and pressed back and writhed in the pressure, kicked presently against a step, and found himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces all about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare. One face, a young man\u2019s, was very near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time it was but a passing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back to him in his dreams. For this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot and was already dead.\r\n\r\nA fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Graham that he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed back across the lower area of the great theatre. This time the picture was livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through the people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden idea came to him, and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came to an end.\r\n\r\nIn a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatre walls.\r\n\r\nHe rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceived that a number of black-badged men were all about him firing at the reds below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames. Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the veil of darkness fell again.\r\n\r\nA young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. \u201cHullo!\u201d he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching Sleeper\u2019s face.\r\n\r\nHe stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and shouting, \u201cTo hell with the Council!\u201d was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham that the half of this man\u2019s neck had vanished. A drop of moisture fell on Graham\u2019s cheek. The green weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ran for his life until a step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet, turned up the gangway and ran on.\r\n\r\nWhen the sixth star glared he was already close to the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a corner into absolute night again. He was knocked sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one thought now was their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly, lost ground and then was clear again.\r\n\r\nFor some minutes he was running through the darkness along a winding passage, and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed down a long incline, and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place. Many people were shouting, \u201cThey are coming! The guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of the fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safe in Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!\u201d There were women and children in the crowd as well as men.\r\n\r\nThe crowd converged on an archway, passed through a short throat and emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.... He perceived that he was no longer in a crowd. He stopped near the highest step. Before him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little kiosk. He went up to this and, stopping in the shadow of its eaves, looked about him panting.\r\n\r\nEverything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps were a series of platforms of the \u201cways,\u201d now motionless again. The platform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by. From their shouts and voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows.\r\n\r\nFrom very far away down the street he could hear the sound of a struggle. But it was evident to him that this was not the street into which the theatre opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly dropped out of sound and hearing. And they were fighting for him!\r\n\r\nFor a space he was like a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestionably. At that time he had little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge astonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap filled, and he began to comprehend his position.\r\n\r\nIt was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the Silent Rooms. At least he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen \u201cOstrog\u201d as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! \u201cI do not understand,\u201d he cried. \u201cI do not understand!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty of the twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the red-clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black-badged revolutionists before them.\r\n\r\nAt any rate chance had given him a breathing space. He could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. His eye followed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light of day. In a little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing had already dried upon him from the snow.\r\n\r\nHe wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one, accosted by no one\u2014a dark figure among dark figures\u2014the coveted man out of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. Wherever there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he was afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or higher level. And though he came on no more fighting, the whole city stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away from the fighting\u2014so far as he could judge. He went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. After a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at last the streets became deserted. The frontages of the buildings grew plain, and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacant warehouses. Solitude crept upon him\u2014his pace slackened.\r\n\r\nHe became aware of a growing fatigue. At times he would turn aside and sit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways. But a feverish restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle, would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggle on his behalf alone?\r\n\r\nAnd then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake\u2014a roaring and thundering\u2014a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry\u2014a series of gigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, and in the distance were shouts and running. He, too, was startled to an aimless activity, and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back.\r\n\r\nA man came running towards him. His self-control returned. \u201cWhat have they blown up?\u201d asked the man breathlessly. \u201cThat was an explosion,\u201d and before Graham could speak he had hurried on.\r\n\r\nThe great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into \u201cHere is Eadhamite,\u201d or, \u201cLabour Bureau\u2014Little Side\u201d? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!\r\n\r\nThe perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again. And that fact realised, he had been prepared. His mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. And no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. Would he, after all, be killed before he saw? It might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him.\r\n\r\nHe became fearful of corners. It seemed to him that there was safety in concealment. Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned? At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there.\r\n\r\nHe squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone. Suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream. It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless. Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this saner world regard him as Owner and Master?\r\n\r\nSo he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home. But fact takes no heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a black banner tramped athwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is no dream,\u201d he said, \u201cno dream.\u201d And he bowed his face upon his hands.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XI. \u2014 THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING<\/h2>\r\nHe was startled by a cough close at hand.\r\n\r\nHe turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.\r\n\r\n\u201cHave ye any news?\u201d asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man.\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated. \u201cNone,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cI stay here till the lights come again,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThese blue scoundrels are everywhere\u2014everywhere.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s answer was inarticulate assent. He tried to see the old man but the darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin.\r\n\r\n\u201cDark and damnable,\u201d said the old man suddenly. \u201cDark and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s hard,\u201d ventured Graham. \u201cThat\u2019s hard on you.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDarkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad. War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don\u2019t they bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I fell over a dead man.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re safer with company,\u201d said the old man, \u201cif it\u2019s company of the right sort,\u201d and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came towards Graham.\r\n\r\nApparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if relieved to be no longer alone. \u201cEh!\u201d he said, \u201cbut this is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there\u2014men, strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: \u201cGod knows where they are to-night.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance. Again the old man\u2019s voice ended the pause.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis Ostrog will win,\u201d he said. \u201cHe will win. And what the world will be like under him no one can tell. My sons are under the wind-vanes, all three. One of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a while. His mistress! We\u2019re not common people. Though they\u2019ve sent me to wander to-night and take my chance.... I knew what was going on. Before most people. But this darkness! And to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!\u201d\r\n\r\nHis wheezy breathing could be heard.\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog!\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe greatest Boss the world has ever seen,\u201d said the voice.\r\n\r\nGraham ransacked his mind. \u201cThe Council has few friends among the people,\u201d he hazarded.\r\n\r\n\u201cFew friends. And poor ones at that. They\u2019ve had their time. Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And Ostrog\u2014. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog\u2014Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his rages at the time\u2014he was terrible. Heaven save them! For nothing on earth can now he has raised the Labour Companies upon them. No one else would have dared. All the blue canvas armed and marching! He will go through with it. He will go through.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe was silent for a little while. \u201cThis Sleeper,\u201d he said, and stopped.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came close. \u201cThe real Sleeper\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cDied years ago.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said Graham, sharply.\r\n\r\n\u201cYears ago. Died. Years ago.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so!\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cI do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who\u2019s woke up\u2014they changed in the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn\u2019t tell all I know. I mustn\u2019t tell all I know.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him. \u201cI don\u2019t know the ones that put him to sleep\u2014that was before my time\u2014but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again. It was ten to one\u2014wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog\u2019s way.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham was so astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man\u2019s senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed awhile and spat, and then the piping, reminiscent voice resumed:\r\n\r\n\u201cThe first time they rejected him. I\u2019ve followed it all.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cRejected whom?\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe Sleeper?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSleeper? No<\/i>. Ostrog. He was terrible\u2014terrible! And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were\u2014not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city\u2019s his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work\u2014the workers cut each other\u2019s throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies! Robbing! Darkness! Such a thing hasn\u2019t been this gross of years. Eh!\u2014but \u2018tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! It\u2019s ill.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDid you say\u2014there had not been\u2014what?\u2014for a gross of years?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh?\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\nThe old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat this a third time. \u201cFighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools bawling freedom and the like,\u201d said the old man. \u201cNot in all my life has there been that. These are like the old days\u2014for sure\u2014when the Paris people broke out\u2014three gross of years ago. That\u2019s what I mean hasn\u2019t been. But it\u2019s the world\u2019s way. It had to come back. I know. I know. This five years Ostrog has been working, and there has been trouble and trouble, and hunger and threats and high talk and arms. Blue canvas and murmurs. No one safe. Everything sliding and slipping. And now here we are! Revolt and fighting, and the Council come to its end.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are rather well-informed on these things,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cI know what I hear. It isn\u2019t all Babble Machine with me.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. \u201cAnd you are certain this Ostrog\u2014you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself\u2014because he was not elected to the Council?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEveryone knows that, I should think,\u201d said the old man. \u201cExcept\u2014just fools. He meant to be master somehow. In the Council or not. Everyone who knows anything knows that. And here we are with dead bodies lying in the dark! Why, where have you been if you haven\u2019t heard all about the trouble between Ostrog and the Verneys? And what do you think the troubles are about? The Sleeper? Eh? You think the Sleeper\u2019s real and woke of his own accord\u2014eh?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful,\u201d said Graham. \u201cLots of things that have happened\u2014especially of late years\u2014. If I was the Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn\u2019t know less about them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh!\u201d said the voice. \u201cOld, are you? You don\u2019t sound so very old! But it\u2019s not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life\u2014truly. But these notorious things! But you\u2019re not so old as me\u2014not nearly so old as me. Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I\u2019m young\u2014for so old a man. Maybe you\u2019re old for so young.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d said Graham. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve a queer history. I know very little. And history! Practically I know no history. The Sleeper and Julius Caesar are all the same to me. It\u2019s interesting to hear you talk of these things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI know a few things,\u201d said the old man. \u201cI know a thing or two. But\u2014. Hark!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe two men became silent, listening. There was a heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. The passers-by stopped, shouted to one another. The old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man who passed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. None knew what had happened.\r\n\r\nHe returned to the seat and found the old man muttering vague interrogations in an undertone. For a while they said nothing to one another.\r\n\r\nThe sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed Graham\u2019s imagination. Was this old man right, was the report of the people right, and were the revolutionaries winning? Or were they all in error, and were the red guards driving all before them? At any time the flood of warfare might pour into this silent quarter of the city and seize upon him again. It behoved him to learn all he could while there was time. He turned suddenly to the old man with a question and left it unsaid. But his motion moved the old man to speech again.\r\n\r\n\u201cEh! but how things work together!\u201d said the old man. \u201cThis Sleeper that all the fools put their trust in! I\u2019ve the whole history of it\u2014I was always a good one for histories. When I was a boy\u2014I\u2019m that old\u2014I used to read printed books. You\u2019d hardly think it. Likely you\u2019ve seen none\u2014they rot and dust so\u2014and the Sanitary Company burns them to make ashlarite. But they were convenient in their dirty way. One learnt a lot. These new-fangled Babble Machines\u2014they don\u2019t seem new-fangled to you, eh?\u2014they\u2019re easy to hear, easy to forget. But I\u2019ve traced all the Sleeper business from the first.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will scarcely believe it,\u201d said Graham slowly, \u201cI\u2019m so ignorant\u2014I\u2019ve been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my circumstances have been so odd\u2014I know nothing of this Sleeper\u2019s history. Who was he?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh!\u201d said the old man. \u201cI know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There\u2019s the old things they had, those brown things\u2014silver photographs\u2014still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago\u2014a gross and a half of years.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSet on a playful woman, poor soul,\u201d said Graham softly to himself, and then aloud, \u201cYes\u2014well go on.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads\u2014the first Eadhamite roads. But surely you\u2019ve heard? No? Why? He bought all the patent rights and made a big company. In those days there were grosses of grosses of separate businesses and business companies. Grosses of grosses! His roads killed the railroads\u2014the old things\u2014in two dozen years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn\u2019t want to break up his great property or let in shareholders, he left it all to the Sleeper, and put it under a Board of Trustees that he had picked and trained. He knew then the Sleeper wouldn\u2019t wake, that he would go on sleeping, sleeping till he died. He knew that quite well! And plump! a man in the United States, who had lost two sons in a boat accident, followed that up with another great bequest. His trustees found themselves with a dozen myriads of lions\u2019-worth or more of property at the very beginning.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat was his name?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGraham.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo\u2014I mean\u2014that American\u2019s.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIsbister.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIsbister!\u201d cried Graham. \u201cWhy, I don\u2019t even know the name.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOf course not,\u201d said the old man. \u201cOf course not. People don\u2019t learn much in the schools nowadays. But I know all about him. He was a rich American who went from England, and he left the Sleeper even more than Warming. How he made it? That I don\u2019t know. Something about pictures by machinery. But he made it and left it, and so the Council had its start. It was just a council of trustees at first.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd how did it grow?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh!\u2014but you\u2019re not up to things. Money attracts money\u2014and twelve brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. They grew\u2014they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the Sleeper\u2019s estate under double names and company titles and all that. The Council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper they bought. If you listen to the old stories you will see the Council growing and growing. Billions and billions of lions at last\u2014the Sleeper\u2019s estate. And all growing out of a whim\u2014out of this Warming\u2019s will, and an accident to Isbister\u2019s sons.\r\n\r\n\u201cMen are strange,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThe strange thing to me is how the Council worked together so long. As many as twelve. But they worked in cliques from the first. And they\u2019ve slipped back. In my young days speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We didn\u2019t think they could do wrong. We didn\u2019t know of their women and all that! Or else I\u2019ve got wiser.\r\n\r\n\u201cMen are strange,\u201d said the old man. \u201cHere are you, young and ignorant, and me\u2014sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before getting\u2014explaining it all to you short and clear.\r\n\r\n\u201cSevendy,\u201d he said, \u201csevendy, and I hear and see\u2014hear better than I see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of things. Sevendy!\r\n\r\n\u201cLife is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him long before he\u2019d pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control. I\u2019ve seen many changes. Eh! I\u2019ve worn the blue. And at last I\u2019ve come to see this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heaps on the ways. And all his doing! All his doing!\u201d\r\n\r\nHis voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.\r\n\r\nGraham thought. \u201cLet me see,\u201d he said, \u201cif I have it right.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. \u201cThe Sleeper has been asleep\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cChanged,\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper\u2019s property grew in the hands of Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of the world. The Twelve Trustees\u2014by virtue of this property have become masters of the world. Because they are the paying power\u2014just as the old English Parliament used to be\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh!\u201d said the old man. \u201cThat\u2019s so\u2014that\u2019s a good comparison. You\u2019re not so\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd now this Ostrog\u2014has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the Sleeper\u2014whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt would wake again\u2014raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the Council, after all these years.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe old man endorsed this statement with a cough. \u201cIt\u2019s strange,\u201d he said, \u201cto meet a man who learns these things for the first time to-night.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAye,\u201d said Graham, \u201cit\u2019s strange.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHave you been in a Pleasure City?\u201d said the old man. \u201cAll my life I\u2019ve longed\u2014\u201d He laughed. \u201cEven now,\u201d he said, \u201cI could enjoy a little fun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow.\u201d He mumbled a sentence Graham did not understand.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Sleeper\u2014when did he awake?\u201d said Graham suddenly.\r\n\r\n\u201cThree days ago.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere is he?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog has him. He escaped from the Council not four hours ago. My dear sir, where were you at the time? He was in the hall of the markets\u2014where the fighting has been. All the city was screaming about it. All the Babble Machines. Everywhere it was shouted. Even the fools who speak for the Council were admitting it. Everyone was rushing off to see him\u2014everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even then! But you\u2019re joking! Surely you\u2019re pretending. It was to stop the shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that they turned off the electricity\u2014and put this damned darkness upon us. Do you mean to say\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI had heard the Sleeper was rescued,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut\u2014to come back a minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe won\u2019t let him go,\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSo all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn\u2019t a thousand things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell you? In a way I\u2019m a sort of relation of Ostrog\u2019s. A sort of relation. Through my daughter-in-law.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose there\u2019s no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose he\u2019s certain to be a puppet\u2014in Ostrog\u2019s hands or the Council\u2019s, as soon as the struggle is over.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn Ostrog\u2019s hands\u2014certainly. Why shouldn\u2019t he be a puppet? Look at his position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he want to assert himself?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat are these Pleasure Cities?\u201d said Graham, abruptly.\r\n\r\nThe old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of Graham\u2019s words, he nudged him violently. \u201cThat\u2019s too<\/i> much,\u201d said he. \u201cYou\u2019re poking fun at an old man. I\u2019ve been suspecting you know more than you pretend.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps I do,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut no! why should I go on acting? No, I do not know what a Pleasure City is.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe old man laughed in an intimate way.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is more, I do not know how to read your letters, I do not know what money you use, I do not know what foreign countries there are. I do not know where I am. I cannot count. I do not know where to get food, nor drink, nor shelter.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCome, come,\u201d said the old man, \u201cif you had a glass of drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI want you to tell me all these things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun.\u201d A withered hand caressed Graham\u2019s arm for a moment. \u201cSilk. Well, well! But, all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He\u2019ll have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He\u2019s a queer looking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I\u2019ve got tickets and been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this substitute used to be. Yellow. But he\u2019ll get fed up. It\u2019s a queer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he\u2019ll be sent to Capri. It\u2019s the best fun for a greener.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. \u201cThe luck of it, the luck of it! All my life I\u2019ve been in London, hoping to get my chance.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut you don\u2019t know that the Sleeper died,\u201d said Graham, suddenly.\r\n\r\nThe old man made him repeat his words.\r\n\r\n\u201cMen don\u2019t live beyond ten dozen. It\u2019s not in the order of things,\u201d said the old man. \u201cI\u2019m not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham became angry with the old man\u2019s assurance. \u201cWhether you are a fool or not,\u201d he said, \u201cit happens you are wrong about the Sleeper.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEh?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven\u2019t told you before, but I will tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHow do you know? I thought you didn\u2019t know anything\u2014not even about Pleasure Cities.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham paused.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know,\u201d said the old man. \u201cHow are you to know? It\u2019s very few men\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI am<\/i> the Sleeper.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe had to repeat it.\r\n\r\nThere was a brief pause. \u201cThere\u2019s a silly thing to say, sir, if you\u2019ll excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this,\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\nGraham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.\r\n\r\n\u201cI was saying I was the Sleeper. That years and years ago I did, indeed, fall asleep, in a little stone-built village, in the days when there were hedgerows, and villages, and inns, and all the countryside cut up into little pieces, little fields. Have you never heard of those days? And it is I\u2014I who speak to you\u2014who awakened again these four days since.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cFour days since!\u2014the Sleeper! But they\u2019ve got<\/i> the Sleeper. They have him and they won\u2019t let him go. Nonsense! You\u2019ve been talking sensibly enough up to now. I can see it as though I was there. There will be Lincoln like a keeper just behind him; they won\u2019t let him go about alone. Trust them. You\u2019re a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why you have been clipping your words so oddly, but\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you\u2019re telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What\u2019s your game? And besides, we\u2019ve been talking of the Sleeper.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stood up. \u201cListen,\u201d he said. \u201cI am the Sleeper.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2019re an odd man,\u201d said the old man, \u201cto sit here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s exasperation fell to laughter. \u201cIt is preposterous,\u201d he cried. \u201cPreposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I\u2014in this damned twilight\u2014I never knew a dream in twilight before\u2014an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I am myself, and meanwhile\u2014Ugh!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man was pursuing him. \u201cEh! but don\u2019t go!\u201d cried the old man. \u201cI\u2019m an old fool, I know. Don\u2019t go. Don\u2019t leave me in all this darkness.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret flashed into his mind.\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to offend you\u2014disbelieving you,\u201d said the old man coming near. \u201cIt\u2019s no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases you. \u2018Tis a foolish trick\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.\r\n\r\nFor a time he heard the old man\u2019s hobbling pursuit and his wheezy cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him no more.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XII. \u2014 OSTROG<\/h2>\r\nGraham could now take a clearer view of his position. For a long time yet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of this Ostrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. One thing was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt had succeeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance. But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of his recapture by the Council.\r\n\r\nPresently a man stopped before him. \u201cHave you heard?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo!\u201d said Graham, starting.\r\n\r\n\u201cNear a dozand,\u201d said the man, \u201ca dozand men!\u201d and hurried on.\r\n\r\nA number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and shouting: \u201cCapitulated! Given up!\u201d \u201cA dozand of men.\u201d \u201cTwo dozand of men.\u201d \u201cOstrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!\u201d These cries receded, became indistinct.\r\n\r\nOther shouting men followed. For a time his attention was absorbed in the fragments of speech he heard. He had a doubt whether all were speaking English. Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like \u201cnigger\u201d dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He dared accost no one with questions. The impression the people gave him jarred altogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man\u2019s faith in Ostrog. It was only slowly he could bring himself to believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of the Council, that the Council which had pursued him with such power and vigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict. And if that was so, how did it affect him? Several times he hesitated on the verge of fundamental questions. Once he turned and walked for a long way after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable to master confidence to address him.\r\n\r\nIt was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the \u201cwind-vane offices\u201d whatever the \u201cwind-vane offices\u201d might be. His first enquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towards Westminster. His second led to the discovery of a short cut in which he was speedily lost. He was told to leave the ways to which he had hitherto confined himself\u2014knowing no other means of transit\u2014and to plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of a cross-way. Thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these an ambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking in a strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow of speech with the drifting corpses of English Words therein, the dialect of the latter-day vile. Then another voice drew near, a girl\u2019s voice singing, \u201ctralala tralala.\u201d She spoke to Graham, her English touched with something of the same quality. She professed to have lost her sister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of him and laughed. But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseen again.\r\n\r\nThe sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking excitedly. \u201cThey have surrendered!\u201d \u201cThe Council! Surely not the Council!\u201d \u201cThey are saying so in the Ways.\u201d The passage seemed wider. Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people were stirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. \u201cStrike straight across,\u201d said a woman\u2019s voice. He left his guiding wall, and in a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of glass. Graham\u2019s eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vista with tables on either side. He went down this. At one or two of the tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There were people then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a meal in spite of social convulsion and darkness. Far off and high up he presently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. As he approached this, a black edge came up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and found himself in a gallery. He heard a sobbing, and found two scared little girls crouched by a railing. These children became silent at the near sound of feet. He tried to console them, but they were very still until he left them. Then as he receded he could hear them sobbing again.\r\n\r\nPresently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wide opening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the blackness into a street of moving ways again. Along this a disorderly swarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the song of the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flared creating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice puzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer he could understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices in Westminster, but the way was easy to follow.\r\n\r\nWhen at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices it seemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along the Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration of the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council must already be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to his ears.\r\n\r\nThe re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless intention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.\r\n\r\nFor a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and weary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in his cause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by some moving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite of his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his approaching it. From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it conveyed news of the fighting about the Council House. Ignorance and indecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. For a time he could not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken fagade of this place. He made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people, until he realised that the descending staircase of the central way led to the interior of the buildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowding in the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reach it. And even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hour of vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before he could get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eager to see him. His story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser for that, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply to have news of extraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he would not say. They sent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited in a little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last came Lincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorway scrutinising Graham, then rushed forward effusively.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d he cried. \u201cIt is you. And you are not dead!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham made a brief explanation.\r\n\r\n\u201cMy brother is waiting,\u201d explained Lincoln. \u201cHe is alone in the wind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted\u2014and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them there<\/i>\u2014or he would have come to you.\u201d\r\n\r\nThey ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed a great hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered a comparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and a large oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall. There Lincoln left Graham for a space, and he remained alone without understanding the smoky shapes that drove slowly across this disc.\r\n\r\nHis attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It was cheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a roaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound heard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room was a noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain was running over the teeth of a wheel.\r\n\r\nThen he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. \u201cIt is Ostrog!\u201d he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then everything was still again.\r\n\r\nPresently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footsteps of some one person detached itself from the other sounds, and drew near, firm, evenly measured steps. The curtain lifted slowly. A tall, white-haired man, clad in garments of cream-coloured silk, appeared, regarding Graham from under his raised arm.\r\n\r\nFor a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it and stood before it. Graham\u2019s first impression was of a very broad forehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquiline nose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over the eyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted the upright bearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feet instinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regarding each other.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are Ostrog?\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cI am Ostrog.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Boss?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSo I am called.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham felt the inconvenience of the silence. \u201cI have to thank you chiefly, I understand, for my safety,\u201d he said presently.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe were afraid you were killed,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cOr sent to sleep again\u2014for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret\u2014the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham told him briefly.\r\n\r\nOstrog listened in silence.\r\n\r\nHe smiled faintly. \u201cDo you know what I was doing when they came to tell me you had come?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHow can I guess?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPreparing your double.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMy double?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA man as like you as we could find. We were going to hypnotise him, to save him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of this revolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Even now a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouring to see you. They do not trust.... You know, of course\u2014something of your position?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cVery little,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is like this.\u201d Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned. \u201cYou are absolute owner,\u201d he said, \u201cof the world. You are King of the Earth. Your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are the figure-head, the popular symbol of government. This White Council, the Council of Trustees as it is called\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI have heard the vague outline of these things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI wondered.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI came upon a garrulous old man.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI see.... Our masses\u2014the word comes from your days\u2014you know, of course, that we still have masses\u2014regard you as our actual ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented\u2014the masses all over the earth\u2014with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness\u2014the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms\u2014when your waking came. Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunely.\u201d He smiled. \u201cThe public mind, making no allowance for your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing to you, and\u2014Flash!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show that he understood.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Council muddled\u2014quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI see. I see. And now\u2014we win?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe win. Indeed we win. To-night, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struck everywhere. The wind-vane people, the Labour Company and its millions, burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeroplanes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All the city rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all the public services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red police. You were rescued, and their own police of the ways\u2014not half of them could be massed at the Council House\u2014have been broken up, disarmed or killed. All London is ours\u2014now. Only the Council House remains.\r\n\r\n\u201cHalf of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in that foolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lost you. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off from the Council House there. Truly to-night has been a night of victory. Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago\u2014the White Council ruled as it has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years, and then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there, suddenly\u2014So!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI am very ignorant,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI suppose\u2014I do not clearly understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where is the Council? Where is the fight?\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.\r\n\r\nThen he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, had assumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strange unfamiliar scene.\r\n\r\nAt the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be. It was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear. Across the picture, and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoter view, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then he perceived that the rows of great wind-wheels he saw, the wide intervals, the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he had fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of red figures marching across an open space between files of men in black, and realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the upper surface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judged that this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, but that matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of red figures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of the picture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that the picture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn a moment you will see the fighting,\u201d said Ostrog at his elbow. \u201cThose fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of London\u2014all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have disappeared.\u201d\r\n\r\nSomething out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggested a man. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept across the oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picture was clear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among the wind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out little smoky flashes. They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating\u2014it might be they were shouting, but of that the picture told nothing. They and the wind-wheels passed slowly and steadily across the field of the mirror.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201ccomes the Council House,\u201d and slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered Graham\u2019s attention. Soon it was no longer an edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clustering edifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid winter sky. Gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers and girders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over these vestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering, leaping, swarming.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is the Council House,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cTheir last stronghold. And the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the buildings all about them\u2014to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It shattered half the brittle glass in the city.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white building. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods. And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clothed defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashes illuminated the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Graham that an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, but then he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.\r\n\r\nAnd not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening in the world!\r\n\r\nLooking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across the centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building was surrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe in concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to isolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that huge downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvised mortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He was more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, the distribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contest that had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It was no tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but a splendidly organised coup d'itat<\/i>. Ostrog\u2019s grasp of details was astonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot of black and red specks that crawled amidst these places.\r\n\r\nHe stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showed the room whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins the course of his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutter ran, and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine. The rest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. He looked again at the Council House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right a hillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant, was gliding into view.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd the Council is really overthrown?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cOverthrown,\u201d said Ostrog.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd I\u2014. Is it indeed true that I\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are Master of the World.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut that white flag\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is the flag of the Council\u2014the flag of the Rule of the World. It will fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their last frantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of these men will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are reviving the ancient arts. We are casting guns.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut\u2014help. Is this city the world?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPractically this is all they have left to them of their empire. Abroad the cities have either revolted with us or wait the issue. Your awakening has perplexed them, paralysed them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut haven\u2019t the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting with them?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with us. They wouldn\u2019t take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would not stir against us. We had<\/i> to get a pull with the aeronauts. Quite half were with us, and the others knew it. Directly they knew you had got away, those looking for you dropped. We killed the man who shot at you\u2014an hour ago. And we occupied the flying stages at the outset in every city we could, and so stopped and captured the greater aeroplanes, and as for the little flying machines that turned out\u2014for some did\u2014we kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council House. If they dropped they couldn\u2019t rise again, because there\u2019s no clear space about there for them to get up. Several we have smashed, several others have dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to the Continent to find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out. Most of these men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out of harm\u2019s way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn\u2019t a very attractive prospect. There\u2019s no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe laughed and turned to the oval reflection again to show Graham what he meant by flying stages. Even the four nearer ones were remote and obscured by a thin morning haze. But Graham could perceive they were very vast structures, judged even by the standard of the things about them.\r\n\r\nAnd then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders were no longer firing.\r\n\r\nSo, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw the closing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of his rule. With a quality of startling discovery it came to him that this was his world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was no spectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whatever life was still before him, lay all his duties and dangers and responsibilities. He turned with fresh questions. Ostrog began to answer them, and then broke off abruptly. \u201cBut these things I must explain more fully later. At present there are\u2014duties. The people are coming by the moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city\u2014the markets and theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. They are clamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. Paris, New York, Chicago, Denver, Capri\u2014thousands of cities are up and in a tumult, undecided, and clamouring to see you. They have clamoured that you should be awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcely believe\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut surely\u2014I can\u2019t go ...\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog answered from the other side of the room, and the picture on the oval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again. \u201cThere are kineto-telephoto-graphs,\u201d he said. \u201cAs you bow to the people here\u2014all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course\u2014not like this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd there is an optical contrivance we shall use,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201cused by some of the posturers and women dancers. It may be novel to you. You stand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnified image of you thrown on a screen\u2014so that even the furtherest man in the remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. \u201cWhat is the population of London?\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cEight and twaindy myriads.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEight and what?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMore than thirty-three millions.\u201d\r\n\r\nThese figures went beyond Graham\u2019s imagination.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will be expected to say something,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cNot what you used to call a Speech, but what our people call a word\u2014just one sentence, six or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest\u2014\u2018I have awakened and my heart is with you.\u2019 That is the sort of thing they want.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat was that?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201c\u2018I am awakened and my heart is with you.\u2019 And bow\u2014bow royally. But first we must get you black robes\u2014for black is your colour. Do you mind? And then they will disperse to their homes.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated. \u201cI am in your hands,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nOstrog was clearly of that opinion. He thought for a moment, turned to the curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants. Almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robe Graham had worn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it about his shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of a high-pitched bell. Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled the curtain aside and disappeared.\r\n\r\nFor a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to Ostrog\u2019s retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question and answer and of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrog reappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed the room in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Graham\u2019s arm and pointed to the mirror.\r\n\r\n\u201cEven as we turned away,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nGraham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirrored Council House. For a moment he did not understand. And then he perceived that the flagstaff that had carried the white banner was bare.\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you mean\u2014?\u201d he began.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cLook!\u201d and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.\r\n\r\nThe oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are clamorous,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nOstrog kept his grip of Graham\u2019s arm.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have raised the people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have given them arms. For to-day at least their wishes must be law.\u201d\r\n\r\nLincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....\r\n\r\nOn his way to the markets Graham had a transitory glance of a long narrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvas were carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medical purple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towards the markets....\r\n\r\nThe roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. And, arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving of blue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatre near the public markets came into view down a long passage. The picture opened out. He perceived they were entering the great theatre of his first appearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-work of glare and blackness in his flight from the red police. This time he entered it along a gallery at a level high above the stage. The place was now brilliantly lit again. His eyes sought the gangway up which he had fled, but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; nor could he see anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and such like traces of the fight because of the density of the people. Except the stage the whole place was closely packed. Looking down the effect was a vast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned face regarding him. At his appearance with Ostrog the cheering died away, the singing died away, a common interest stilled and unified the disorder. It seemed as though every individual of those myriads was watching him.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XIII. \u2014 THE END OF THE OLD ORDER<\/h2>\r\nSo far as Graham was able to judge, it was near midday when the white banner of the Council fell. But some hours had to elapse before it was possible to effect the formal capitulation, and so after he had spoken his \u201cWord\u201d he retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. The continuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left him inordinately fatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space he sat inert and passive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. He was roused by two medical attendants, come prepared with stimulants to sustain him through the next occasion. After he had taken their drugs and bathed by their advice in cold water, he felt a rapid return of interest and energy, and was presently able and willing to accompany Ostrog through several miles (as it seemed) of passages, lifts, and slides to the closing scene of the White Council\u2019s rule.\r\n\r\nThe way ran deviously through a maze of buildings. They came at last to a passage that curved about, and showed broadening before him an oblong opening, clouds hot with sunset, and the ragged skyline of the ruinous Council House. A tumult of shouts came drifting up to him. In another moment they had come out high up on the brow of the cliff of torn buildings that overhung the wreckage. The vast area opened to Graham\u2019s eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had of it in the oval mirror.\r\n\r\nThis rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the better part of a mile to its outer edge. It was gold lit on the left hand, catching the sunlight, and below and to the right clear and cold in the shadow. Above the shadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset. Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken masses of metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound of trumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; the smashed and blackened masses, the gaunt foundations and ruinous lumber of the fabric that had been destroyed by the Council\u2019s orders, skeletons of girders, Titanic masses of wall, forests of stout pillars. Amongst the sombre wreckage beneath, running water flashed and glistened, and far away across the space, out of the midst of a vague vast mass of buildings, there thrust the twisted end of a water-main, two hundred feet in the air, thunderously spouting a shining cascade. And everywhere great multitudes of people.\r\n\r\nWherever there was space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed along the edges of the circle of ruins. The air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central space.\r\n\r\nThe upper storeys of the Council House seemed deserted, not a human being was visible. Only the drooping banner of the surrender hung heavily against the light. The dead were within the Council House, or hidden by the swarming people, or carried away. Graham could see only a few neglected bodies in gaps and corners of the ruins, and amidst the flowing water.\r\n\r\n\u201cWill you let them see you, Sire?\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey are very anxious to see you.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken verge of wall dropped sheer. He stood looking down, a lonely, tall, black figure against the sky.\r\n\r\nVery slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. And as they did so little bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting through the crowds towards the Council House. He saw little black heads become pink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweep across the space. It occurred to him that he should accord them some recognition. He held up his arm, then pointed to the Council House and dropped his hand. The voices below became unanimous, gathered volume, came up to him as multitudinous wavelets of cheering.\r\n\r\nThe western sky was a pallid bluish green, and Jupiter shone high in the south, before the capitulation was accomplished. Above was a slow insensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below was hurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within those long passages and chambers....\r\n\r\nGuards in black lined the way that the Council would come, and as far as the eye could reach into the hazy blue twilight of the ruins, and swarming now at every possible point in the captured Council House and along the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent buildings, were innumerable people, and their voices, even when they were not cheering, were as the soughing of the sea upon a pebble beach. Ostrog had chosen a huge commanding pile of crushed and overthrown masonry, and on this a stage of timbers and metal girders was being hastily constructed. Its essential parts were complete, but humming and clangorous machinery still glared fitfully in the shadows beneath this temporary edifice.\r\n\r\nThe stage had a small higher portion on which Graham stood with Ostrog and Lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minor officers. A broader lower stage surrounded this quarter-deck, and on this were the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the little green weapons whose very names Graham still did not know. Those standing about him perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarming people in the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the White Council House, whence the Trustees would presently come, and to the gaunt cliffs of ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. The voices of the crowd swelled to a deafening tumult.\r\n\r\nHe saw the Councillors first afar off in the glare of one of the temporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figures in a black archway. In the Council House they had been in darkness. He watched them approaching, drawing nearer past first this blazing electric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd over whom their power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched along beside them. As they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, white, and anxious. He saw them blinking up through the glare about him and Ostrog. He contrasted their strange cold looks in the Hall of Atlas.... Presently he could recognise several of them; the man who had rapped the table at Howard, a burly man with a red beard, and one delicate-featured, short, dark man with a peculiarly long skull. He noted that two were whispering together and looking behind him at Ostrog. Next there came a tall, dark and handsome man, walking downcast. Abruptly he glanced up, his eyes touched Graham for a moment, and passed beyond him to Ostrog. The way that had been made for them was so contrived that they had to march past and curve about before they came to the sloping path of planks that ascended to the stage where their surrender was to be made.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Master, the Master! God and the Master,\u201d shouted the people. \u201cTo hell with the Council!\u201d Graham looked at their multitudes, receding beyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him, white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little group of White Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet stars overhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Could that be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred years gone by\u2014and this as well?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XIV. \u2014 FROM THE CROW\u2019S NEST<\/h2>\r\nAnd so after strange delays and through an avenue of doubt and battle, this man from the nineteenth century came at last to his position at the head of that complex world.\r\n\r\nAt first when he rose from the long deep sleep that followed his rescue and the surrender of the Council, he did not recognise his surroundings. By an effort he gained a clue in his mind, and all that had happened came back to him, at first with a quality of insincerity like a story heard, like something read out of a book. And even before his memories were clear, the exultation of his escape, the wonder of his prominence were back in his mind. He was owner of the world; Master of the Earth. This new great age was in the completest sense his. He no longer hoped to discover his experiences a dream; he became anxious now to convince himself that they were real.\r\n\r\nAn obsequious valet assisted him to dress under the direction of a dignified chief attendant, a little man whose face proclaimed him Japanese, albeit he spoke English like an Englishman. From the latter he learnt something of the state of affairs. Already the revolution was an accepted fact; already business was being resumed throughout the city. Abroad the downfall of the Council had been received for the most part with delight. Nowhere was the Council popular, and the thousand cities of Western America, after two hundred years still jealous of New York, London, and the East, had risen almost unanimously two days before at the news of Graham\u2019s imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest of the world hung in suspense.\r\n\r\nWhile he was breaking his fast, the sound of a telephone bell jetted from a corner, and his chief attendant called his attention to the voice of Ostrog making polite enquiries. Graham interrupted his refreshment to reply. Very shortly Lincoln arrived, and Graham at once expressed a strong desire to talk to people and to be shown more of the new life that was opening before him. Lincoln informed him that in three hours\u2019 time a representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham\u2019s desire to traverse the ways of the city was, however, at present impossible, because of the enormous excitement of the people. It was, however, quite possible for him to take a bird\u2019s-eye view of the city from the crow\u2019s nest of the wind-vane keeper. To this accordingly Graham was conducted by his attendant. Lincoln; with a graceful compliment to the attendant, apologised for not accompanying them, on account of the present pressure of administrative work.\r\n\r\nHigher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow\u2019s nest, a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes\u2014minute they looked from above\u2014rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the specula, en rapport<\/i> with the wind-vane keeper\u2019s mirrors, in one of which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. His Japanese attendant ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking and answering questions.\r\n\r\nIt was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of the wind warmed. The sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of London shone dazzling under the morning sun. The air was clear of smoke and haze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen.\r\n\r\nSave for the irregular oval of ruins about the House of the Council and the black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty city seen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, to his imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of the world. A multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and the huge openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times of peace the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of Europe and America, were also black with the victors. Across a narrow way of planking raised on trestles that crossed the ruins a crowd of workmen were busy restoring the connection between the cables and wires of the Council House and the rest of the city, preparatory to the transfer thither of Ostrog\u2019s headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.\r\n\r\nFor the rest the luminous expanse was undisturbed. So vast was its serenity in comparison with the areas of disturbance, that presently Graham, looking beyond them, could almost forget the thousands of men lying out of sight in the artificial glare within the quasi-subterranean labyrinth, dead or dying of the overnight wounds, forget the improvised wards with the hosts of surgeons, nurses, and bearers feverishly busy, forget, indeed, all the wonder, consternation and novelty under the electric lights. Down there in the hidden ways of the anthill he knew that the revolution triumphed, that black everywhere carried the day, black favours, black banners, black festoons across the streets. And out here, under the fresh sunlight, beyond the crater of the fight, as if nothing had happened to the earth, the forest of wind vanes that had grown from one or two while the Council had ruled, roared peacefully upon their incessant duty.\r\n\r\nFar away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the Surrey Hills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contours of Highgate and Muswell Hill were similarly jagged. And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farm houses had nestled among their trees, wind-wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like them vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. And underneath these wandered the countless flocks and herds of the British Food Trust, his property, with their lonely guards and keepers.\r\n\r\nNot a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes below. St. Paul\u2019s he knew survived, and many of the old buildings in Westminster, embedded out of sight, arched over and covered in among the giant growths of this great age. The Thames, too, made no fall and gleam of silver to break the wilderness of the city; the thirsty water mains drank up every drop of its waters before they reached the walls. Its bed and estuary, scoured and sunken, was now a canal of sea water, and a race of grimy bargemen brought the heavy materials of trade from the Pool thereby beneath the very feet of the workers. Faint and dim in the eastward between earth and sky hung the clustering masts of the colossal shipping in the Pool. For all the heavy traffic, for which there was no need of haste, came in gigantic sailing ships from the ends of the earth, and the heavy goods for which there was urgency in mechanical ships of a smaller swifter sort.\r\n\r\nAnd to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines\u2014the roads, stippled with moving grey specks. On the first occasion that offered he was determined to go out and see these roads. That would come after the flying ship he was presently to try. His attendant officer described them as a pair of gently curving surfaces a hundred yards wide, each one for the traffic going in one direction, and made of a substance called Eadhamite\u2014an artificial substance, so far as he could gather, resembling toughened glass. Along this shot a strange traffic of narrow rubber-shod vehicles, great single wheels, two and four wheeled vehicles, sweeping along at velocities of from one to six miles a minute. Railroads had vanished; a few embankments remained as rust-crowned trenches here and there. Some few formed the cores of Eadhamite ways.\r\n\r\nAmong the first things to strike his attention had been the great fleets of advertisement balloons and kites that receded in irregular vistas northward and southward along the lines of the aeroplane journeys. No great aeroplanes were to be seen. Their passages had ceased, and only one little-seeming monoplane circled high in the blue distance above the Surrey Hills, an unimpressive soaring speck.\r\n\r\nA thing Graham had already learnt, and which he found very hard to imagine, was that nearly all the towns in the country, and almost all the villages, had disappeared. Here and there only, he understood, some gigantic hotel-like edifice stood amid square miles of some single cultivation and preserved the name of a town\u2014as Bournemouth, Wareham, or Swanage. Yet the officer had speedily convinced him how inevitable such a change had been. The old order had dotted the country with farmhouses, and every two or three miles was the ruling landlord\u2019s estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer\u2019s shop and church\u2014the village. Every eight miles or so was the country town, where lawyer, corn merchant, wool-stapler, saddler, veterinary surgeon, doctor, draper, milliner and so forth lived. Every eight miles\u2014simply because that eight mile marketing journey, four there and back, was as much as was comfortable for the farmer. But directly the railways came into play, and after them the light railways, and all the swift new motor cars that had replaced waggons and horses, and so soon as the high roads began to be made of wood, and rubber, and Eadhamite, and all sorts of elastic durable substances\u2014the necessity of having such frequent market towns disappeared. And the big towns grew. They drew the worker with the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the employer with their suggestion of an infinite ocean of labour.\r\n\r\nAnd as the standard of comfort rose, as the complexity of the mechanism of living increased, life in the country had become more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. The disappearance of vicar and squire, the extinction of the general practitioner by the city specialist; had robbed the village of its last touch of culture. After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book, schoolmaster, and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage. In the country were neither means of being clothed nor fed (according to the refined conceptions of the time), no efficient doctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits.\r\n\r\nMoreover, mechanical appliances in agriculture made one engineer the equivalent of thirty labourers. So, inverting the condition of the city clerk in the days when London was scarce inhabitable because of the coaly foulness of its air, the labourers now came to the city and its life and delights at night to leave it again in the morning. The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development. First had come the nomad, the hunter, then had followed the agriculturist of the agricultural state, whose towns and cities and ports were but the headquarters and markets of the countryside. And now, logical consequence of an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation of men.\r\n\r\nSuch things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to contemporary men, strained Graham\u2019s imagination to picture. And when he glanced \u201cover beyond there\u201d at the strange things that existed on the Continent, it failed him altogether.\r\n\r\nHe had a vision of city beyond city; cities on great plains, cities beside great rivers, vast cities along the sea margin, cities girdled by snowy mountains. Over a great part of the earth the English tongue was spoken; taken together with its Spanish American and Hindoo and Negro and \u201cPidgin\u201d dialects, it was the everyday-language of two-thirds of humanity. On the Continent, save as remote and curious survivals, three other languages alone held sway\u2014German, which reached to Antioch and Genoa and jostled Spanish-English at Cadiz; a Gallicised Russian which met the Indian English in Persia and Kurdistan and the \u201cPidgin\u201d English in Pekin; and French still clear and brilliant, the language of lucidity, which shared the Mediterranean with the Indian English and German and reached through a negro dialect to the Congo.\r\n\r\nAnd everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered \u201cblack belt\u201d territories of the tropics, the same cosmopolitan social organisation prevailed, and everywhere from Pole to Equator his property and his responsibilities extended. The whole world was civilised; the whole world dwelt in cities; the whole world was his property....\r\n\r\nOut of the dim south-west, glittering and strange, voluptuous, and in some way terrible, shone those Pleasure Cities of which the kinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the street had spoken. Strange places reminiscent of the legendary Sybaris, cities of art and beauty, mercenary art and mercenary beauty, sterile wonderful cities of motion and music, whither repaired all who profited by the fierce, inglorious, economic struggle that went on in the glaring labyrinth below.\r\n\r\nFierce he knew it was. How fierce he could judge from the fact that these latter-day people referred back to the England of the nineteenth century as the figure of an idyllic easy-going life. He turned his eyes to the scene immediately before him again, trying to conceive the big factories of that intricate maze....\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XV. \u2014 PROMINENT PEOPLE<\/h2>\r\nThe state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have astonished Graham had he entered them fresh from his nineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to the scale of the new time. He came out through one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a plateau of landing at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, with men and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seen, ascending and descending. From this position he looked down a vista of subtle and varied ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned by bridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminating far off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens.\r\n\r\nGlancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending galleries with faces looking down upon him. The air was full of the babble of innumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay and exhilarating music whose source he did not discover.\r\n\r\nThe central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortably crowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands. They were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifully as the women, for the sobering influence of the Puritan conception of dignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. The hair of the men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled in a manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished from the earth. Frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed Rossetti abounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to Graham under the mysterious title of an \u201camorist,\u201d wore his hair in two becoming plaits ` la<\/i> Marguerite. The pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizens of Chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. There was little uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. The more shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here were puffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. The fashions of the days of Leo the Tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, but the aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. Masculine embonpoint, which, in Victorian times, would have been subjected to the buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-legged tight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth of dignity and drooping folds. Graceful slenderness abounded also. To Graham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not only did these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether too expressive in their vividly expressive faces. They gesticulated, they expressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressed the emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them with astonishing frankness. Even at the first glance it was evident that women were in a great majority.\r\n\r\nThe ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearing and manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected a classical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashion of the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders as Graham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or belt at the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. The delightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by the passage of two centuries.\r\n\r\nEveryone\u2019s movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he saw men as Raphael\u2019s cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich person\u2019s education. The Master\u2019s entry was greeted with a sort of tittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished manners by not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, as he descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle.\r\n\r\nHe had already learnt from Lincoln that these were the leaders of existing London society; almost every person there that night was either a powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official. Many had returned from the European Pleasure Cities expressly to welcome him. The aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a part in the overthrow of the Council only second to Graham\u2019s, were very prominent, and so, too, was the Wind Vane Control. Amongst others there were several of the more prominent officers of the Food Department; the controller of the European Piggeries had a particularly melancholy and interesting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. A bishop in full canonicals passed athwart Graham\u2019s vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.\r\n\r\n\u201cWho is that?\u201d he asked almost involuntarily.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Bishop of London,\u201d said Lincoln.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo\u2014the other, I mean.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPoet Laureate.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou still\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t make poetry, of course. He\u2019s a cousin of Wotton\u2014one of the Councillors. But he\u2019s one of the Red Rose Royalists\u2014a delightful club\u2014and they keep up the tradition of these things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAsano told me there was a King.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe King doesn\u2019t belong. They had to expel him. It\u2019s the Stuart blood, I suppose; but really\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cToo much?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cFar too much.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham did not quite follow all this, but it seemed part of the general inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his first introduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailed even in this assembly, that only to a small proportion of the guests, to an inner group, did Lincoln consider it appropriate to introduce him. This first introduction was the Master Aeronaut, a man whose sun-tanned face contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Just at present his critical defection from the Council made him a very important person indeed.\r\n\r\nHis manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham\u2019s ideas, with the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master\u2019s health. His manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff \u201caerial dog\u201d\u2014he used that phrase\u2014that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn\u2019t profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing. He made a curt bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness, and passed.\r\n\r\n\u201cI am glad to see that type endures,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cPhonographs and kinematographs,\u201d said Lincoln, a little spitefully. \u201cHe has studied from the life.\u201d Graham glanced at the burly form again. It was oddly reminiscent.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs a matter of fact we bought him,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cPartly. And partly he was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public Schools. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, he beamed down upon Graham through pince-nez<\/i> of a Victorian pattern, and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand. Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman\u2019s functions, and asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General seemed quietly amused at the Master\u2019s fundamental bluntness. He was a little vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; it was done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous London Municipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progress since the Victorian times. \u201cWe have conquered Cram,\u201d he said, \u201ccompletely conquered Cram\u2014there is not an examination left in the world. Aren\u2019t you glad?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHow do you get the work done?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe make it attractive\u2014as attractive as possible. And if it does not attract then\u2014we let it go. We cover an immense field.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. \u201cThere is a certain type of girl, for example,\u201d said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of his usefulness, \u201cwith a perfect passion for severe studies\u2014when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At this moment,\u201d he said with a Napoleonic touch, \u201cnearly five hundred phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt, and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your little germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days has quite passed away.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAbout the public elementary schools,\u201d said Graham. \u201cDo you control them?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe Surveyor-General did, \u201centirely.\u201d Now, Graham, in his later democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning quickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. The Surveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man\u2019s words. \u201cWe try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple principles\u2014obedience\u2014industry.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou teach them very little?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them. Even as it is\u2014there are troubles\u2014agitations. Where the labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic dreams\u2014anarchy even! Agitators will<\/i> get to work among them. I take it\u2014I have always taken it\u2014that my foremost duty is to fight against popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham thoughtfully. \u201cBut there are a great many things I want to know.\u201d\r\n\r\nLincoln, who had stood watching Graham\u2019s face throughout the conversation, intervened. \u201cThere are others,\u201d he said in an undertone.\r\n\r\nThe Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. \u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, \u201cyou would like to know some of these ladies?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the \u201cdear old days,\u201d as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. As she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demanded reciprocity.\r\n\r\n\u201cI have tried,\u201d she said, \u201ccountless times\u2014to imagine those old romantic days. And to you\u2014they are memories. How strange and crowded the world must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the past, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud and all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black coats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the streets. And suddenly, you have come into this!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cInto this,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cOut of your life\u2014out of all that was familiar.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe old life was not a happy one,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI do not regret that.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed encouragingly. \u201cNo?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIt was a little life\u2014and unmeaning. But this\u2014We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I see\u2014although in this world I am barely four days old\u2014looking back on my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time\u2014the mere beginning of this new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to understand how little I know.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou may ask me what you like,\u201d she said, smiling at him.\r\n\r\n\u201cThen tell me who these people are. I\u2019m still very much in the dark about them. It\u2019s puzzling. Are there any Generals?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMen in hats and feathers?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOf course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat? He\u2019s a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managing director of the Antibilious Pill Department. I have heard that his workers sometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours. Fancy a myriad myriad!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud,\u201d said Graham. \u201cPills! What a wonderful time it is! That man in purple?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. He is really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of the Medical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, wear that purple. But, of course, people who are paid by fees for doing<\/i> something\u2014\u201d She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.\r\n\r\n\u201cAre any of your great artists or authors here?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo authors. They are mostly such queer people\u2014and so preoccupied about themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn\u2019t it? But I think Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCapillotomist,\u201d said Graham. \u201cAh! I remember. An artist! Why not?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have to cultivate him,\u201d she said apologetically. \u201cOur heads are in his hands.\u201d She smiled.\r\n\r\nGraham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was expressive. \u201cHave the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?\u201d he said. \u201cWho are your great painters?\u201d\r\n\r\nShe looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. \u201cFor a moment,\u201d she said, \u201cI thought you meant\u2014\u201d She laughed again. \u201cYou mean, of course, those good men you used to think so much of because they could cover great spaces of canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put the things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. We haven\u2019t any. People grew tired of that sort of thing.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut what did you think I meant?\u201d\r\n\r\nShe put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. \u201cAnd here,\u201d and she indicated her eyelid.\r\n\r\nGraham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picture he had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the widow flashed across his mind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that he was visible to a great number of interested people. \u201cI see,\u201d he remarked inadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her fascinating facility. He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupied themselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. \u201cWho is that talking with the lady in saffron?\u201d he asked, avoiding her eyes.\r\n\r\nThe person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of the American theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. His face reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking looking man was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deep impression, but afterwards it recurred;\u2014the Black Labour Master? The little lady in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charming little woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop of London. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage\u2014hitherto there had been a rule of clerical monogamy\u2014\u201cneither a natural nor an expedient condition of things. Why should the natural development of the affections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd, bye the bye,\u201d she added, \u201care you an Anglican?\u201d Graham was on the verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a \u201csubsidiary wife,\u201d apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln\u2019s return broke off this very suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle to where a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume (as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities he passed to other presentations.\r\n\r\nIn a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organise themselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gathering had raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile and satirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of courteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skilfully modulated voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a time forgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to the intoxication of the position that was conceded him, his manner became more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, the black robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. After all, this was a brilliant interesting world.\r\n\r\nHe looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and looking down upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face of the girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatre after his escape from the Council. And she was watching him.\r\n\r\nFor the moment he did not remember when he had seen her, and then came a vague memory of the stirring emotions of their first encounter. But the dancing web of melody about him kept the air of that great marching song from his memory.\r\n\r\nThe lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.\r\n\r\nYet, unaccountably, a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew to dissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by some half forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping from him amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these ladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no longer gave vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances that he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wandered for another sight of the girl of the first revolt.\r\n\r\nWhere, precisely, had he seen her?...\r\n\r\nGraham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite\u2014the subject was his choice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personal devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had already found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed than charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer melody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down to him.\r\n\r\nAh! Now he remembered!\r\n\r\nHe glanced up startled, and perceived above him an oeil de boeuf<\/i> through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses of cable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the public ways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. He perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platforms and a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could not account for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways a huge crowd must be watching this place in which their Master amused himself.\r\n\r\nThough the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this gathering reasserted itself, the motif<\/i> of the marching song, once it had begun, lingered in his mind.\r\n\r\nThe bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries of Eadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again. She was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her first before she saw him. She was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her dark hair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold light from the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face.\r\n\r\nThe lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. \u201cWould you care to know that girl, Sire?\u201d she asked boldly. \u201cShe is Helen Wotton\u2014a niece of Ostrog\u2019s. She knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed lady had fluttered away.\r\n\r\n\u201cI remember you quite well,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou were in that little room. When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before I walked across the Hall.\u201d\r\n\r\nHer momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face was steady. \u201cIt was wonderful,\u201d she said, hesitated, and spoke with a sudden effort. \u201cAll those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless people did die for you that night.\u201d\r\n\r\nHer face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard her words.\r\n\r\nLincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way through the press towards them. She saw him and turned to Graham strangely eager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. \u201cSire,\u201d she said quickly, \u201cI cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very unhappy; they are oppressed\u2014they are misgoverned. Do not forget the people, who faced death\u2014death that you might live.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI know nothing\u2014\u201d began Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cI cannot tell you now.\u201d\r\n\r\nLincoln\u2019s face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou find the new world amusing, Sire?\u201d asked Lincoln, with smiling deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one comprehensive gesture. \u201cAt any rate, you find it changed.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham, \u201cchanged. And yet, after all, not so greatly changed.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWait till you are in the air,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cThe wind has fallen; even now an aeroplane awaits you.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe girl\u2019s attitude awaited dismissal.\r\n\r\nGraham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found a warning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany Lincoln.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XVI. \u2014 THE MONOPLANE<\/h2>\r\nThe Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of two each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages. They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood, Blackheath, and Shooter\u2019s Hill. They were uniform structures rising high above the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum and iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended. The upper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions\u2014the starting carriers\u2014that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric.\r\n\r\nGraham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompanied by Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who was busy with his administrative concerns. A strong guard of the Wind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, and they cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passage to the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowd gathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he could hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and children in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He was struck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poor of the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediately surrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him that some had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared a passage for him with difficulty.\r\n\r\nHe found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on the westward stage. Seen close this mechanism was no longer small. As it lay on its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its aluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Its lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost like the nerves of a bee\u2019s wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. The chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft the middle. The passenger\u2019s chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, and desired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass that sheltered his face. The passenger could secure himself firmly in his seat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move along by means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the central engine that projected to the propeller at the stern.\r\n\r\nThe flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite of attendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Asano stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand. He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.\r\n\r\nThe engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally past Graham\u2019s eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. He gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. He felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic impulses\u2014one, two, three, pause; one, two, three\u2014which the engineer controlled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration that continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Looking sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw\u2014a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognised the Council House and the Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straight down between his feet.\r\n\r\nFor a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense of insecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes. Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots. These things seemed to be falling away from him. For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. He set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.\r\n\r\nHe remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky. Throb, throb, throb\u2014beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb\u2014beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return\u2014perhaps a little artificially. \u201cA little strange at first,\u201d he shouted before he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He stared over the aeronaut\u2019s head to where a rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. For a little while he could not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb\u2014beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose\u2014! He made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he went steadily, higher and higher into the clear air.\r\n\r\nOnce the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily pleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found the pulsating movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-west breeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on to broad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a good sailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked up and saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye came cautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white birds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Then going lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of the Wind-Vane keeper\u2019s crow\u2019s nest shining golden in the sunlight and growing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with more confidence now, there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward, an intricate space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, and banished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. For the boundary of London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a complex decorative fagade.\r\n\r\nThat gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it here but a waste of ruins, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of winter greens. The latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. But for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.\r\n\r\nThe vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foeman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the first prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled. And when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw below him the vegetable fields of the Thames valley\u2014innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.\r\n\r\nHis exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. He found himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring to shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and he shouted. They curved about towards the south. They drove with a slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short, sharp ascent and then a long downward glide that was very swift and pleasing. During these downward glides the propeller was inactive altogether. These ascents gave Graham a glorious sense of successful effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience. He wanted never to leave the upper air again.\r\n\r\nFor a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northward beneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villages had gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out familiar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind. Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he recognised as the Guildford Hog\u2019s Back, because of the familiar outline of the gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the town that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. And from that he made out other points, Leith Hill, the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth. Save where the broad Eadhamite Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the wey was choked with thickets.\r\n\r\nThe whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey haze permitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest of the city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motion before the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dotted with the sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mounted shepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of the monoplane came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, and Leith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather was speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that were swallowed up in haze.\r\n\r\nAnd when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit wailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there came into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little white cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment, and in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, and then beneath him spread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and smaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line\u2014sunlit and pleasant\u2014the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the Downland of England was speeding by below.\r\n\r\nIn a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circled about to the north. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point Colossus. And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about \u201ctrouble in the under-ways,\u201d that Graham did not heed. But he marked the minarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. \u201cWhat?\u201d said Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. \u201cLondon aeroplane, Sire,\u201d bawled the aeronaut, pointing.\r\n\r\nThey rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb\u2014beat, of the monoplane\u2019s flight, that had seemed so potent, and so swift, suddenly appeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great the monster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneath them, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucent wings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows and rows of wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behind wind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale along a ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of the whirling wind screw, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted in the sight. And in an instant the thing had passed.\r\n\r\nIt rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of its flight. It fell and grew smaller. Scarcely had they moved, as it seemed, before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. This was the aeroplane that went to and fro between London and Paris. In fair weather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day.\r\n\r\nThey beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham\u2019s enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.\r\n\r\n\u201cLand,\u201d called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of the air over the wind-screen.\r\n\r\n\u201cNot yet,\u201d bawled Graham, laughing. \u201cNot land yet. I want to learn more of this machine.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI meant\u2014\u201d said the aeronaut.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to learn more of this machine,\u201d repeated Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m coming to you,\u201d he said, and had flung himself free of his chair and taken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for a moment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. Another step and he was clinging close to the aeronaut. He felt a weight on his shoulder, the pressure of the air. His hat was a whirling speck behind. The wind came in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers past his cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting of the centres of gravity and pressure.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to have these things explained,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat do you do when you move that engine forward?\u201d\r\n\r\nThe aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, \u201cThey are complex, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind,\u201d shouted Graham. \u201cI don\u2019t mind.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was a moment\u2019s pause. \u201cAeronautics is the secret\u2014the privilege\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI know. But I\u2019m the Master, and I mean to know.\u201d He laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.\r\n\r\nThe monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham\u2019s face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the west. The two men looked into each other\u2019s eyes.\r\n\r\n\u201cSire, there are rules\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNot where I am concerned,\u201d said Graham, \u201cYou seem to forget.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe aeronaut scrutinised his face \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not forget, Sire. But in all the earth\u2014no man who is not a sworn aeronaut\u2014has ever a chance. They come as passengers\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI have heard something of the sort. But I\u2019m not going to argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSire,\u201d said the aeronaut, \u201cthe rules\u2014if I break the rules\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham waved the penalties aside.\r\n\r\n\u201cThen if you will watch me\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its nose again for an ascent. \u201cThat\u2019s not my game. I want to do it myself. Do it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See I am going to clamber by this\u2014to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my own accord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay for my sleep. Of all other things\u2014. In my past it was my dream to fly. Now\u2014keep your balance.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA dozen spies are watching me, Sire!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it should be. He swore. He swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and the monoplane swayed.\r\n\r\n\u201cAm I Master of the earth?\u201d he said. \u201cOr is your Society? Now. Take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes\u2014so. And now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSire,\u201d said the aeronaut.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will protect me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cLord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly to your advantage, this journey,\u201d he said with a loud laugh\u2014for the air was like strong wine\u2014\u201cto teach me quickly and well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBack, Sire! Back!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBack\u2014right. One\u2014two\u2014three\u2014good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this is living!\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Now it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one of these descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park of balloons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by a sudden recovery of dexterity. The extraordinary swiftness and smoothness of the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon his constitution, threw Graham into a careless fury.\r\n\r\nBut at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles. As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. \u201cWhat was that?\u201d he asked. \u201cI did not see.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping down. When the monoplane was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied, \u201cThat,\u201d and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, \u201cwas a swan.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI never saw it,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\nThe aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his forehead.\r\n\r\nThey drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger\u2019s place out of the lash of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, with the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.\r\n\r\nSoon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw that the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his people rejoicing over his safe return. A black mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XVII. \u2014 THREE DAYS<\/h2>\r\nLincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying. Graham was in a mood of enthusiasm. \u201cI must learn to fly,\u201d he cried. \u201cI must master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in the world.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will find our new times full of wonderful experiences,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cI do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that may seem novel.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cFor the present,\u201d said Graham, \u201cflying holds me. Let me learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to one\u2019s learning.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere is, I believe,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cBut for you\u2014! If you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a while. \u201cAnd as for affairs,\u201d he asked abruptly. \u201cHow are things going on?\u201d\r\n\r\nLincoln waved affairs aside. \u201cOstrog will tell you that to-morrow,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itself all over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course; but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog\u2019s hands.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWould it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it, forthwith\u2014before I sleep?\u201d said Graham, pacing. \u201cThen I could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again....\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt would be possible,\u201d said Lincoln thoughtfully. \u201cQuite possible. Indeed, it shall be done.\u201d He laughed. \u201cI came prepared to suggest amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will be able to come. You don\u2019t think that after you have dined you might prefer\u2014?\u201d He paused.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe had prepared a show of dancers\u2014they have been brought from the Capri theatre.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI hate ballets,\u201d said Graham, shortly. \u201cAlways did. That other\u2014. That\u2019s not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the matter of that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cThough our dancers\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey can afford to wait,\u201d said Graham; \u201cthey can afford to wait. I know. I\u2019m not a Latin. There\u2019s questions I want to ask some expert\u2014about your machinery. I\u2019m keen. I want no distractions.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou have the world to choose from,\u201d said Lincoln; \u201cwhatever you want is yours.\u201d\r\n\r\nAsano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned through the city streets to Graham\u2019s apartments. Far larger crowds had assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned Lincoln\u2019s answers to the endless questions Graham\u2019s aerial journey had suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already a little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the remainder of his public progress.\r\n\r\nDirectly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched Graham\u2019s commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by a number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habit of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish for that indulgence, enquiries were made and some excellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him by pneumatic despatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity of counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating to Graham than any bayadhre. \u201cWe were savages,\u201d was his refrain, \u201cwe were savages. We were in the stone age\u2014compared with this.... And what else have you?\u201d\r\n\r\nThere came also practical psychologists with some very interesting developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell, Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anesthetics in medicine; was employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A real enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this direction. The feats of \u201ccalculating boys,\u201d the wonders, as Graham had been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these expedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply to repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a suggestion of the post-hypnotic recollection of these points. In process mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now systematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion, and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children of the labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced, habits removed, and desires eradicated\u2014a sort of psychic surgery was, in fact, in general use. Indignities, humbling experiences, were thus forgotten, widows would obliterate their previous husbands, angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a troupe of pale-faced children in blue.\r\n\r\nGraham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many painful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln\u2019s assurances he held to the old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of his personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderful experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain absolutely himself.\r\n\r\nThe next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such interests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the glorious entertainment of flying. On the third, he soared across middle France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia of his first awakening. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strange things they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an hour or so. He found his interest in his contemporaries becoming personal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly for unfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, any discordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status and manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon that strangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it, disappeared; how soon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and see the old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found himself particularly amused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the European Piggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of a latter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And after that, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved to suggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but this Graham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists in his aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London; he found a delight in topographical identifications that he would have missed abroad. \u201cHere\u2014or a hundred feet below here,\u201d he could say, \u201cI used to eat my midday cutlets during my London University days. Underneath here was Waterloo and the tiresome hunt for confusing trains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and stared up into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I should walk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky that was once a grey smoke canopy, I circle in a monoplane.\u201d\r\n\r\nDuring those three days Graham was so occupied with these distractions that the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters had but a small share of his attention. Those about him told him little. Daily came Ostrog, the Boss, his Grand Vizier, his mayor of the palace, to report in vague terms the steady establishment of his rule; \u201ca little trouble\u201d soon to be settled in this city, \u201ca slight disturbance\u201d in that. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he never learned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all the great emotions of the crow\u2019s nest slumbered in his mind.\r\n\r\nBut on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spite of his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girl Helen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper\u2019s gathering. The impression, she had made was a deep one, albeit the incessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from brooding upon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. He wondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences; the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more vivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her slender beauty came compellingly between him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But he did not see her again until three full days were past.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XVIII. \u2014 GRAHAM REMEMBERS<\/h2>\r\nShe came upon him at last in a little gallery that ran from the Wind-Vane Offices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long and narrow, with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration that looked upon a court of palms. He came upon her suddenly in one of these recesses. She was seated. She turned her head at the sound of his footsteps and started at the sight of him. Every touch of colour vanished from her face. She rose instantly, made a step toward him as if to address him, and hesitated. He stopped and stood still, expectant. Then he perceived that a nervous tumult silenced her, perceived, too, that she must have sought speech with him to be waiting for him in this place.\r\n\r\nHe felt a regal impulse to assist her. \u201cI have wanted to see you,\u201d he said. \u201cA few days ago you wanted to tell me something\u2014you wanted to tell me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?\u201d\r\n\r\nShe looked at him with troubled eyes.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou said the people were unhappy?\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a moment she was silent still.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt must have seemed strange to you,\u201d she said abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt did. And yet\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was an impulse.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is all.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort. \u201cYou forget,\u201d she said, drawing a deep breath.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you mean\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou forget the people.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe looked interrogative.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are. You do not know the things that are happening.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou do not understand.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNot clearly, perhaps. But\u2014tell me.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe turned to him with sudden resolution. \u201cIt is so hard to explain. I have meant to, I have wanted to. And now\u2014I cannot. I am not ready with words. But about you\u2014there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep\u2014your awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least\u2014and to all the common people. You who lived and suffered and died, you who were a common citizen, wake again, live again, to find yourself Master almost of the earth.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMaster of the earth,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they tell me. But try and imagine how little I know of it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCities\u2014Trusts\u2014the Labour Department\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPrincipalities, powers, dominions\u2014the power and the glory. Yes, I have heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog, the Boss\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe paused.\r\n\r\nShe turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny. \u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\nHe smiled. \u201cTo take the responsibility.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is what we have begun to fear.\u201d For a moment she said no more. \u201cNo,\u201d she said slowly. \u201cYou<\/i> will take the responsibility. You will take the responsibility. The people look to you.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe spoke softly. \u201cListen! For at least half the years of your sleep\u2014in every generation\u2014multitudes of people, in every generation greater multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake\u2014prayed<\/i>.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham moved to speak and did not.\r\n\r\nShe hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. \u201cDo you know that you have been to myriads\u2014King Arthur, Barbarossa\u2014the King who would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose the imagination of the people\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHave you not heard our proverb, \u2018When the Sleeper wakes\u2019? While you lay insensible and motionless there\u2014thousands came. Thousands. Every first of the month you lay in state with a white robe upon you and the people filed by you. When I was a little girl I saw you like that, with your face white and calm.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted wall before her. Her voice fell. \u201cWhen I was a little girl I used to look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience of God.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is what we thought of you,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is how you seemed to us.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. \u201cIn the city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what you will do, full of strange incredible expectations.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog\u2014no one\u2014can take that responsibility.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham looked at her in surprise, at her face lit with emotion. She seemed at first to have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herself by speaking.\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you think,\u201d she said, \u201cthat you who have lived that little life so far away in the past, you who have fallen into and risen out of this miracle of sleep\u2014do you think that the wonder and reverence and hope of half the world has gathered about you only that you may live another little life?... That you may shift the responsibility to any other man?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI know how great this kingship of mine is,\u201d he said haltingly. \u201cI know how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible\u2014dreamlike. Is it real, or is it only a great delusion?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is real,\u201d she said; \u201cif you dare.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAfter all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion in the minds of men.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf you dare!\u201d she said.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cCountless men,\u201d she said, \u201cand while it is in their minds\u2014they will obey.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And these others\u2014the Councillors, Ostrog. They are wiser, cooler, they know so much, every detail. And, indeed, what are these miseries of which you speak? What am I to know? Do you mean\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped blankly.\r\n\r\n\u201cI am still hardly more than a girl,\u201d she said. \u201cBut to me the world seems full of wretchedness. The world has altered since your day, altered very strangely. I have prayed that I might see you and tell you these things. The world has changed. As if a canker had seized it\u2014and robbed life of\u2014everything worth having.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. \u201cYour days were the days of freedom. Yes\u2014I have thought. I have been made to think, for my life\u2014has not been happy. Men are no longer free\u2014no greater, no better than the men of your time. That is not all. This city\u2014is a prison. Every city now is a prison. Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads, countless myriads, toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right? Is that to be\u2014for ever? Yes, far worse than in your time. All about us, beneath us, sorrow and pain. All the shallow delight of such life as you find about you, is separated by just a little from a life of wretchedness beyond any telling. Yes, the poor know it\u2014they know they suffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since\u2014! You owe your life to them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham, slowly. \u201cYes. I owe my life to them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou come,\u201d she said, \u201cfrom the days when this new tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny\u2014a tyranny. In your days the feudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had still to come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the free countryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard the stories out of the old books\u2014there was nobility! Common men led lives of love and faithfulness then\u2014they did a thousand things. And you\u2014you come from that time.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was not\u2014. But never mind. How is it now\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery\u2014unthanked, unhonoured, slavery.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSlavery!\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cSlavery.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say that human beings are chattels.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWorse. That is what I want you to know, what I want you to see. I know you do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take you presently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women and children in pale blue canvas, with thin yellow faces and dull eyes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cEverywhere.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSpeaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI have heard it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are the slaves\u2014your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour Department you own.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Labour Department! In some way\u2014that is familiar. Ah! now I remember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the lights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you really mean\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you. Nearly a third of our people wear it\u2014more assume it now every day. This Labour Department has grown imperceptibly.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is<\/i> this Labour Department?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn the old times, how did you manage with starving people?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere was the workhouse\u2014which the parishes maintained.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWorkhouse! Yes\u2014there was something. In our history lessons. I remember now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew\u2014partly\u2014out of something\u2014you, perhaps, may remember it\u2014an emotional religious organisation called the Salvation Army\u2014that became a business company. In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouse rigours. There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now I come to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this. The idea in the first place was to organise the labour of starving homeless people.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but that Department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end\u2014or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means\u2014for the poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers\u2014that is the first condition of the Department\u2019s incorporation\u2014and in return for a day\u2019s shelter the Department extracts a day\u2019s work, and then returns the visitor\u2019s proper clothing and sends him or her out again.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved in your streets. That was bad. But they died\u2014men<\/i>. These people in blue\u2014. The proverb runs: \u2018Blue canvas once and ever.\u2019 The Department trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the supply. People come to it starving and helpless\u2014they eat and sleep for a night and day, they work for a day, and at the end of the day they go out again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so\u2014enough for a theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or a dinner or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented by the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come back again the next day or the day after\u2014brought back by the same incapacity that brought them first. At last their proper clothing wears out, or their rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must work for months to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of children are born under the Department\u2019s care. The mother owes them a month thereafter\u2014the children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay two years\u2019 service. You may be sure these children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Department works.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd none are destitute in the city?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNone. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished destitution. It is engraved upon the Department\u2019s checks.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIf they will not work?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMost people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers. There are stages of unpleasantness in the work\u2014stoppage of food\u2014and a man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking system in the Department\u2019s offices all over the world. Besides, who can leave the city poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And for insubordination there are the prisons\u2014dark and miserable\u2014out of sight below. There are prisons now for many things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd a third of the people wear this blue canvas?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMore than a third. Toilers, living without pride or delight or hope, with the stories of Pleasure Cities ringing in their ears, mocking their shameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for the Euthanasy, the rich man\u2019s refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions, countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything but limitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwarted and they die. That is the state to which we have come.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a space Graham sat downcast.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut there has been a revolution,\u201d he said. \u201cAll these things will be changed. Ostrog\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat is our hope. That is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will not do it. He is a politician. To him it seems things must be like this. He does not mind. He takes it for granted. All the rich, all the influential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries for granted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease by their degradation. But you\u2014you who come from a happier age\u2014it is to you the people look. To you.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe looked at her face. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felt a rush of emotion. For a moment he forgot this city, he forgot the race, and all those vague remote voices, in the immediate humanity of her beauty.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut what am I to do?\u201d he said with his eyes upon her.\r\n\r\n\u201cRule,\u201d she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone. \u201cRule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of men. For you might rule it\u2014you could rule it.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It wants but a word\u2014but a word from you\u2014to bring them all together. Even the middle sort of people are restless\u2014unhappy.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will not go back to their drudgery\u2014they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of\u2014he has awakened hopes.\u201d\r\n\r\nHis heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh considerations.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey only want their leader,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd then?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou could do what you would;\u2014the world is yours.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. \u201cThe old dreams, and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one man\u2014one man<\/i>\u2014?\u201d His voice sank and ceased.\r\n\r\n\u201cNot one man, but all men\u2014give them only a leader to speak the desire of their hearts.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe shook his head, and for a time there was silence.\r\n\r\nHe looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. \u201cI have not your faith,\u201d he said, \u201cI have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No\u2014let me speak. I want to do\u2014not right\u2014I have not the strength for that\u2014but something rather right than wrong. It will bring no millennium, but I am resolved now, that I will rule. What you have said has awakened me... You are right. Ostrog must know his place. And I will learn\u2014.... One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery shall end.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd you will rule?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. Provided\u2014. There is one thing.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat you will help me.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI<\/i>\u2014a girl!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?\u201d\r\n\r\nShe started and for an instant her eyes had pity. \u201cNeed you ask whether I will help you?\u201d she said.\r\n\r\nThere came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the hour. Graham rose.\r\n\r\n\u201cEven now,\u201d he said, \u201cOstrog will be waiting.\u201d He hesitated, facing her. \u201cWhen I have asked him certain questions\u2014. There is much I do not know. It may be, that I will go to see with my own eyes the things of which you have spoken. And when I return\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again.\u201d\r\n\r\nThey regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned from her towards the Wind-Vane office.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XIX. \u2014 OSTROG\u2019S POINT OF VIEW<\/h2>\r\nGraham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day\u2019s stewardship. On previous occasions he had passed over this ceremony as speedily as possible, in order to resume his aerial experiences, but now he began to ask quick short questions. He was very anxious to take up his empire forthwith. Ostrog brought flattering reports of the development of affairs abroad. In Paris and Berlin, Graham perceived that he was saying, there had been trouble, not organised resistance indeed, but insubordinate proceedings. \u201cAfter all these years,\u201d said Ostrog, when Graham pressed enquiries; \u201cthe Commune has lifted its head again. That is the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit.\u201d But order had been restored in these cities. Graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting. \u201cA little,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cIn one quarter only. But the Senegalese division of our African agricultural police\u2014the Consolidated African Companies have a very well drilled police\u2014was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in America. But things are very quiet in America. They are satisfied with the overthrow of the Council. For the time.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy should you expect trouble?\u201d asked Graham abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere is a lot of discontent\u2014social discontent.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Labour Department?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are learning,\u201d said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. \u201cYes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow\u2014that and your awakening.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes?\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog smiled. He became explicit. \u201cWe had to stir up their discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness\u2014all men equal\u2014all men happy\u2014no luxury that everyone may not share\u2014ideas that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive these ideals, impossible as they are\u2014in order to overthrow the Council. And now\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOur revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up\u2014remain surging. There was scarcely enough fighting.... We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread. We who sowed the seed even, have been astonished. In Paris, as I say\u2014we have had to call in a little external help.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd here?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere is trouble. Multitudes will not go back to work. There is a general strike. Half the factories are empty and the people are swarming in the ways. They are talking of a Commune. Men in silk and satin have been insulted in the streets. The blue canvas is expecting all sorts of things from you.... Of course there is no need for you to trouble. We are setting the Babble Machines to work with counter suggestions in the cause of law and order. We must keep the grip tight; that is all.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke with restraint.\r\n\r\n\u201cEven to the pitch of bringing a negro police,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are useful,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads\u2014such as our rabble has. The Council should have had them as police of the ways, and things might have been different. Of course, there is nothing to fear except rioting and wreckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders\u2014only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. Mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are and bitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for a central figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. To be frank\u2014that may happen. But it won\u2019t interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make revolutions are past.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose they are,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI suppose they are.\u201d He mused. \u201cThis world of yours has been full of surprises to me. In the old days we dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would be equal and happy.\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog looked at him steadfastly. \u201cThe day of democracy is past,\u201d he said. \u201cPast for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Cregy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before\u2014it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth. On your behalf.... You must accept facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler! Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has only one believer\u2014a multiplex, silly one\u2014the man in the Crowd.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre preoccupations.\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThe day of the common man is past. On the open countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. The earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity. They were tempered\u2014tempered. There were insurrections, duels, riots. The first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in with castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. But this is the second aristocracy. The real one. Those days of gunpowder and democracy were only an eddy in the stream. The common man now is a helpless unit. In these days we have this great machine of the city, and an organisation complex beyond his understanding.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYet,\u201d said Graham, \u201cthere is something resists, something you are holding down\u2014something that stirs and presses.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will see,\u201d said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these difficult questions aside. \u201cI have not roused the force to destroy myself\u2014trust me.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\nOstrog stared.\r\n\r\n\u201cMust<\/i> the world go this way?\u201d said Graham with his emotions at the speaking point. \u201cMust it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cHopes?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWell,\u2014but you are the chief tyrant.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham shook his head.\r\n\r\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201ctake the general question. It is the way that change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best\u2014the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut aristocracy! those people I met\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh! not those<\/i>!\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cBut for the most part they go to their death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPleasant extinction,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYet\u2014.\u201d He thought for an instant. \u201cThere is that other thing\u2014the Crowd, the great mass of poor men. Will that die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly than before.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t trouble about these things,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything will be settled in a few days now. The Crowd is a huge foolish beast. What if it does not die out? Even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven. I have no sympathy with servile men. You heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago. They were taught<\/i> that song. If you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you. They think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you. Just then they were ready to slaughter the Council. To-day\u2014they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the Council.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Graham. \u201cThey shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me\u2014in me\u2014they hoped.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd what was their hope? What is their hope? What right have they to hope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. The hope of mankind\u2014what is it? That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty\u2014it\u2019s a fine duty too!\u2014is to die. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things.\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. \u201cI can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government\u2014their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils, and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery. You feel moved against our Pleasure Cities. I might have thought of that,\u2014had I not been busy. But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy\u2014they would be in sympathy with you. Even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities. But the Pleasure Cities are the excretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. They go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. If the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. And you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for.\u201d He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. \u201cYou will learn better. I know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelley and dreamt of Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within\u2014not without. It is each man\u2019s own affair. Suppose\u2014which is impossible\u2014that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand of us, what then? They will only fall to other masters. So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey. It would mean but a few hundred years\u2019 delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured. The end will be the Over-man\u2014for all the mad protests of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will arise\u2014other masters. The end will be the same.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham doggedly.\r\n\r\nFor a moment he stood downcast.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut I must see these things for myself,\u201d he said, suddenly assuming a tone of confident mastery. \u201cOnly by seeing can I understand. I must learn. That is what I want to tell you, Ostrog. I do not want to be King in a Pleasure City; that is not my pleasure. I have spent enough time with aeronautics\u2014and those other things. I must learn how people live now, how the common life has developed. Then I shall understand these things better. I must learn how common people live\u2014the labour people more especially\u2014how they work, marry, bear children, die\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou get that from our realistic novelists,\u201d suggested Ostrog, suddenly preoccupied.\r\n\r\n\u201cI want reality,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere are difficulties,\u201d said Ostrog, and thought. \u201cOn the whole\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI did not expect\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI had thought\u2014. And yet perhaps\u2014. You say you want to go through the ways of the city and see the common people.\u201d\r\n\r\nSuddenly he came to some conclusion. \u201cYou would need to go disguised,\u201d he said. \u201cThe city is intensely excited, and the discovery of your presence among them might create a fearful tumult. Still this wish of yours to go into this city\u2014this idea of yours\u2014. Yes, now I think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether\u2014. It can be contrived. If you would really find an interest in that! You are, of course, Master. You can go soon if you like. A disguise Asano will be able to manage. He would go with you. After all it is not a bad idea of yours.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will not want to consult me in any matter?\u201d asked Graham suddenly, struck by an odd suspicion.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any rate,\u201d said Ostrog, smiling. \u201cEven if we differ\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham glanced at him sharply.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere is no fighting likely to happen soon?\u201d he asked abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI have been thinking about these negroes. I don\u2019t believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do not want any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Even about Paris\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. \u201cI am not bringing negroes to London,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cBut if\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIn that matter I am quite decided.\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XX. \u2014 IN THE CITY WAYS<\/h2>\r\nAnd that night, unknown and unsuspected, Graham, dressed in the costume of an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied by Asano in Labour Department canvas, surveyed the city through which he had wandered when it was veiled in darkness. But now he saw it lit and waking, a whirlpool of life. In spite of the surging and swaying of the forces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutterings of the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude, the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. He knew now something of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was not prepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrent of colour and vivid impressions that poured past him.\r\n\r\nThis was his first real contact with the people of these latter days. He realised that all that had gone before, saving his glimpses of the public theatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had been a movement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that all his previous experiences had revolved immediately about the question of his own position. But here was the city at the busiest hours of night, the people to a large extent returned to their own immediate interests, the resumption of the real informal life, the common habits of the new time.\r\n\r\nThey emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowded with the blue canvas liveries. This swarm Graham saw was a portion of a procession\u2014it was odd to see a procession parading the city seated<\/i>. They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. \u201cNo disarmament,\u201d said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed letters and with variant spelling, and \u201cWhy should we disarm?\u201d \u201cNo disarming.\u201d \u201cNo disarming.\u201d Banner after banner went by, a stream of banners flowing past, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt and a noisy band of strange instruments. \u201cThey all ought to be at work,\u201d said Asano. \u201cThey have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it.\u201d\r\n\r\nPresently Asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gaped upon the occasional passage of dead bodies from hospital to a mortuary, the gleanings after death\u2019s harvest of the first revolt.\r\n\r\nThat night few people were sleeping, everyone was abroad. A vast excitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded Graham; his mind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the cries and enigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yet only beginning. Everywhere festoons and banners of black and strange decorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. Everywhere he caught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterate class, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, in their commonplace intercourse. Everywhere this trouble of disarmament was in the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had no inkling during his seclusion in the Wind-Vane quarter. He perceived that as soon as he returned he must discuss this with Ostrog, this and the greater issues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusive way than he had so far done. Perpetually that night, even in the earlier hours of their wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest and revolt swamped his attention, to the exclusion of countless strange things he might otherwise have observed.\r\n\r\nThis preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. Yet amidst so much that was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent, could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionary movement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtain from before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed his mind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times when she, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, for example, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, for the easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways rendered sporadic churches and chapels no longer necessary\u2014and his attention was vividly arrested by the fagade of one of the Christian sects.\r\n\r\nThey were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the place leapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It was covered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, save where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented a realistic New Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to show that the popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across the lettering. Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writing and these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were \u201cSalvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right.\u201d \u201cPut your Money on your Maker.\u201d \u201cThe Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!\u201d \u201cWhat Christ would say to the Sleeper;\u2014Join the Up-to-date Saints!\u201d \u201cBe a Christian\u2014without hindrance to your present Occupation.\u201d \u201cAll the Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual.\u201d \u201cBrisk Blessings for Busy Business Men.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut this is appalling!\u201d said Graham, as that deafening scream of mercantile piety towered above them.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat is appalling?\u201d asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis<\/i>! Surely the essence of religion is reverence.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOh that<\/i>!\u201d Asano looked at Graham. \u201cDoes it shock you?\u201d he said in the tone of one who makes a discovery. \u201cI suppose it would, of course. I had forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people simply haven\u2019t the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do.\u201d He smiled. \u201cIn the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the countryside. Though somewhere I\u2019ve read of Sunday afternoons that\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut that<\/i>,\u201d said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white. \u201cThat is surely not the only\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn\u2019t tell<\/i> it doesn\u2019t pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high class sects with quieter ways\u2014costly incense and personal attentions and all that. These people are extremely popular and prosperous. They pay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council\u2014to you, I should say.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention of a dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment the screaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this new interest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the idea that gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which had begun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned. The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extension of the system of cheques that had even in his previous life already practically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. The common traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world, was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink council cheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had several with him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in his set. They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparent fabric of silken flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them all sprawled a facsimile of Graham\u2019s signature, his first encounter with the curves and turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.\r\n\r\nSome intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid to prevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again; a blurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES in enormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, but then came the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue. That interested him very greatly.\r\n\r\nBy the energy and thought of Asano he was able to view this place from a little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. The building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the lights on the night of his solitary wandering.\r\n\r\nHe had grown accustomed to vastness and great numbers of people, nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as he watched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersed with many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisation of the full significance of the feast of several thousand people came to him.\r\n\r\nIt was his constant surprise to find that points that one might have expected to strike vividly at the very outset never occurred to him until some trivial detail suddenly shaped as a riddle and pointed to the obvious thing he had overlooked. He discovered only now that this continuity of the city, this exclusion of weather, these vast halls and ways, involved the disappearance of the household; that the typical Victorian \u201cHome,\u201d the little brick cell containing kitchen and scullery, living rooms and bedrooms, had, save for the ruins that diversified the countryside, vanished as surely as the wattle hut. But now he saw what had indeed been manifest from the first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer an aggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousand classes of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres, markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises, of which he chiefly was the owner. People had their sleeping rooms, with, it might be, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever the degree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as many people had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days, eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of public resort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city or doing business in their offices in the trading section.\r\n\r\nHe perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developed from the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city had ever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent the merging of the separate households in his own generation was simply the still imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride, passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of the middle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separation of contiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, had been in rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previous life he had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming meals from home, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had given place to the open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women\u2019s clubs had had their beginning, and an immense development of reading rooms, lounges and libraries had witnessed to the growth of social confidence. These promises had by this time attained to their complete fulfilment. The locked and barred household had passed away.\r\n\r\nThese people below him belonged, he learnt, to the lower middle class, the class just above the blue labourers, a class so accustomed in the Victorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and certainly quite at their ease with regard to one another.\r\n\r\nHe noted a slight significant thing; the table, as far as he could see, was and remained delightfully neat, there was nothing to parallel the confusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment, the overturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have marked the stormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture was very different. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table was without a cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance having the texture and appearance of damask. He discerned that this damask substance was patterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements.\r\n\r\nIn a sort of recess before each diner was a complex apparatus of porcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and by means of taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed this himself between the courses; he also washed his elegant white metal knife and fork and spoon as occasion required.\r\n\r\nSoup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were delivered by similar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically in tastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The diner stopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared at a little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. That turn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls, which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong he found among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details that it was only as he was leaving the place that he remarked the huge advertisement dioramas that marched majestically along the upper walls and proclaimed the most remarkable commodities.\r\n\r\nBeyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered the cause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile at which a payment was made.\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot, followed by a vast leathery voice. \u201cThe Master is sleeping peacefully,\u201d it vociferated. \u201cHe is in excellent health. He is going to devote the rest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautiful than ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes him beyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in Boss Ostrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chief minister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers\u2014all patronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of Boss Ostrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison above the Council House.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld a foolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the General Intelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath, and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then it trumpeted \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d and broke out again.\r\n\r\n\u201cParis is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The black police hold every position of importance in the city. They fought with great bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors by the poet Kipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured and mutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral\u2014don\u2019t go rebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Lively brave fellows. Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of this city. Yah! Banderlog! Filth of the earth! Galloop, Galloop!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the crowd. \u201cDamned niggers.\u201d A man began to harangue near them. \u201cIs this the Master\u2019s doing, brothers? Is this the Master\u2019s doing?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBlack police!\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat is that? You don\u2019t mean\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nAsano touched his arm and gave him a warning look, and forthwith another of these mechanisms screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrill voice. \u201cYahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha! Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by the black police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savage times come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!\u201d The nearer Babble Machine hooted stupendously, \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d drowned the end of the sentence, and proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the horrors of disorder. \u201cLaw and order must be maintained,\u201d said the nearer Babble Machine.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut,\u201d began Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t ask questions here,\u201d said Asano, \u201cor you will be involved in an argument.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThen let us go on,\u201d said Graham, \u201cfor I want to know more of this.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs he and his companion pushed their way through the excited crowd that swarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived more clearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, great and small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections, piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each with its crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in blue canvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossiping mechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, through a number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had first hooted over Graham.\r\n\r\nThis place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interest in the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been much more savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms were discoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made the huge hive buzz with such phrases as \u201cLynched policemen,\u201d \u201cWomen burnt alive,\u201d \u201cFuzzy Wuzzy.\u201d \u201cBut does the Master allow such things?\u201d asked a man near him. \u201cIs this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule?\u201d\r\n\r\nIs this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule? For a long time after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines pursued him; \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d \u201cYahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!\u201d Is this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule?\r\n\r\nDirectly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely on the nature of the Parisian struggle. \u201cThis disarmament! What was their trouble? What does it all mean?\u201d Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure him that it was \u201call right.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut these outrages!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou cannot have an omelette,\u201d said Asano, \u201cwithout breaking eggs. It is only the rough people. Only in one part of the city. All the rest is all right. The Parisian labourers are the wildest in the world, except ours.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat! the Londoners?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut burning women alive!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA Commune!\u201d said Asano. \u201cThey would rob you of your property. They would do away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You are Master, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There is no need for black police here.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes\u2014French speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cRegiments?\u201d said Graham, \u201cI thought there was only one\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Asano, and glanced at him. \u201cThere is more than one.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham felt unpleasantly helpless.\r\n\r\n\u201cI did not think,\u201d he began and stopped abruptly. He went off at a tangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the most part, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, and Graham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned, in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixed Babble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenant of the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the great News Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, he demanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments. Asano was embarrassed. \u201cI never thought,\u201d he said. \u201cOstrog must have had them removed.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stared. \u201cHow was I to know?\u201d he exclaimed.\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps he thought they would annoy you,\u201d said Asano.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey must be replaced directly I return,\u201d said Graham after an interval.\r\n\r\nHe found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and the dining hall were not great central places, that such establishments were repeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and again during the night\u2019s expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, \u201cGalloop, Galloop!\u201d or the shrill \u201cYahaha, Yaha Yap!\u2014Hear a live paper yelp!\u201d of its chief rival.\r\n\r\nRepeated, too, everywhere, were such crhches<\/i> as the one he now entered. It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flung across the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle. To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of his solvent signature under Asano\u2019s direction. They were immediately attended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia of practising medical men. He perceived from this man\u2019s manner that his identity was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place without reserve.\r\n\r\nOn either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as if to deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size and arrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upper portion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff that had enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in every case, a very young baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatus watched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office at the slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. A system of such crhches<\/i> had almost entirely replaced the hazardous adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called Graham\u2019s attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures, with arms, shoulders, and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling, articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having in the place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be of interest to mothers.\r\n\r\nOf all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarred more upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of the little pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vague first movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was wholly repugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. His statistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian times the most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, that there human mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other hand this crhche<\/i> company, the International Crhche Syndicate, lost not one-half per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But Graham\u2019s prejudice was too strong even for those figures.\r\n\r\nAlong one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon a young couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparency and laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. Graham\u2019s face must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceased and they looked abashed. But this little incident accentuated his sudden realisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways of the new age. He passed on to the crawling rooms and the Kindergarten, perplexed and distressed. He found the endless long playrooms were empty! the latter-day children at least still spent their nights in sleep. As they went through these, the little officer pointed out the nature of the toys, developments of those devised by that inspired sentimentalist Froebel. There were nurses here, but much was done by machines that sang and danced and dandled.\r\n\r\nGraham was still not clear upon many points. \u201cBut so many orphans,\u201d he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that they were not orphans.\r\n\r\nSo soon as they had left the crhche<\/i> he began to speak of the horror the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. \u201cIs motherhood gone?\u201d he said. \u201cWas it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so unnatural\u2014abominable almost.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAlong here we shall come to the dancing place,\u201d said Asano by way of reply. \u201cIt is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics\u2014except a few here and there. You will see the mothers\u2014most young women in London are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have one child\u2014a proof of animation. Few middle class people have more than one. With the Labour Department it is different. As for motherhood! They still take an immense pride in the children. They come here to look at them quite often.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThen do you mean that the population of the World\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIs falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In spite of scientific discipline they are reckless\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nThe air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approached obliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst, flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries and laughter. He saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricate flutter of gamboge pass triumphant across the picture.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will see,\u201d said Asano with a faint smile. \u201cThe world has changed. In a moment you will see the mothers of the new age. Come this way. We shall see those yonder again very soon.\u201d\r\n\r\nThey ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slower one. As they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near and full and splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they could distinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. They made a payment at a turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked the dancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight.\r\n\r\n\u201cHere,\u201d said Asano, \u201care the fathers and mothers of the little ones you saw.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe hall was not so richly decorated as that of the Atlas, but saving that, it was, for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. The beautiful white-limbed figures that supported the galleries reminded him once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemed to writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of the music that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floor was thick with dancing couples. \u201cLook at them,\u201d said the little officer, \u201csee how much they show of motherhood.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe gallery they stood upon ran along the upper edge of a huge screen that cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall that showed through broad arches the incessant onward rush of the city ways. In this outer hall was a great crowd of less brilliantly dressed people, as numerous almost as those who danced within, the great majority wearing the blue uniform of the Labour Department that was now so familiar to Graham. Too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they were yet unable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. Some of them even had cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags in the air. Some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions Graham did not understand. Once someone began whistling the refrain of the revolutionary song, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptly suppressed. The corner was dark and Graham could not see. He turned to the hall again. Above the caryatids were marble busts of men whom that age esteemed great moral emancipators and pioneers; for the most part their names were strange to Graham, though he recognised Grant Allen, Le Gallienne, Nietzsche, Shelley and Goodwin. Great black festoons and eloquent sentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partially defaced the upper end of the dancing place, and asserted that \u201cThe Festival of the Awakening\u201d was in progress.\r\n\r\n\u201cMyriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite apart from the labourers who refuse to go back,\u201d said Asano. \u201cThese people are always ready for holidays.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at the dancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolen apart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath of scent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightly clad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the city permitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured cheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with elaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with eyes half closed in pleasure.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat sort of people are these?\u201d he asked abruptly.\r\n\r\n\u201cWorkers\u2014prosperous workers. What you would have called the middle class. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses have vanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers of a hundred sorts. To-night is a holiday of course, and every dancing place in the city will be crowded, and every place of worship.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut\u2014the women?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe same. There\u2019s a thousand forms of work for women now. But you had the beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most women are independent now. Most of these are married more or less\u2014there are a number of methods of contract\u2014and that gives them more money, and enables them to enjoy themselves.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI see,\u201d said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs. \u201cAnd these are\u2014mothers.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cMost of them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems. This, for instance, is a surprise. That news from Paris was a surprise.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn a little while he spoke again:\r\n\r\n\u201cThese are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me\u2014habits based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Of course, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them\u2014all the essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother. Or went without. Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly, there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies. I see that! Only there was an ideal\u2014that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men\u2014to love her was a sort of worship\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped and repeated, \u201cA sort of worship.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIdeals change,\u201d said the little man, \u201cas needs change.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words. Graham\u2019s mind returned to the thing at hand.\r\n\r\n\u201cOf course I see the perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man\u2019s tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes\u2014his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black police\u2014and life is joyous.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe looked at the dancers again. \u201cJoyous,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere are weary moments,\u201d said the little officer, reflectively.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are young. There are few old people in this class in the work cities.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHow is that?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOld people\u2019s lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless they are rich to hire lovers and helpers. And we have an institution called Euthanasy.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAh! that Euthanasy!\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe easy death?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it well. People will pay the sum\u2014it is a costly thing\u2014long beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThere is a lot left for me to understand,\u201d said Graham after a pause. \u201cYet I see the logic of it all. Our array of angry virtues and sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, the Puritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days man was armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies the difference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off\u2014for well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been asleep two hundred years.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.\r\n\r\n\u201cBefore God,\u201d said Graham, suddenly, \u201cI would rather be a wounded sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIn the snow,\u201d said Asano, \u201cone might think differently.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI am uncivilised,\u201d said Graham, not heeding him. \u201cThat is the trouble. I am primitive\u2014Paleolithic. Their<\/i> fountain of rage and fear and anger is sealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful and easy and delightful. You must bear with my nineteenth century shocks and disgusts. These people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. And while these dance, men are fighting\u2014men are dying in Paris to keep the world\u2014that they may dance.\u201d\r\n\r\nAsano smiled faintly. \u201cFor that matter, men are dying in London,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nThere was a moment\u2019s silence.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere do these sleep?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cAbove and below\u2014an intricate warren.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnd where do they work? This is\u2014the domestic life.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will see little work to-night. Half the workers are out or under arms. Half these people are keeping holiday. But we will go to the work places if you wish it.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. \u201cI want to see the workers. I have seen enough of these,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nAsano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. Presently they came to a transverse passage that brought a breath of fresher, colder air.\r\n\r\nAsano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to it, and turned to Graham with a smile. \u201cHere, Sire,\u201d he said, \u201cis something\u2014will be familiar to you at least\u2014and yet\u2014. But I will not tell you. Come!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. The reverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. They came into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather, and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though Graham could not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. In this was a ladder\u2014the first ladder he had seen since his awakening\u2014up which they went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.\r\n\r\nBut at the top he understood, and recognised the metallic bars to which he clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul\u2019s. The dome rose but a little way above the general contour of the city, into the still twilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights, into a circumambient ditch of darkness.\r\n\r\nOut between the bars he looked upon the wind-clear northern sky and saw the starry constellations all unchanged. Capella hung in the west, Vega was rising, and the seven glittering points of the Great Bear swept overhead in their stately circle about the Pole.\r\n\r\nHe saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. To the east and south the great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens, so that the glare about the Council House was hidden. To the southwest hung Orion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery of iron-work and interlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights. A bellowing and siren screaming that came from the flying stages warned the world that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained for a space gazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to the northward constellations.\r\n\r\nFor a long time he was silent. \u201cThis,\u201d he said at last, smiling in the shadow, \u201cseems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St. Paul\u2019s and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!\u201d\r\n\r\nThence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the great gambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into which opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude of bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and cable leaps. And here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. \u201cSkin your eyes and slide,\u201d \u201cGewhoop, Bonanza,\u201d \u201cGollipers come and hark!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundly agitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the place was comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the last few days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In one huge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited, undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-faced women and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of an absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes, paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion of its shares by means of a lottery wheel.\r\n\r\nThese business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readily passed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at its centre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teeth and nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something still remained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehement announcement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the height of a man, that \u201cWE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET\u2019R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET\u2019R.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWho\u2019s the proprietor?\u201d he asked.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut what do they assure me?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhat do they assure me?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you have assurance?\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham thought. \u201cInsurance?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYes\u2014Insurance. I remember that was the older word. They are insuring your life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lions are being put on you. And further on other people are buying annuities. They do that on everybody who is at all prominent. Look there!\u201d\r\n\r\nA crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. \u201cAnuetes on the Propraiet\u2019r\u2014x 5 pr. G.\u201d The people began to boo and shout at this, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past, clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush about a little doorway.\r\n\r\nAsano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. \u201cSeventeen per cent, per annum is their annuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent, if they could see you now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuities used to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course. This is probably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will get their money.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some time they could move neither forward nor backward. Graham noticed what appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex. They seemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd, using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost. One curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, and then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank, grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring \u201cX 5 pr. G.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI want to get out of this,\u201d said Graham to Asano. \u201cThis is not what I came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These parasitic lunatics\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\nHe found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XXI. \u2014 THE UNDER-SIDE<\/h2>\r\nFrom the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures was done. On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from the North. In both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid. The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with receding lights. A string of black barges passed seaward, manned by blue-clad men. The road was a long and very broad and high tunnel, along which big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, the distinctive blue of the Labour Department was in abundance. The smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightness of the big pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struck Graham most vividly. One lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested his attention unduly. Abruptly the edge of the archway cut and blotted out the picture.\r\n\r\nPresently they left the way and descended by a lift and traversed a passage that sloped downward, and so came to a descending lift again. The appearance of things changed. Even the pretence of architectural ornament disappeared, the lights diminished in number and size, the architecture became more and more massive in proportion to the spaces as the factory quarters were reached. And in the dusty biscuit-making place of the potters, among the felspar mills, in the furnace rooms of the metal workers, among the incandescent lakes of crude Eadhamite, the blue canvas clothing was on man, woman and child.\r\n\r\nMany of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues of machinery, endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to the revolutionary dislocation, but wherever there was work it was being done by slow-moving workers in blue canvas. The only people not in blue canvas were the overlookers of the work-places and the orange-clad Labour Police. And fresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary vigours of the business quarter, Graham could note the pinched faces, the feeble muscles, and weary eyes of many of the latter-day workers. Such as he saw at work were noticeably inferior in physique to the few gaily dressed managers and forewomen who were directing their labours. The burly labourers of the old Victorian times had followed that dray horse and all such living force producers, to extinction; the place of his costly muscles was taken by some dexterous machine. The latter-day labourer, male as well as female, was essentially a machine-minder and feeder, a servant and attendant, or an artist under direction.\r\n\r\nThe women, in comparison with those Graham remembered, were as a class distinctly plain and flat-chested. Two hundred years of emancipation from the moral restraints of Puritanical religion, two hundred years of city life, had done their work in eliminating the strain of feminine beauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliant physically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, had been and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a line of escape to the Pleasure City and its splendours and delights, and at last to the Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against such inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. In the young cities of Graham\u2019s former life, the newly aggregated labouring mass had been a diverse multitude, still stirred by the tradition of personal honour and a high morality; now it was differentiating into an instinct class, with a moral and physical difference of its own\u2014even with a dialect of its own.\r\n\r\nThey penetrated downward, ever downward, towards the working places. Presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways, and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks of white lights between the transverse slits. The factories that were not working were sparsely lighted; to Graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was going on the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways.\r\n\r\nBeyond the blazing lakes of Eadhamite he came to the warren of the jewellers, and, with some difficulty and by using his signature, obtained admission to these galleries. They were high and dark, and rather cold. In the first a few men were making ornaments of gold filigree, each man at a little bench by himself, and with a little shaded light. The long vista of light patches, with the nimble fingers brightly lit and moving among the gleaming yellow coils, and the intent face like the face of a ghost, in each shadow, had the oddest effect.\r\n\r\nThe work was beautifully executed, but without any strength of modelling or drawing, for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing of the changes on a geometrical motif<\/i>. These workers wore a peculiar white uniform without pockets or sleeves. They assumed this on coming to work, but at night they were stripped and examined before they left the premises of the Department. In spite of every precaution, the Labour policeman told them in a depressed tone, the Department was not infrequently robbed.\r\n\r\nBeyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs of artificial ruby, and next these were men and women working together upon the slabs of copper net that formed the basis of cloisonni<\/i> tiles. Many of these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a disease caused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion. Asano apologised to Graham for this offensive sight, but excused himself on the score of the convenience of this route. \u201cThis is what I wanted to see,\u201d said Graham; \u201cthis is what I wanted to see,\u201d trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement.\r\n\r\n\u201cShe might have done better with herself than that,\u201d said Asano.\r\n\r\nGraham made some indignant comments.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,\u201d said Asano. \u201cIn your days people could stand such crudities, they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years.\u201d\r\n\r\nThey continued along one of the lower galleries of this cloisonni<\/i> factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. Looking over the parapet, Graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet more tremendous archings than any he had seen. Three barges, smothered in floury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar by a multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dust filled the place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glare yellow. The vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their feet, and rushed to and fro against a long stretch of white-washed wall. Every now and then one would stop to cough.\r\n\r\nA shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to Graham\u2019s mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and lifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. The men worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police; their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went to and fro. And as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in the darkness began to sing.\r\n\r\n\u201cStop that!\u201d shouted one of the policemen, but the order was disobeyed, and first one and then all the white-stained men who were working there had taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly\u2014the Song of the Revolt. The feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the song, tramp, tramp, tramp. The policeman who had shouted glanced at his fellow, and Graham saw him shrug his shoulders. He made no further effort to stop the singing.\r\n\r\nAnd so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham\u2019s mind a maze of memories, fluctuating pictures of swathed halls, and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust, of intricate machines, the racing threads of looms, the heavy beat of stamping machinery, the roar and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. Here was the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. Everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as Graham had never before seen, thick Titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity. And everywhere were pale features, lean limbs, disfigurement and degradation.\r\n\r\nOnce and again, and again a third time, Graham heard the song of the revolt during his long, unpleasant research in these places, and once he saw a confused struggle down a passage, and learnt that a number of these serfs had seized their bread before their work was done. Graham was ascending towards the ways again when he saw a number of blue-clad children running down a transverse passage, and presently perceived the reason of their panic in a company of the Labour Police armed with clubs, trotting towards some unknown disturbance. And then came a remote disorder. But for the most part this remnant that worked, worked hopelessly. All the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above in the streets that night, calling for the Master, and valiantly and noisily keeping its arms.\r\n\r\nThey emerged from these wanderings and stood blinking in the bright light of the middle passage of the platforms again. They became aware of the remote hooting and yelping of the machines of one of the General Intelligence Offices, and suddenly came men running, and along the platforms and about the ways everywhere was a shouting and crying. Then a woman with a face of mute white terror, and another who gasped and shrieked as she ran.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat has happened now?\u201d said Graham, puzzled, for he could not understand their thick speech. Then he heard it in English and perceived that the thing that everyone was shouting, that men yelled to one another, that women took up screaming, that was passing like the first breeze of a thunderstorm, chill and sudden through the city, was this: \u201cOstrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police.\u201d\r\n\r\nAsano\u2019s face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham\u2019s face, and told him the thing he already knew. \u201cBut how can they know?\u201d asked Asano.\r\n\r\nGraham heard someone shouting. \u201cStop all work. Stop all work,\u201d and a swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, \u201cThis is Ostrog\u2019s doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed.\u201d His voice was hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. He yelled an unspeakable horror that the Black Police had done in Paris, and so passed shrieking, \u201cOstrog the Knave!\u201d\r\n\r\nFor a moment Graham stood still, for it had come upon him again that these things were a dream. He looked up at the great cliff of buildings on either side, vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights, and down to the roaring tiers of platforms, and the shouting, running people who were gesticulating past. \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d they cried. \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d\r\n\r\nSuddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His heart began to beat fast and strong.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt has come,\u201d he said. \u201cI might have known. The hour has come.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe thought swiftly. \u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGo back to the Council House,\u201d said Asano.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhy should I not appeal\u2014? The people are here.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will lose time. They will doubt if it is you. But they will mass about the Council House. There you will find their leaders. Your strength is there\u2014with them.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSuppose this is only a rumour?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt sounds true,\u201d said Asano.\r\n\r\n\u201cLet us have the facts,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\nAsano shrugged his shoulders. \u201cWe had better get towards the Council House,\u201d he cried. \u201cThat is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may be impassable.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.\r\n\r\nThey went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one, and there Asano accosted a labourer. The answers to his questions were in the thick, vulgar speech.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived here before the people knew\u2014had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices learnt. He said a girl.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cA girl? Not\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHe said a girl\u2014he did not know who she was. Who came out from the Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street. \u201cTo your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to his ward!\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XXII. \u2014 THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE<\/h2>\r\nAs Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House, they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. \u201cTo your wards! To your wards!\u201d Everywhere men and women in blue were hurrying from unknown subterranean employments, up the staircases of the middle path; at one place Graham saw an arsenal of the revolutionary committee besieged by a crowd of shouting men, at another a couple of men in the hated yellow uniform of the Labour Police, pursued by a gathering crowd, fled precipitately along the swift way that went in the opposite direction.\r\n\r\nThe cries of \u201cTo your wards!\u201d became at last a continuous shouting as they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were unintelligible. \u201cOstrog has betrayed us,\u201d one man bawled in a hoarse voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham\u2019s ear until it haunted him. This person stayed close beside Graham and Asano on the swift way, shouting to the people who swarmed on the lower platforms as he rushed past them. His cry about Ostrog alternated with some incomprehensible orders. Presently he went leaping down and disappeared.\r\n\r\nGraham\u2019s mind was filled with the din. His plans were vague and unformed. He had one picture of some commanding position from which he could address the multitudes, another of meeting Ostrog face to face. He was full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, his lips were pressed together.\r\n\r\nThe way to the Council House across the ruins was impassable, but Asano met that difficulty and took Graham into the premises of the central post-office. The post-office was nominally at work, but the blue-clothed porters moved sluggishly or had stopped to stare through the arches of their galleries at the shouting men who were going by outside. \u201cEvery man to his ward! Every man to his ward!\u201d Here, by Asano\u2019s advice, Graham revealed his identity.\r\n\r\nThey crossed to the Council House by a cable cradle. Already in the brief interval since the capitulation of the Councillors a great change had been wrought in the appearance of the ruins. The spurting cascades of the ruptured sea-water mains had been captured and tamed, and huge temporary pipes ran overhead along a flimsy looking fabric of girders. The sky was laced with restored cables and wires that served the Council House, and a mass of new fabric with cranes and other building machines going to and fro upon it projected to the left of the white pile.\r\n\r\nThe moving ways that ran across this area had been restored, albeit for once running under the open sky. These were the ways that Graham had seen from the little balcony in the hour of his awakening, not nine days since, and the hall of his Trance had been on the further side, where now shapeless piles of smashed and shattered masonry were heaped together.\r\n\r\nIt was already high day and the sun was shining brightly. Out of their tall caverns of blue electric light came the swift ways crowded with multitudes of people, who poured off them and gathered ever denser over the wreckage and confusion of the ruins. The air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central building. For the most part that shouting mass consisted of shapeless swarms, but here and there Graham could see that a rude discipline struggled to establish itself. And every voice clamoured for order in the chaos. \u201cTo your wards! Every man to his ward!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe cable carried them into a hall which Graham recognised as the ante-chamber to the Hall of the Atlas, about the gallery of which he had walked days ago with Howard to show himself to the Vanished Council, an hour from his awakening. Now the place was empty except for two cable attendants. These men seemed hugely astonished to recognise the Sleeper in the man who swung down from the cross seat.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhere is Ostrog?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI must see Ostrog forthwith. He has disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands.\u201d Without waiting for Asano, he went straight across the place, ascended the steps at the further end, and, pulling the curtain aside, found himself facing the perpetually labouring Titan.\r\n\r\nThe hall was empty. Its appearance had changed very greatly since his first sight of it. It had suffered serious injury in the violent struggle of the first outbreak. On the right hand side of the great figure the upper half of the wall had been torn away for nearly two hundred feet of its length, and a sheet of the same glassy film that had enclosed Graham at his awakening had been drawn across the gap. This deadened, but did not altogether exclude the roar of the people outside. \u201cWards! Wards! Wards!\u201d they seemed to be saying. Through it there were visible the beams and supports of metal scaffoldings that rose and fell according to the requirements of a great crowd of workmen. An idle building machine, with lank arms of red painted metal stretched gauntly across this green tinted picture. On it were still a number of workmen staring at the crowd below. For a moment he stood regarding these things, and Asano overtook him.\r\n\r\n\u201cOstrog,\u201d said Asano, \u201cwill be in the small offices beyond there.\u201d The little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham\u2019s face.\r\n\r\nThey had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a little panel to the left of the Atlas rolled up, and Ostrog, accompanied by Lincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appeared crossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that was raised and open. \u201cOstrog,\u201d shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice the little party turned astonished.\r\n\r\nOstrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.\r\n\r\nGraham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. \u201cWhat is this I hear?\u201d he asked. \u201cAre you bringing negroes here\u2014to keep the people down?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is none too soon,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey have been getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOn the way. As it is, you have seen the people\u2014outside?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo wonder! But\u2014after what was said. You have taken too much on yourself, Ostrog.\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog said nothing, but drew nearer.\r\n\r\n\u201cThese negroes must not come to London,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI am Master and they shall not come.\u201d\r\n\r\nOstrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two attendants close behind him. \u201cWhy not?\u201d asked Ostrog.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhite men must be mastered by white men. Besides\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe negroes are only an instrument.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master. And I tell you these negroes shall not come.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people\u2014\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI believe in the people.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past\u2014an accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally\u2014legally. But you are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe glanced at Lincoln again. \u201cI know now what you think\u2014I can guess something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn you. You dream of human equality\u2014of some sort of socialistic order\u2014you have all those worn-out dreams of the nineteenth century fresh and vivid in your mind, and you would rule this age that you do not understand.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cListen!\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou can hear it\u2014a sound like the sea. Not voices\u2014but a voice. Do you<\/i> altogether understand?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe taught them that,\u201d said Ostrog.\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These negroes must not come.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey will,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cI forbid it,\u201d said Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey have started.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI will not have it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cSorry as I am to follow the method of the Council\u2014. For your own good\u2014you must not side with\u2014Disorder. And now that you are here\u2014. It was kind of you to come here.\u201d\r\n\r\nLincoln laid his hand on Graham\u2019s shoulder. Abruptly Graham realised the enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the ante-chamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment Lincoln had grasped Graham\u2019s cloak.\r\n\r\nHe turned and struck at Lincoln\u2019s face, and incontinently a negro had him by collar and arm. He wrenched himself away, his sleeve tore noisily, and he stumbled back, to be tripped by the other attendant. Then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distant ceiling of the hall.\r\n\r\nHe shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant\u2019s leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.\r\n\r\nLincoln appeared before him, went down heavily again with a blow under the point of the jaw and lay still. Graham made two strides, stumbled. And then Ostrog\u2019s arm was round his neck, he was pulled over backward, fell heavily, and his arms were pinned to the ground. After a few violent efforts he ceased to struggle and lay staring at Ostrog\u2019s heaving throat.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou\u2014are\u2014a prisoner,\u201d panted Ostrog, exulting. \u201cYou\u2014were rather a fool\u2014to come back.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham turned his head about and perceived through the irregular green window in the walls of the hall the men who had been working the building cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them. They had seen!\r\n\r\nOstrog followed his eyes and started. He shouted something to Lincoln, but Lincoln did not move. A bullet smashed among the mouldings above the Atlas. The two sheets of transparent matter that had been stretched across this gap were rent, the edges of the torn aperture darkened, curved, ran rapidly towards the framework, and in a moment the Council chamber stood open to the air. A chilly gust blew in by the gap, bringing with it a war of voices from the ruinous spaces without, an elvish babblement, \u201cSave the Master!\u201d \u201cWhat are they doing to the Master?\u201d \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd then he realised that Ostrog\u2019s attention was distracted, that Ostrog\u2019s grip had relaxed, and, wrenching his arms free, he struggled to his knees. In another moment he had thrust Ostrog back, and he was on one foot, his hand gripping Ostrog\u2019s throat, and Ostrog\u2019s hands clutching the silk about his neck.\r\n\r\nBut now men were coming towards them from the dais\u2014men whose intentions he misunderstood. He had a glimpse of someone running in the distance towards the curtains of the antechamber, and then Ostrog had slipped from him and these newcomers were upon him. To his infinite astonishment, they seized him. They obeyed the shouts of Ostrog.\r\n\r\nHe was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not friends\u2014that they were dragging him towards the open panel. When he saw this he pulled back, he tried to fling himself down, he shouted for help with all his strength. And this time there were answering cries.\r\n\r\nThe grip upon his neck relaxed, and behold! in the lower corner of the rent upon the wall, first one and then a number of little black figures appeared shouting and waving arms. They came leaping down from the gap into the light gallery that had led to the Silent Rooms. They ran along it, so near were they that Graham could see the weapons in their hands. Then Ostrog was shouting in his ear to the men who held him, and once more he was struggling with all his strength against their endeavours to thrust him towards the opening that yawned to receive him. \u201cThey can\u2019t come down,\u201d panted Ostrog. \u201cThey daren\u2019t fire. It\u2019s all right. We\u2019ll save him from them yet.\u201d\r\n\r\nFor long minutes as it seemed to Graham that inglorious struggle continued. His clothes were rent in a dozen places, he was covered in dust, one hand had been trodden upon. He could hear the shouts of his supporters, and once he heard shots. He could feel his strength giving way, feel his efforts wild and aimless. But no help came, and surely, irresistibly, that black, yawning opening came nearer.\r\n\r\nThe pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog\u2019s grey head receding and perceived that he was no longer held. He turned about and came full into a man in black. One of the green weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed. The huge chamber span about him.\r\n\r\nHe saw a man in pale blue stabbing one of the black and yellow attendants not three yards from his face. Then hands were upon him again.\r\n\r\nHe was being pulled in two directions now. It seemed as though people were shouting to him. He wanted to understand and could not. Someone was clutching about his thighs, he was being hoisted in spite of his vigorous efforts. He understood suddenly, he ceased to struggle. He was lifted up on men\u2019s shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten thousand throats were cheering.\r\n\r\nHe saw men in blue and black hurrying after the retreating Ostrogites and firing. Lifted up, he saw now across the whole expanse of the hall beneath the Atlas image, saw that he was being carried towards the raised platform in the centre of the place. The far end of the hall was already full of people running towards him. They were looking at him and cheering.\r\n\r\nHe became aware that a bodyguard surrounded him. Active men about him shouted vague orders. He saw close at hand the black moustached man in yellow who had been among those who had greeted him in the public theatre, shouting directions. The hall was already densely packed with swaying people, the little metal gallery sagged with a shouting load, the curtains at the end had been torn away, and the antechamber was revealed densely crowded. He could scarcely make the man near him hear for the tumult about them. \u201cWhere has Ostrog gone?\u201d he asked.\r\n\r\nThe man he questioned pointed over the heads towards the lower panels about the hall on the side opposite the gap. They stood open, and armed men, blue clad with black sashes, were running through them and vanishing into the chambers and passages beyond. It seemed to Graham that a sound of firing drifted through the riot. He was carried in a staggering curve across the great hall towards an opening beneath the gap.\r\n\r\nHe perceived men working with a sort of rude discipline to keep the crowd off him, to make a space clear about him. He passed out of the hall, and saw a crude, new wall rising blankly before him topped by blue sky. He was swung down to his feet; someone gripped his arm and guided him. He found the man in yellow close at hand. They were taking him up a narrow stairway of brick, and close at hand rose the great red painted masses, the cranes and levers and the still engines of the big building machine.\r\n\r\nHe was at the top of the steps. He was hurried across a narrow railed footway, and suddenly with a vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruins opened again before him. \u201cThe Master is with us! The Master! The Master!\u201d The shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, broke against the distant cliff of ruins, and came back in a welter of cries. \u201cThe Master is on our side!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham perceived that he was no longer encompassed by people, that he was standing upon a little temporary platform of white metal, part of a flimsy seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass of the Council House. Over all the huge expanse of the ruins swayed and eddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners of the revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare nuclei of organisation in the chaos. Up the steep stairs of wall and scaffolding by which his rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging to pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested, masses to stir. Behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number of men struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon the packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. A solitary monoplane beat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming aeroplanes.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat has become of Ostrog?\u201d asked Graham, and even as he spoke he saw that all eyes were turned from him towards the crest of the Council House building. He looked also in this direction of universal attention. For a moment he saw nothing but the jagged corner of a wall, hard and clear against the sky. Then in the shadow he perceived the interior of a room and recognised with a start the green and white decorations of his former prison. And coming quickly across this opened room and up to the very verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figure followed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. He heard the man beside him exclaim \u201cOstrog,\u201d and turned to ask a question. But he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another of those who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. He looked, and behold! the monoplane that had been rising from the flying stage when last he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. The swift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention.\r\n\r\nNearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger, until it had swept over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes below. It drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, rising to clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyond the skyline of the ruins.\r\n\r\nGraham transferred his attention to Ostrog. He was signalling with his hands, and his attendants were busy breaking down the wall beside him. In another moment the monoplane came into view again, a little thing far away, coming round in a wide curve and going slower.\r\n\r\nThen suddenly the man in yellow shouted: \u201cWhat are they doing? What are the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They will lift him\u2014the monoplane will lift him! Ah!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe exclamation was echoed by a shout from the ruins. The rattling sound of the green weapons drifted across the intervening gulf to Graham, and, looking down, he saw a number of black and yellow uniforms running along one of the galleries that lay open to the air below the promontory upon which Ostrog stood. They fired as they ran at men unseen, and then emerged a number of pale blue figures in pursuit. These minute fighting figures had the oddest effect; they seemed as they ran like little model soldiers in a toy. This queer appearance of a house cut open gave that struggle amidst furniture and passages a quality of unreality. It was perhaps two hundred yards away from him, and very nearly fifty above the heads in the ruins below. The black and yellow men ran into an open archway, and turned and fired a volley. One of the blue pursuers striding forward close to the edge, flung up his arms, staggered sideways, seemed to Graham\u2019s sense to hang over the edge for several seconds, and fell headlong down. Graham saw him strike a projecting corner, fly out, head over heels, head over heels, and vanish behind the red arm of the building machine.\r\n\r\nAnd then a shadow came between Graham and the sun. He looked up and the sky was clear, but he knew the little monoplane had passed. Ostrog had vanished. The man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and perspiring, pointing and blatant.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey are grounding!\u201d cried the man in yellow. \u201cThey are grounding. Tell the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these enigmatical orders.\r\n\r\nSuddenly he saw the prow of the monoplane come gliding over the edge of the ruins and stop with a jerk. In a moment Graham understood that the thing had grounded in order that Ostrog might escape by it. He saw a blue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him were now firing up at the projecting stem.\r\n\r\nA man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebels had gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and yellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along the open passage.\r\n\r\nAnd suddenly the monoplane slipped over the edge of the Council House and fell like a diving swallow. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most of those below, that it could not possibly rise again.\r\n\r\nIt fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the guides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut wrenching over the lever that turned the machine upward. He heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below.\r\n\r\nGraham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an age. The lower vane of the monoplane passed within an ace of touching the people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below.\r\n\r\nAnd then it rose.\r\n\r\nFor a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that rotated beyond.\r\n\r\nAnd behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward, upward into the wind-swept sky.\r\n\r\nThe suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belated activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar, until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the thin smoke of their weapons.\r\n\r\nToo late! The flying machine dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved about and swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had so lately risen. Ostrog had escaped.\r\n\r\nFor a while a confused babblement arose from the ruins, and then the universal attention came back to Graham, perched high among the scaffolding. He saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heard their shouts at his rescue. From the throat of the ways came the song of the revolt spreading like a breeze across that swaying sea of men.\r\n\r\nThe little group of men about him shouted congratulations on his escape. The man in yellow was close to him, with a set face and shining eyes. And the song was rising, louder and louder; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.\r\n\r\nSlowly the realisation came of the full meaning of these things to him, the perception of the swift change in his position. Ostrog, who had stood beside him whenever he had faced that shouting multitude before, was beyond there\u2014the antagonist. There was no one to rule for him any longer. Even the people about him, the leaders and organisers of the multitude, looked to see what he would do, looked to him to act, awaited his orders. He was king indeed. His puppet reign was at an end.\r\n\r\nHe was very intent to do the thing that was expected of him. His nerves and muscles were quivering, his mind was perhaps a little confused, but he felt neither fear nor anger. His hand that had been trodden upon throbbed and was hot. He was a little nervous about his bearing. He knew he was not afraid, but he was anxious not to seem afraid. In his former life he had often been more excited in playing games of skill. He was desirous of immediate action, he knew he must not think too much in detail of the huge complexity of the struggle about him lest be should be paralysed by the sense of its intricacy.\r\n\r\nOver there those square blue shapes, the flying stages, meant Ostrog; against Ostrog, who was so clear and definite and decisive, he who was so vague and undecided, was fighting for the whole future of the world.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XXIII. \u2014 GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD<\/h2>\r\nFor a time the Master of the Earth was not even master of his own mind. Even his will seemed a will not his own, his own acts surprised him and were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that poured across his being. These things were definite, the negroes were coming, Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he was Master of the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for complete possession of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarming halls, elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council, kinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seething sea of marching men. The men in yellow, and men whom he fancied were called Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or following him obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little of both. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected propelled them all. He was aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of the Earth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as the thing he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he found himself with the man in yellow entering a little room where this proclamation of his was to be made.\r\n\r\nThis room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest was in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came from the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The dead thud of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the tumult in which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of light, the whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible attendants in the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge ears of a phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the black eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together black and sharp to a little blot at his feet.\r\n\r\nThe vague shape of the thing he meant to say was already in his mind. But this silence, this isolation, the withdrawal from that contagious crowd, this audience of gaping, glaring machines, had not been in his anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawn together; he seemed to have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to have discovered himself. In a moment he was changed. He found that he now feared to be inadequate, he feared to be theatrical, he feared the quality of his voice, the quality of his wit; astonished, he turned to the man in yellow with a propitiatory gesture. \u201cFor a moment,\u201d he said, \u201cI must wait. I did not think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat news of the flying stages?\u201d he asked.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe people of the south-west wards are ready.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cReady!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.\r\n\r\n\u201cI suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly the thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Madrid! They must have started before the main fleet.\r\n\r\n\u201cOh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?\u201d he said, and felt the light grow brighter.\r\n\r\nHe had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating, with an indiscreet apology for his inability trembling on his lips, came the noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of feet. \u201cWait,\u201d cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the watching lights waned.\r\n\r\nThrough the open doorway he saw a slight girlish figure approaching. His heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. The man in yellow came out of the nearer shadows into the circle of light.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nShe came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to interrupt Graham\u2019s eloquence.... But his doubts and questionings fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He turned back to her.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou have helped me,\u201d he said lamely\u2014\u201chelped me very much.... This is very difficult.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.\r\n\r\n\u201cMen and women of the new age,\u201d he said; \u201cyou have arisen to do battle for the race!... There is no easy victory before us.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of moving speech.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis night is a beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cThis battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. I think I may be overthrown.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of speech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian commonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched it to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of the new age, to the girl at his side.\r\n\r\n\u201cI come out of the past to you,\u201d he said, \u201cwith the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams\u2014of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women might live nobly, in freedom and peace.... So we hoped in the days that are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundred years?\r\n\r\n\u201cGreat cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams. For that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the little lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common lives? As it has ever been\u2014sorrow and labour, lives cramped and unfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to waste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith\u2014. Is there a new faith?\r\n\r\n\u201cCharity and mercy,\u201d he floundered; \u201cbeauty and the love of beautiful things\u2014effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself\u2014as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You know<\/i>\u2014in the core of your hearts you know<\/i>. There is no promise, there is no security\u2014nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith\u2014faith which is courage....\u201d\r\n\r\nThings that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. He spoke gustily, in broken incomplete sentences, but with all his heart and strength, of this new faith within him. He spoke of the greatness of self-abnegation, of his belief in an immortal life of Humanity in which we live and move and have our being. His voice rose and fell, and the recording appliances hummed as he spoke, dim attendants watched him out of the shadow....\r\n\r\nHis sense of that silent spectator beside him sustained his sincerity. For a few glorious moments he was carried away; he felt no doubt of his heroic quality, no doubt of his heroic words, he had it all straight and plain. His eloquence limped no longer. And at last he made an end to speaking. \u201cHere and now,\u201d he cried, \u201cI make my will. All that is mine in the world I give to the people of the world. All that is mine in the world I give to the people of the world. To all of you. I give it to you, and myself I give to you. And as God wills to-night, I will live for you, or I will die.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe ended. He found the light of his present exaltation reflected in the face of the girl. Their eyes met; her eyes were swimming with tears of enthusiasm.\r\n\r\n\u201cI knew,\u201d she whispered. \u201cOh! Father of the World\u2014Sire<\/i>! I knew you would say these things....\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI have said what I could,\u201d he answered lamely and grasped and clung to her outstretched hands.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XXIV. \u2014 WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING<\/h2>\r\nThe man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was saying that the south-west wards were marching. \u201cI never expected it so soon,\u201d he cried. \u201cThey have done wonders. You must send them a word to help them on their way.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.\r\n\r\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is good, that is good.\u201d He weighed a message. \u201cTell them;\u2014well done South West.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle between conflicting ideas. \u201cWe must capture the flying stages,\u201d he explained. \u201cUnless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we must prevent that.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe felt even as he spoke that this was not what had been in his mind before the interruption. He saw a touch of surprise in her eyes. She seemed about to speak and a shrill bell drowned her voice.\r\n\r\nIt occurred to Graham that she expected him to lead these marching people, that that was the thing he had to do. He made the offer abruptly. He addressed the man in yellow, but he spoke to her. He saw her face respond. \u201cHere I am doing nothing,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt is impossible,\u201d protested the man in yellow. \u201cIt is a fight in a warren. Your place is here.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must wait, he insisted no other course was possible. \u201cWe must know where you are,\u201d he said. \u201cAt any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence and decision.\u201d\r\n\r\nA picture had drifted through his mind of such a vast dramatic struggle as the masses in the ruins had suggested. But here was no spectacular battle-field such as he imagined. Instead was seclusion\u2014and suspense. It was only as the afternoon wore on that he pieced together a truer picture of the fight that was raging, inaudibly and invisibly, within four miles of him, beneath the Roehampton stage. A strange and unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either side was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture and sudden distribution in enormous quantities had been one of Ostrog\u2019s culminating moves against the Council. Few had had any experience with this weapon, many had never discharged one, many who carried it came unprovided with ammunition; never was wilder firing in the history of warfare. It was a battle of amateurs, a hideous experimental warfare, armed rioters fighting armed rioters, armed rioters swept forward by the words and fury of a song, by the tramping sympathy of their numbers, pouring in countless myriads towards the smaller ways, the disabled lifts, the galleries slippery with blood, the halls and passages choked with smoke, beneath the flying stages, to learn there when retreat was hopeless the ancient mysteries of warfare. And overhead save for a few sharpshooters upon the roof spaces and for a few bands and threads of vapour that multiplied and darkened towards the evening, the day was a clear serenity. Ostrog it seems had no bombs at command and in all the earlier phases of the battle the flying machines played no part. Not the smallest cloud was there to break the empty brilliance of the sky. It seemed as though it held itself vacant until the aeroplanes should come.\r\n\r\nEver and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from this Spanish town and then that, and presently from France. But of the new guns that Ostrog had made and which were known to be in the city came no news in spite of Graham\u2019s urgency, nor any report of successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flying stages. Section after section of the Labour-Societies reported itself assembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare. What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative.\r\n\r\nHis isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening. It had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. A tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bells and broken mirror!\r\n\r\nNow the door would be closed and Graham and Helen were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world.\r\n\r\nThere came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.\r\n\r\nMetallic voices were shouting \u201cVictory!\u201d Yes it was \u201cVictory!\u201d\r\n\r\nBursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and dishevelled with excitement, \u201cVictory,\u201d he cried, \u201cvictory! The people are winning. Ostrog\u2019s people have collapsed.\u201d\r\n\r\nShe rose. \u201cVictory?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d asked Graham. \u201cTell me! What<\/i>?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours<\/i>!\u2014and we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon.\u201d\r\n\r\nA shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of the Ward Leaders. \u201cIt is all over,\u201d he cried.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been sighted at Boulogne!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Channel!\u201d said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly. \u201cHalf an hour.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThey still have three of the flying stages,\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\n\u201cThose guns?\u201d cried Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe cannot mount them\u2014in half an hour.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo you mean they are found?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cToo late,\u201d said the old man.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf we could stop them another hour!\u201d cried the man in yellow.\r\n\r\n\u201cNothing can stop them now,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThey have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cAnother hour?\u201d asked Graham.\r\n\r\n\u201cTo be so near!\u201d said the Ward Leader. \u201cNow that we have found those guns. To be so near\u2014. If once we could get them out upon the roof spaces.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cHow long would that take?\u201d asked Graham suddenly.\r\n\r\n\u201cAn hour\u2014certainly.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cToo late,\u201d cried the Ward Leader, \u201ctoo late.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cIs<\/i> it too late?\u201d said Graham. \u201cEven now\u2014. An hour!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his face was white. \u201cThere is are chance. You said there was a monoplane\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cOn the Roehampton stage, Sire.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSmashed?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNo. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the guides\u2014easily. But there is no aeronaut\u2014.\u201d\r\n\r\nGraham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long pause. \u201cWe<\/i> have no aeronauts?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cNone.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. \u201cI must do it.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cDo what?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cGo to this flying stage\u2014to this machine.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cI am an aeronaut. After all\u2014. Those days for which you reproached me were not altogether wasted.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe turned to the old man in yellow. \u201cTell them to put it upon the guides.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe man in yellow hesitated.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat do you mean to do?\u201d cried Helen.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis monoplane\u2014it is a chance\u2014.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou don\u2019t mean\u2014?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cTo fight\u2014yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before\u2014. A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man\u2014!\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cBut\u2014never since flying began\u2014\u201d cried the man in yellow.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now\u2014send them my message\u2014to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I see now why I am here!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.\r\n\r\nHelen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. \u201cBut, Sire!\u2014How can one fight? You will be killed.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cPerhaps. Yet, not to do it\u2014or to let some one else attempt it\u2014.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cYou will be killed,\u201d she repeated.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019ve said my word. Do you not see? It may save\u2014London!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a gesture, and they stood looking at one another.\r\n\r\nThey were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these towering heroisms.\r\n\r\nHer eyes brimmed with tears. She came towards him with a curious movement of her hands, as though she felt her way and could not see; she seized his hand and kissed it.\r\n\r\n\u201cTo wake,\u201d she cried, \u201cfor this!\u201d\r\n\r\nHe held her clumsily for a moment, and kissed the hair of her bowed head, and then thrust her away, and turned towards the man in yellow.\r\n\r\nHe could not speak. The gesture of his arm said \u201cOnward.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

CHAPTER XXV. \u2014 THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES<\/h2>\r\nTwo men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched along the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called Wimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke the mutilated English of their class and period. The fire of the Ostrogites had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some time. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the staccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describing to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too far. \u201cHe\u2019s down there still,\u201d said the marksman. \u201cSee that little patch. Yes. Between those bars.\u201d\r\n\r\nA few yards behind them lay a dead stranger, face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smouldering in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face and watched the progress of that burning. Behind them, athwart the carrier lay the captured monoplane.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can\u2019t see him now<\/i>,\u201d said the second man in a tone of provocation.\r\n\r\nThe marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest endeavour to make things plain. And suddenly, interrupting him, came a noisy shouting from the substage.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat\u2019s going on now?\u201d he said, and raised himself on one arm to survey the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of blue figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want all these fools,\u201d said his friend. \u201cThey only crowd up and spoil shots. What are they after?\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cSsh!\u2014they\u2019re shouting something.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe two men listened. The new-comers had crowded densely about the machine. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and file flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. One of the marksmen knelt up. \u201cThey\u2019re putting it on the carrier\u2014that\u2019s what they\u2019re after.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe rose to his feet, his friend rose also. \u201cWhat\u2019s the good?\u201d said his friend. \u201cWe\u2019ve got no aeronauts.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cThat\u2019s what they\u2019re doing anyhow.\u201d He looked at his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. \u201cMind these, mate,\u201d he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a moment he was running towards the monoplane. For a quarter of an hour he was lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts, and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of others cheering their own achievement. By this time he knew, what indeed everyone in the city knew, that the Master, raw learner though he was, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to take control of it, would let no other man attempt it.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King,\u201d so the Master was reported to have spoken. And even as this man cheered, and while the beads of sweat still chased one another from the disorder of his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitful snatches the beat and impulse of the revolutionary song. He saw through a gap in the people that a thick stream of heads still poured up the stairway. \u201cThe Master is coming,\u201d shouted voices, \u201cthe Master is coming,\u201d and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to thrust himself towards the central groove. \u201cThe Master is coming!\u201d \u201cThe Sleeper, the Master!\u201d \u201cGod and the Master!\u201d roared the voices.\r\n\r\nAnd suddenly quite close to him were the black uniforms of the revolutionary guard, and for the first and last time in his life he saw Graham, saw him quite nearly. A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe he was, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man who for all the little things about him had neither ears nor eyes nor thoughts....\r\n\r\nFor all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham\u2019s bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fighting in the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling \u201cClear for the start, you fools!\u201d The bell that cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.\r\n\r\nWith that clanging in his ears Graham drew near the monoplane, marched into the shadow of its tilting wing. He became aware that a number of people about him were offering to accompany him, and waved their offers aside. He wanted to think how one started the engine. The bell clanged faster and faster, and the feet of the retreating people roared faster and louder. The man in yellow was assisting him to mount through the ribs of the body. He clambered into the aeronaut\u2019s place, fixing himself very carefully and deliberately. What was it? The man in yellow was pointing to two small flying machines driving upward in the southern sky. No doubt they were looking for the coming aeroplanes. That\u2014presently\u2014the thing to do now was to start. Things were being shouted at him, questions, warnings. They bothered him. He wanted to think about the machine, to recall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people from him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd cleft down the line of the girders by his gesture.\r\n\r\nFor a moment he was motionless, staring at the levers, the wheel by which the engine shifted, and all the delicate appliances of which he knew so little. His eye caught a spirit level with the bubble towards him, and he remembered something, spent a dozen seconds in swinging the engine forward until the bubble floated in the centre of the tube. He noted that the people were not shouting, knew they watched his deliberation. A bullet smashed on the bar above his head. Who fired? Was the line clear of people? He stood up to see and sat down again.\r\n\r\nIn another second the propeller was spinning and he was rushing down the guides. He gripped the wheel and swung the engine back to lift the stem. Then it was the people shouted. In a moment he was throbbing with the quiver of the engine, and the shouts dwindled swiftly behind, rushed down to silence. The wind whistled over the edges of the screen, and the world sank away from him very swiftly.\r\n\r\nThrob, throb, throb\u2014throb, throb, throb; up he drove. He fancied himself free of all excitement, felt cool and deliberate. He lifted the stem still more, opened one valve on his left wing and swept round and up. He looked down with a steady head, and up. One of the Ostrogite monoplanes was driving across his course, so that he drove obliquely towards it and would pass below it at a steep angle. Its little aeronauts were peering down at him. What did they mean to do? His mind became active. One, he saw held a weapon pointing, seemed prepared to fire. What did they think he meant to do? In a moment he understood their tactics, and his resolution was taken. His momentary lethargy was past. He opened two more valves to his left, swung round, end on to this hostile machine, closed his valves, and shot straight at it, stem and wind-screen shielding him from the shot. They tilted a little as if to clear him. He flung up his stem.\r\n\r\nThrob, throb, throb\u2014pause\u2014throb, throb\u2014he set his teeth, his face into an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath the nearer wing.\r\n\r\nVery slowly the wing of his antagonist seemed to broaden as the impetus of his blow turned it up. He saw the full breadth of it and then it slid downward out of his sight.\r\n\r\nHe felt his stem going down, his hands tightened on the levers, whirled and rammed the engine back. He felt the jerk of a clearance, the nose of the machine jerked upward steeply, and for a moment he seemed to be lying on his back. The machine was reeling and staggering, it seemed to be dancing on its screw. He made a huge effort, hung for a moment on the levers, and slowly the engine came forward again. He was driving upward but no longer so steeply. He gasped for a moment and flung himself at the levers again. The wind whistled about him. One further effort and he was almost level. He could breathe. He turned his head for the first time to see what had become of his antagonists. Turned back to the levers for a moment and looked again. For a moment he could have believed they were annihilated. And then he saw between the two stages to the east was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge, fell swiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a crack.\r\n\r\nAt first he did not understand, and then a wild joy possessed him. He shouted at the top of his voice, an inarticulate shout, and drove higher and higher up the sky. Throb, throb, throb, pause, throb, throb, throb. \u201cWhere was the other?\u201d he thought. \u201cThey too\u2014.\u201d As he looked round the empty heavens he had a momentary fear that this second machine had risen above him, and then he saw it alighting on the Norwood stage. They had meant shooting. To risk being rammed headlong two thousand feet in the air was beyond their latter-day courage....\r\n\r\nFor a little while he circled, then swooped in a steep descent towards the westward stage. Throb throb throb, throb throb throb. The twilight was creeping on apace, the smoke from the Streatham stage that had been so dense and dark, was now a pillar of fire, and all the laced curves of the moving ways and the translucent roofs and domes and the chasms between the buildings were glowing softly now, lit by the tempered radiance of the electric light that the glare of the day overpowered. The three efficient stages that the Ostrogites held\u2014for Wimbledon Park was useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a furnace\u2014were glowing with guide lights for the coming aeroplanes. As he swept over the Roehampton stage he saw the dark masses of the people thereon. He heard a clap of frantic cheering, heard a bullet from the Wimbledon Park stage tweet through the air, and went beating up above the Surrey wastes. He felt a breath of wind from the southwest, and lifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upward heeling into the rare swift upper air. Whirr, whirr, whirr.\r\n\r\nUp he drove and up, to that pulsating rhythm, until the country beneath was blue and indistinct, and London spread like a little map traced in light, like the mere model of a city near the brim of the horizon. The southwest was a sky of sapphire over the shadowy rim of the world, and ever as he drove upward the multitude of stars increased.\r\n\r\nAnd behold! In the southward, low down and glittering swiftly nearer, were two little patches of nebulous light. And then two more, and then a glow of swiftly driving shapes. Presently he could count them. There were four and twenty. The first fleet of aeroplanes had come! Beyond appeared a yet greater glow.\r\n\r\nHe swept round in a half circle, staring at this advancing fleet. It flew in a wedge-like shape, a triangular flight of gigantic phosphorescent shapes sweeping nearer through the lower air. He made a swift calculation of their pace, and spun the little wheel that brought the engine forward. He touched a lever and the throbbing effort of the engine ceased. He began to fall, fell swifter and swifter. He aimed at the apex of the wedge. He dropped like a stone through the whistling air. It seemed scarce a second from that soaring moment before he struck the foremost aeroplane.\r\n\r\nNo man of all that black multitude saw the coming of his fate, no man among them dreamt of the hawk that struck downward upon him out of the sky. Those who were not limp in the agonies of air-sickness, were craning their black necks and staring to see the filmy city that was rising out of the haze, the rich and splendid city to which \u201cMassa Boss\u201d had brought their obedient muscles. Bright teeth gleamed and the glossy faces shone. They had heard of Paris. They knew they were to have lordly times among the poor white trash.\r\n\r\nSuddenly Graham hit them.\r\n\r\nHe had aimed at the body of the aeroplane, but at the very last instant a better idea had flashed into his mind. He twisted about and struck near the edge of the starboard wing with all his accumulated weight. He was jerked back as he struck. His prow went gliding across its smooth expanse towards the rim. He felt the forward rush of the huge fabric sweeping him and his monoplane along with it, and for a moment that seemed an age he could not tell what was happening. He heard a thousand throats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edge of the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulder and saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. He had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, and hands clutching at the tilting guide bars. The fenestrations in the further float flashed open as the aeronaut tried to right her. Beyond, he saw a second aeroplane leaping steeply to escape the whirl of its heeling fellow. The broad area of swaying wings seemed to jerk upward. He felt he had dropped clear, that the monstrous fabric, clean overturned, hung like a sloping wall above him.\r\n\r\nHe did not clearly understand that he had struck the side float of the aeroplane and slipped off, but he perceived that he was flying free on the down glide and rapidly nearing earth. What had he done? His heart throbbed like a noisy engine in his throat and for a perilous instant he could not move his levers because of the paralysis of his hands. He wrenched the levers to throw his engine back, fought for two seconds against the weight of it, felt himself righting, driving horizontally, set the engine beating again.\r\n\r\nHe looked upward and saw two aeroplanes glide shouting far overhead, looked back, and saw the main body of the fleet opening out and rushing upward and outward; saw the one he had struck fall edgewise on and strike like a gigantic knife-blade along the wind-wheels below it.\r\n\r\nHe put down his stern and looked again. He drove up heedless of his direction as he watched. He saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabric strike the earth, saw its downward vanes crumple with the weight of its descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down, upon the sloping wheels. Then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the zenith. He was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge\u2014if it was a charge\u2014of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the gust of its close passage.\r\n\r\nHe became aware of three others rushing towards him, aware of the urgent necessity of beating above them. Aeroplanes were all about him, circling wildly to avoid him, as it seemed. They drove past him, above, below, eastward and westward. Far away to the westward was the sound of a collision, and two falling flares. Far away to the southward a second squadron was coming. Steadily he beat upward. Presently all the aeroplanes were below him, but for a moment he doubted the height he had of them, and did not swoop again. And then he came down upon a second victim and all its load of soldiers saw him coming. The big machine heeled and swayed as the fear-maddened men scrambled to the stern for their weapons. A score of bullets sung through the air, and there flashed a star in the thick glass wind-screen that protected him. The aeroplane slowed and dropped to foil his stroke, and dropped too low. Just in time he saw the wind-wheels of Bromley hill rushing up towards him, and spun about and up as the aeroplane he had chased crashed among them. All its voices wove into a felt of yelling. The great fabric seemed to be standing on end for a second among the heeling and splintering vans, and then it flew to pieces. Huge splinters came flying through the air, its engines burst like shells. A hot rush of flame shot overhead into the darkling sky.\r\n\r\n\u201cTwo<\/i>!\u201d he cried, with a bomb from overhead bursting as it fell, and forthwith he was beating up again. A glorious exhilaration possessed him now, a giant activity. His troubles about humanity, about his inadequacy, were gone for ever. He was a man in battle rejoicing in his power. Aeroplanes seemed radiating from him in every direction, intent only upon avoiding him, the yelling of their packed passengers came in short gusts as they swept by. He chose his third quarry, struck hastily and did but turn it on edge. It escaped him, to smash against the tall cliff of London wall. Flying from that impact he skimmed the darkling ground so nearly he could see a frightened rabbit bolting up a slope. He jerked up steeply, and found himself driving over south London with the air about him vacant. To the right of him a wild riot of signal rockets from the Ostrogites banged tumultuously in the sky. To the south the wreckage of half a dozen air ships flamed, and east and west and north they fled before him. They drove away to the east and north, and went about in the south, for they could not pause in the air. In their present confusion any attempt at evolution would have meant disastrous collisions.\r\n\r\nHe passed two hundred feet or so above the Roehampton stage. It was black with people and noisy with their frantic shouting. But why was the Wimbledon Park stage black and cheering, too? The smoke and flame of Streatham now hid the three further stages. He curved about and rose to see them and the northern quarters. First came the square masses of Shooter\u2019s Hill into sight, from behind the smoke, lit and orderly with the aeroplane that had landed and its disembarking negroes. Then came Blackheath, and then under the corner of the reek the Norwood stage. On Blackheath no aeroplane had landed. Norwood was covered by a swarm of little figures running to and fro in a passionate confusion. Why? Abruptly he understood. The stubborn defence of the flying stages was over, the people were pouring into the under-ways of these last strongholds of Ostrog\u2019s usurpation. And then, from far away on the northern border of the city, full of glorious import to him, came a sound, a signal, a note of triumph, the leaden thud of a gun. His lips fell apart, his face was disturbed with emotion.\r\n\r\nHe drew an immense breath. \u201cThey win,\u201d he shouted to the empty air; \u201cthe people win!\u201d The sound of a second gun came like an answer. And then he saw the monoplane on Blackheath was running down its guides to launch. It lifted clean and rose. It shot up into the air, driving straight southward and away from him.\r\n\r\nIn an instant it came to him what this meant. It must needs be Ostrog in flight. He shouted and dropped towards it. He had the momentum of his elevation and fell slanting down the air and very swiftly. It rose steeply at his approach. He allowed for its velocity and drove straight upon it.\r\n\r\nIt suddenly became a mere flat edge, and behold! he was past it, and driving headlong down with all the force of his futile blow.\r\n\r\nHe was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and went circling up. He saw Ostrog\u2019s machine beating up a spiral before him. He rose straight towards it, won above it by virtue of the impetus of his swoop and by the advantage and weight of a man. He dropped headlong\u2014dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog\u2019s aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog\u2019s attitude a wincing resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him\u2014to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Below he saw the Croydon hills. He jerked upward and once more he gained on his enemy.\r\n\r\nHe glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The eastward stage, the one on Shooter\u2019s Hill, appeared to lift; a flash changing to a tall grey shape, a cowled figure of smoke and dust, jerked into the air. For a moment this cowled figure stood motionless, dropping huge masses of metal from its shoulders, and then it began to uncoil a dense head of smoke. The people had blown it up, aeroplane and all! As suddenly a second flash and grey shape sprang up from the Norwood stage. And even as he stared at this came a dead report; and the air wave of the first explosion struck him. He was flung up and sideways.\r\n\r\nFor a moment his monoplane fell nearly edgewise with her nose down, and seemed to hesitate whether to overset altogether. He stood on his wind-shield, wrenching the wheel that swayed up over his head. And then the shock of the second explosion took his machine sideways.\r\n\r\nHe found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the air was blowing past him and upward<\/i>. He seemed to be hanging quite still in the air, with the wind blowing up past him. It occurred to him that he was falling. Then he was sure that he was falling. He could not look down.\r\n\r\nHe found himself recapitulating with incredible swiftness all that had happened since his awakening, the days of doubt, the days of Empire, and at last the tumultuous discovery of Ostrog\u2019s calculated treachery.\r\n\r\nThe vision had a quality of utter unreality. Who was he? Why was he holding so tightly with his hands? Why could he not let go? In such a fall as this countless dreams have ended. But in a moment he would wake....\r\n\r\nHis thoughts ran swifter and swifter. He wondered if he should see Helen again. It seemed so unreasonable that he should not see her again. It must<\/i> be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real. She was real. He would wake and meet her.\r\n\r\nAlthough he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth was very near.\r\n

THE END<\/h3>","rendered":"

THE SLEEPER AWAKES<\/h2>\n

CHAPTER I. \u2014 INSOMNIA<\/h2>\n

One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and staring before him, and his face was wet with tears.<\/p>\n

He glanced round at Isbister\u2019s footfall. Both men were disconcerted, Isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that the weather was hot for the time of year.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery,\u201d answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a colourless tone, \u201cI can\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbister stopped abruptly. \u201cNo?\u201d was all he said, but his bearing conveyed his helpful impulse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may sound incredible,\u201d said the stranger, turning weary eyes to Isbister\u2019s face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, \u201cbut I have had no sleep\u2014no sleep at all for six nights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHad advice?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system…. They are all very well for the run of people. It\u2019s hard to explain. I dare not take … sufficiently powerful drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat makes it difficult,\u201d said Isbister.<\/p>\n

He stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. Clearly the man wanted to talk. An idea natural enough under the circumstances, prompted him to keep the conversation going. \u201cI\u2019ve never suffered from sleeplessness myself,\u201d he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, \u201cbut in those cases I have known, people have usually found something\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI dare make no experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men were silent.<\/p>\n

\u201cExercise?\u201d suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his interlocutor\u2019s face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast, day after day\u2014from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork\u2014trouble. There was something\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I have no part. I am wifeless\u2014childless\u2014who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless\u2014I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set myself to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, I will<\/i> do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I\u2019ve had enough of drugs! I don\u2019t know if you<\/i> feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind\u2014time\u2014life! Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies\u2014or irritations. We have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man\u2019s day is his own\u2014even at the best! And then come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill rest\u2014black coffee, cocaine\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see,\u201d said Isbister.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did my work,\u201d said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is the price?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a little while the two remained without speaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel\u2014a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady\u2014\u201d He paused. \u201cTowards the gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must sleep,\u201d said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy discovered. \u201cCertainly you must sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am drawing towards the vortex. Presently\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity\u2014down\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d expostulated Isbister.<\/p>\n

The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. \u201cI shall kill myself. If in no other way\u2014at the foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles down. There at any rate is … sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s unreasonable,\u201d said Isbister, startled at the man\u2019s hysterical gust of emotion. \u201cDrugs are better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere at any rate is sleep,\u201d repeated the stranger, not heeding him.<\/p>\n

Isbister looked at him. \u201cIt\u2019s not a cert, you know,\u201d he remarked. \u201cThere\u2019s a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove\u2014as high, anyhow\u2014and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day\u2014sound and well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut those rocks there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Their eyes met. \u201cSorry to upset your ideals,\u201d said Isbister with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance. \u201cBut a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist\u2014\u201d He laughed. \u201cIt\u2019s so damned amateurish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the other thing,\u201d said the sleepless man irritably, \u201cthe other thing. No man can keep sane if night after night\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you been walking along this coast alone?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSilly sort of thing to do. If you\u2019ll excuse my saying so. Alone! As you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder; walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day long, and then, I suppose, you go to bed and try very hard\u2014eh?\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at these rocks!\u201d cried the seated man with a sudden force of gesture. \u201cLook at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever! See the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And this blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It is your world. You accept it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports and delights you. And for me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. \u201cIt is the garment of my misery. The whole world … is the garment of my misery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about them and back to that face of despair. For a moment he was silent.<\/p>\n

He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. \u201cYou get a night\u2019s sleep,\u201d he said, \u201cand you won\u2019t see much misery out here. Take my word for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. Only half an hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment the bare thought of which, was righteous self-applause. He took possession forthwith. The first need of this exhausted being was companionship. He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the motionless seated figure, and threw out a skirmishing line of gossip.<\/p>\n

His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only in answer to Isbister\u2019s direct questions\u2014and not to all of those. But he made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.<\/p>\n

He seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister, feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they should reascend the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging the view into Blackapit, he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talking to himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. \u201cWhat can be happening?\u201d he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. \u201cWhat can be happening? Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stood with his hand circling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all right, old chap,\u201d said Isbister with the air of an old friend. \u201cDon\u2019t worry yourself. Trust to me,\u201d<\/p>\n

The man dropped his hand and turned again. They went over the brow and to the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless man gesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning his whirling brain. At the headland they stood by the seat that looks into the dark mysteries of Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his companion interrupted him again.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy head is not like what it was,\u201d he said, gesticulating for want of expressive phrases. \u201cIt\u2019s not like what it was. There is a sort of oppression, a weight. No\u2014not drowsiness, would God it were! It is like a shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across something busy. Spin, spin into the darkness. The tumult of thought, the confusion, the eddy and eddy. I can\u2019t express it. I can hardly keep my mind on it\u2014steadily enough to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped feebly.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t trouble, old chap,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI think I can understand. At any rate, it don\u2019t matter very much just at present about telling me, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them. Isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had a fresh idea. \u201cCome down to my room,\u201d he said, \u201cand try a pipe. I can show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you\u2019d care?\u201d<\/p>\n

The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.<\/p>\n

Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his movements were slow and hesitating. \u201cCome in with me,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cand try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you take alcohol?\u201d<\/p>\n

The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of his actions. \u201cI don\u2019t drink,\u201d he said slowly, coming up the garden path, and after a moment\u2019s interval repeated absently, \u201cNo\u2014I don\u2019t drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes\u2014spin\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one who sees nothing.<\/p>\n

Then he sat down heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost to fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and became motionless. Presently he made a faint sound in his throat.<\/p>\n

Isbister moved about the room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little remarks that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to his portfolio, placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019d care to have supper with me,\u201d he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand\u2014his mind troubled with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. \u201cOnly cold mutton, you know, but passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe.\u201d He repeated this after momentary silence.<\/p>\n

The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding him.<\/p>\n

The stillness lengthened. The match went out, the cigarette was put down unlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. \u201cPerhaps,\u201d he whispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back to the figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his companion after each elaborate pace.<\/p>\n

He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, and he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at the corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the stranger through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had not moved.<\/p>\n

A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the artist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He felt that possibly his circumspect attitude and position looked peculiar and unaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipe and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder,\u201d … he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. \u201cAt any rate one must give him a chance.\u201d He struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.<\/p>\n

He heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit from the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped her at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty in explaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. She retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed and less at his ease.<\/p>\n

Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister\u2019s mind; he started, and leaning over the table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction. Astonishment seized him and became\u2014dread!<\/p>\n

No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!<\/p>\n

He crept slowly and noiselessly round the table, pausing twice to listen. At last he could lay his hand on the back of the armchair. He bent down until the two heads were ear to ear.<\/p>\n

Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor\u2019s face. He started violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.<\/p>\n

He looked again and saw that they were open and with the pupils rolled under the lids. He was afraid. He took the man by the shoulder and shook him. \u201cAre you asleep?\u201d he said, with his voice jumping, and again, \u201cAre you asleep?\u201d<\/p>\n

A conviction took possession of his mind that this man was dead. He became active and noisy, strode across the room, blundering against the table as he did so, and rang the bell.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease bring a light at once,\u201d he said in the passage. \u201cThere is something wrong with my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

He returned to the motionless seated figure, grasped the shoulder, shook it, shouted. The room was flooded with yellow glare as his landlady entered with the light. His face was white as he turned blinking towards her. \u201cI must fetch a doctor,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is either death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER II. \u2014 THE TRANCE<\/h2>\n

The state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then it was his eyes could be closed.<\/p>\n

He was removed from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted every attempt at reanimation. After a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were discontinued. For a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and still\u2014neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by a ray of thought or sensation, a dreamless inanition, a vast space of peace. The tumult of his mind had swelled and risen to an abrupt climax of silence. Where was the man? Where is any man when insensibility takes hold of him?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems only yesterday,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI remember it all as though it happened yesterday\u2014clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a young man. The hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of the fashionable length, was iron grey and clipped close, and the face that had been pink and white was buff and ruddy. He had a pointed beard shot with grey. He talked to an elderly man who wore a summer suit of drill (the summer of that year was unusually hot). This was Warming, a London solicitor and next of kin to Graham, the man who had fallen into the trance. And the two men stood side by side in a room in a house in London regarding his recumbent figure.<\/p>\n

It was a yellow figure lying lax upon a water-bed and clad in a flowing shirt, a figure with a shrunken face and a stubby beard, lean limbs and lank nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. This glass seemed to mark off the sleeper from the reality of life about him, he was a thing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality. The two men stood close to the glass, peering in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing gave me a shock,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cI feel a queer sort of surprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, you know, rolled up. Coming here again brings it all back to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you never seen him since that time?\u201d asked Warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften wanted to come,\u201d said Isbister; \u201cbut business nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I\u2019ve been in America most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I remember rightly,\u201d said Warming, \u201cyou were an artist?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and white, very soon\u2014at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGood posters,\u201d admitted the solicitor, \u201cthough I was sorry to see them there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLast as long as the cliffs, if necessary,\u201d exclaimed Isbister with satisfaction. \u201cThe world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty years ago, I was down at Boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. I didn\u2019t expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land\u2019s End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he\u2019s not looking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. \u201cI just missed seeing you, if I recollect aright.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria\u2019s Jubilee, because I remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Diamond Jubilee, it was,\u201d said Warming; \u201cthe second one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, yes! At the proper Jubilee\u2014the Fifty Year affair\u2014I was down at Wookey\u2014a boy. I missed all that…. What a fuss we had with him! My landlady wouldn\u2019t take him in, wouldn\u2019t let him stay\u2014he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor\u2014it wasn\u2019t the present chap, but the G.P. before him\u2014was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you mean\u2014he was stiff and hard?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStiff!\u2014wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his head and he\u2019d have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course this\u201d\u2014he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head\u2014\u201cis quite different. And the little doctor\u2014what was his name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSmithers?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSmithers it was\u2014was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. The things he did! Even now it makes me feel all\u2014ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little things, not dynamos\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCoils.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and him<\/i>\u2014stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strange state,\u201d said Warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a sort of complete absence,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cHere\u2019s the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It\u2019s like a seat vacant and marked \u2018engaged.\u2019 No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart\u2014not a flutter. That<\/i> doesn\u2019t make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it\u2019s more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even the hair has stopped growing. Now with the proper dead, the hair will go on growing\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know,\u201d said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.<\/p>\n

They peered through the glass again. Graham was indeed in a strange state, in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance unprecedented in medical history. Trances had lasted for as much as a year before\u2014but at the end of that time it had ever been a waking or a death; sometimes first one and then the other. Isbister noted the marks the physicians had made in injecting nourishment, for that had been resorted to to postpone collapse; he pointed them out to Warming, who had been trying not to see them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd while he has been lying here,\u201d said Isbister, with the zest of a life freely spent, \u201cI have changed my plans in life; married, raised a family, my eldest lad\u2014I hadn\u2019t begun to think of sons then\u2014is an American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There\u2019s a touch of grey in my hair. And this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than I was in my downy days. It\u2019s curious to think of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warming turned. \u201cAnd I have grown old too. I played cricket with him when I was still only a boy. And he looks a young man still. Yellow perhaps. But that is<\/i> a young man nevertheless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there\u2019s been the War,\u201d said Isbister.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom beginning to end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd these Martians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve understood,\u201d said Isbister after a pause, \u201cthat he had some moderate property of his own?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is so,\u201d said Warming. He coughed primly. \u201cAs it happens\u2014I have charge of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh!\u201d Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: \u201cNo doubt\u2014his keep here is not expensive\u2014no doubt it will have improved\u2014accumulated?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has. He will wake up very much better off\u2014if he wakes\u2014than when he slept.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a business man,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cthat thought has naturally been in my mind. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he knows what he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he had lived straight on\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt if he would have premeditated as much,\u201d said Warming. \u201cHe was not a far-sighted man. In fact\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe differed on that point. I stood to him somewhat in the relation of a guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain friction\u2014. But even if that was the case, there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts. Apparently he is sliding slowly, very slowly and tediously, down a long slope, if you can understand me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be a pity to lose his surprise. There\u2019s been a lot of change these twenty years. It\u2019s Rip Van Winkle come real.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a lot of change certainly,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAnd, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have thought it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was forty-three when his bankers\u2014you remember you wired to his bankers\u2014sent on to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI got their address from the cheque book in his pocket,\u201d said Isbister.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the addition is not difficult,\u201d said Warming.<\/p>\n

There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. \u201cHe may go on for years yet,\u201d he said, and had a moment of hesitation. \u201cWe have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall some day into the hands of\u2014someone else, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most constantly before my mind. We happen to be\u2014as a matter of fact, there are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and unprecedented position.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRather,\u201d said Isbister.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems to me it\u2019s a case of some public body, some practically undying guardian. If he really is going on living\u2014as the doctors, some of them, think. As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two public men about it. But, so far, nothing has been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body\u2014the British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe difficulty is to induce them to take him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRed tape, I suppose?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPartly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pause. \u201cIt\u2019s a curious business, certainly,\u201d said Isbister. \u201cAnd compound interest has a way of mounting up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAnd now the gold supplies are running short there is a tendency towards … appreciation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve felt that,\u201d said Isbister with a grimace. \u201cBut it makes it better for him<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf<\/i> he wakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he wakes,\u201d echoed Isbister. \u201cDo you notice the pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?\u201d<\/p>\n

Warming looked and thought for a space. \u201cI doubt if he will wake,\u201d he said at last.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never properly understood,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cwhat it was brought this on. He told me something about overstudy. I\u2019ve often been curious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical\u2014a Socialist\u2014or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic\u2014flighty\u2014undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote\u2014a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is of unanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. If ever a waking comes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d give anything to be there,\u201d said Isbister, \u201cjust to hear what he would say to it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo would I,\u201d said Warming. \u201cAye! so would I,\u201d with an old man\u2019s sudden turn to self pity. \u201cBut I shall never see him wake.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. \u201cHe will never awake,\u201d he said at last. He sighed. \u201cHe will never awake again.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER III. \u2014 THE AWAKENING<\/h2>\n

But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.<\/p>\n

What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity\u2014the self! Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as it happens to most of us after the night\u2019s sleep, so it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber. A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, a cloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent, faint, but alive.<\/p>\n

The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. Gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name\u2014he could not tell what name\u2014that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes….<\/p>\n

Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar thing.<\/p>\n

It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. He moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went up beyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did it matter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a dark depression. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and footsteps hastily receding.<\/p>\n

The movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical weakness. He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley\u2014but he could not recall that white edge. He must have slept. He remembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He recalled the cliff and Waterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to a passer-by….<\/p>\n

How long had he slept? What was that sound of pattering feet? And that rise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out a languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit to place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. This was so unexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak\u2014and amazed.<\/p>\n

He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear\u2014evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm\u2014and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow\u2014was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below. And this bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for the most part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum thermometer was recognisable.<\/p>\n

The slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surrounded him on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was a vast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and simple white archway facing him. Close to the walls of the cage were articles of furniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like the side of a fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number of dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. He realised that he was intensely hungry.<\/p>\n

He could see no one, and after a period of hesitation scrambled off the translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his little apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however, and staggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him to steady himself. For a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward like a distended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished\u2014a pricked bubble. He reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatly astonished. He caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of the glasses to the floor\u2014it rang but did not break\u2014and sat down in one of the armchairs.<\/p>\n

When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the bottle and drank\u2014a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with a pleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support and stimulus. He put down the vessel and looked about him.<\/p>\n

The apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that the greenish transparency that had intervened was removed. The archway he saw led to a flight of steps, going downward without the intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage ran between polished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviating droning note. He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the viands in his attention.<\/p>\n

Then with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about him for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.<\/p>\n

His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and had been removed in his sleep. But where? And who were those people, the distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.<\/p>\n

What was this place?\u2014this place that to his senses seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed. \u201cBeat, beat,\u201d that sweeping shadow had a note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.<\/p>\n

He would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat. Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved himself by catching at one of the blue pillars.<\/p>\n

The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. Beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural forms. The tumult of voices rose now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backs to him, gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft colourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the balcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once some brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the air perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded like English, there was a reiteration of \u201cWake!\u201d He heard some indistinct shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d laughed one\u2014a red-haired man in a short purple robe. \u201cWhen the Sleeper wakes\u2014When<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed an expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.<\/p>\n

Suddenly Graham\u2019s knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER IV. \u2014 THE SOUND OF A TUMULT<\/h2>\n

Graham\u2019s last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses, he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed from his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still about him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was altogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.<\/p>\n

Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly closed.<\/p>\n

Graham moved his head. \u201cWhat does this all mean?\u201d he said slowly. \u201cWhere am I?\u201d<\/p>\n

He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.<\/p>\n

The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper\u2019s ears. \u201cYou are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep. It is quite safe. You have been here some time\u2014sleeping. In a trance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, something further that Graham could not hear, and a little phial was handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment increased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetter?\u201d asked the man in violet, as Graham\u2019s eyes reopened. He was a pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have heard? Catalepsy? It may seem strange to you at first, but I can assure you everything is well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose. His eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. They were regarding him strangely. He knew he ought to be somewhere in Cornwall, but he could not square these things with that impression.<\/p>\n

A matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments at Boscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. He cleared his throat.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you wired my cousin?\u201d he asked. \u201cE. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?\u201d<\/p>\n

They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. \u201cWhat an odd blurr<\/i> in his accent!\u201d whispered the red-haired man. \u201cWire, sir?\u201d said the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe means send an electric telegram,\u201d volunteered the third, a pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a cry of comprehension. \u201cHow stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall be done, sir,\u201d he said to Graham. \u201cI am afraid it would be difficult to\u2014wire<\/i> to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don\u2019t trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the important thing is to get over that, sir.\u201d (Graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it \u201cSire<\/i>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d said Graham, and became quiet.<\/p>\n

It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar dress knew what they were about. Yet they were odd and the room was odd. It seemed he was in some newly established place. He had a sudden flash of suspicion! Surely this wasn\u2019t some hall of public exhibition! If it was he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely had that character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not have discovered himself naked.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There was no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptly he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some processes of thought-reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that peered into his. He looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion. It seemed they read his eyes. He framed his lips to speak and could not. A queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the moment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding them silently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly.<\/p>\n

They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2014that makes me feel better,\u201d he said hoarsely, and there were murmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made to speak again, and again he could not.<\/p>\n

He pressed his throat and tried a third time. \u201cHow long?\u201d he asked in a level voice. \u201cHow long have I been asleep?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome considerable time,\u201d said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly at the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u2014yes,\u201d said Graham, suddenly testy. \u201cBut I want\u2014Is it\u2014it is\u2014some years? Many years? There was something\u2014I forget what. I feel\u2014confused. But you\u2014\u201d He sobbed. \u201cYou need not fence with me. How long\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles and sat waiting for an answer.<\/p>\n

They spoke in undertones.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive or six?\u201d he asked faintly. \u201cMore?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery much more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles of his face. He looked his question.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany years,\u201d said the man with the red beard.<\/p>\n

Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from his face with a lean hand. \u201cMany years!\u201d he repeated. He shut his eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing to another.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many years?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must be prepared to be surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than a gross of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was irritated at the strange word. \u201cMore than a what<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about \u201cdecimal\u201d he did not catch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long did you say?\u201d asked Graham. \u201cHow long? Don\u2019t look like that. Tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: \u201cMore than a couple of centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat<\/i>?\u201d he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. \u201cWho says\u2014? What was that? A couple of centuries<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said the man with the red beard. \u201cTwo hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo hundred years,\u201d he said again, with the figure of a great gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, \u201cOh, but\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n

They said nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2014did you say\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo hundred years. Two centuries of years,\u201d said the man with the red beard.<\/p>\n

There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had heard was indeed true.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it can\u2019t be,\u201d he said querulously. \u201cI am dreaming. Trances\u2014trances don\u2019t last. That is not right\u2014this is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me\u2014some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of Cornwall\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

His voice failed him.<\/p>\n

The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. \u201cI\u2019m not very strong in history, sir,\u201d he said weakly, and glanced at the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was it, sir,\u201d said the youngster. \u201cBoscastle, in the old Duchy of Cornwall\u2014it\u2019s in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. I have been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoscastle!\u201d Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. \u201cThat was it\u2014Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep\u2014somewhere there. I don\u2019t exactly remember. I don\u2019t exactly remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pressed his brows and whispered, \u201cMore than two hundred years<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n

He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold within him. \u201cBut if it is<\/i> two hundred years, every soul I know, every human being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

They did not answer him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High and low, rich and poor, one with another … Is there England still?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a comfort! Is there London?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is<\/i> London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian; assistant-custodian. And these\u2014? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!\u201d<\/p>\n

He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. \u201cBut why am I here? No! Don\u2019t talk. Be quiet. Let me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. Directly he had taken it he began to weep naturally and refreshingly.<\/p>\n

Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a little foolishly. \u201cBut\u2014two\u2014hun\u2014dred\u2014years!\u201d he said. He grimaced hysterically and covered his face again.<\/p>\n

After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found him on the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thick domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. \u201cWhat are you doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will suffer for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed? All the doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told. Has he been told anything?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard returned to the man with the flaxen beard. \u201cThese others,\u201d he said in a voice of extreme irritation. \u201cYou had better go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo?\u201d said the red-bearded man.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly\u2014go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. A long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the newcomer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.<\/p>\n

For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but proceeded to interrogate the other\u2014obviously his subordinate\u2014-upon the treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases only partially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matter of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidently profoundly excited.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must not confuse his mind by telling him things,\u201d he repeated again and again. \u201cYou must not confuse his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper with an ambiguous expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeel queer?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose so, now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the first place, hadn\u2019t I better have some clothes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2014\u201d said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. \u201cYou will very speedily have clothes,\u201d said the thickset man.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred\u2014?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter of fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, \u201cIs there a mill or dynamo near here?\u201d He did not wait for an answer. \u201cThings have changed tremendously, I suppose?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that shouting?\u201d he asked abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing,\u201d said the thickset man impatiently. \u201cIt\u2019s people. You\u2019ll understand better later\u2014perhaps. As you say, things have changed.\u201d He spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man trying to decide in an emergency. \u201cWe must get you clothes and so forth, at any rate. Better wait here until they can be procured. No one will come near you. You want shaving.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham rubbed his chin.<\/p>\n

The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly, listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the woven tumult.<\/p>\n

Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: \u201cShow us the Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!\u201d<\/p>\n

The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWild!\u201d he cried. \u201cHow do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?\u201d<\/p>\n

There was perhaps an answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t come,\u201d said the thickset man; \u201cI have him<\/i> to see to. But shout from the balcony.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was an inaudible reply.<\/p>\n

\u201cSay he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He came hurrying back to Graham. \u201cYou must have clothes at once,\u201d he said. \u201cYou cannot stop here\u2014and it will be impossible to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a moment he was back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes\u2014in a moment. And then I can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut those voices. They were shouting\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething about the Sleeper\u2014that\u2019s you. They have some twisted idea. I don\u2019t know what it is. I know nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote noises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliances in the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball of crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the wall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like a curtain, and he stood waiting.<\/p>\n

Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the restoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couch and then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credit his rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs.<\/p>\n

The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the tailor,\u201d said the thickset man with an introductory gesture. \u201cIt will never do for you to wear that black. I cannot understand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapid as possible?\u201d he said to the tailor.<\/p>\n

The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on the bed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. \u201cYou will find the fashions altered, Sire,\u201d he said. He glanced from under his brows at the thickset man.<\/p>\n

He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees. \u201cYou lived, Sire, in a period essentially cylindrical\u2014the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now\u2014\u201d He flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold\u2014a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. \u201cThat is my conception of your immediate treatment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have very little time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust me,\u201d said the tailor. \u201cMy machine follows. What do you think of this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked the man from the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn your days they showed you a fashion-plate,\u201d said the tailor, \u201cbut this is our modern development. See here.\u201d The little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. \u201cOr this,\u201d and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift as he did these things.<\/p>\n

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anemic lad with features of the Chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity.<\/p>\n

The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made some connexion and the machine became energetic and swift.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that doing?\u201d asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. \u201cIs that\u2014some sort of force\u2014laid on?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said the man with the flaxen beard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is that<\/i>?\u201d He indicated the archway behind him.<\/p>\n

The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an undertone, \u201cHe is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire\u2014it\u2019s a little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian and assistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. In order that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorways for the first time. But I think\u2014if you don\u2019t mind, I will leave him to explain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOdd!\u201d said Graham. \u201cGuardian? Council?\u201d Then turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, \u201cWhy is this man glaring<\/i> at me? Is he a mesmerist?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMesmerist! He is a capillotomist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCapillotomist!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u2014one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.\u201d<\/p>\n

It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an unsteady mind. \u201cSixdoz lions?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are our monetary units.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what was that you said\u2014sixdoz?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system\u2014tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. Very simple?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose so,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut about this cap\u2014what was it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere are your clothes!\u201d he said. Graham turned round sharply and saw the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had arrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. \u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust made,\u201d said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet of Graham, walked to the bed, on which Graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass. As he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. The man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by the archway.<\/p>\n

The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back from the corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from the balcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing had an unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came a complex garment of bluish white, and Graham, was clothed in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable unprecedented way graceful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must shave,\u201d he said regarding himself in the glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a moment,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

The persistent stare ceased. The young man closed his eyes, reopened them, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then he stopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him.<\/p>\n

\u201cA seat,\u201d said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham. \u201cSit down, please,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the glint of steel.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you understand, Sire?\u201d cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried politeness. \u201cHe is going to cut your hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d cried Graham enlightened. \u201cBut you called him\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA capillotomist\u2014precisely! He is one of the finest artists in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The capillotomist came forward, examined Graham\u2019s ears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for Howard\u2019s audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham\u2019s chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his hair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pair of shoes.<\/p>\n

Suddenly a loud voice shouted\u2014it seemed from a piece of machinery in the corner\u2014\u201cAt once\u2014at once. The people know all over the city. Work is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come.\u201d<\/p>\n

This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures it seemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptly he went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the little crystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from the archway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mighty sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if receding swiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. He glanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strides he was down the steps and in the passage, and in a score he was out upon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER V. \u2014 THE MOVING WAYS<\/h2>\n

He went to the railings of the balcony and stared upward. An exclamation of surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of people came from the great area below.<\/p>\n

His first impression was of overwhelming architecture. The place into which he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite fagade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the opposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham\u2019s heart into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion of anything else. Then suddenly he discovered the roadway! It was not a roadway at all, as Graham understood such things, for in the nineteenth century the only roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostling rivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway was three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle, the lowest part. For a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. Then he understood. Under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to Graham\u2019s right, an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth century express train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping slats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures of the street. Upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks, but they swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. From this nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the centre of the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower than the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to permit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk uninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. Beyond this middle way was another series of endless platforms rushing with varying pace to Graham\u2019s left. And seated in crowds upon the two widest and swiftest platforms, or stepping from one to another down the steps, or swarming over the central space, was an innumerable and wonderfully diversified multitude of people.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must not stop here,\u201d shouted Howard suddenly at his side. \u201cYou must come away at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham made no answer. He heard without hearing. The platforms ran with a roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girls with flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the breasts. These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived that the dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that the tailor\u2019s boy had worn. He became aware of cries of \u201cThe Sleeper. What has happened to the Sleeper?\u201d and it seemed as though the rushing platforms before him were suddenly spattered with the pale buff of human faces, and then still more thickly. He saw pointing fingers. He perceived that the motionless central area of this huge arcade just opposite to the balcony was densely crowded with blue-clad people. Some sort of struggle had sprung into life. People seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on either side, and carried away against their will. They would spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of the confusion, and run back towards the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper,\u201d shouted voices. \u201cThat is never the Sleeper,\u201d shouted others. More and more faces were turned to him. At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings, pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with people ascending out of them and descending into them. The struggle it seemed centred about the one of these nearest to him. People were running down the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform to platform. The clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to divide their interest between this point and the balcony. A number of sturdy little figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodically together, were employed it seemed in preventing access to this descending staircase. About them a crowd was rapidly accumulating. Their brilliant colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their antagonists, for the struggle was indisputable.<\/p>\n

He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm. And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.<\/p>\n

He perceived that the cries of \u201cThe Sleeper!\u201d grew in volume, and that the people on the nearer platform were standing up. The nearer platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: \u201cThe Sleeper! The Sleeper!\u201d and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and cries of \u201cStop the Ways!\u201d They were also crying another name strange to Graham. It sounded like \u201cOstrog.\u201d The slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop the Ways,\u201d they cried. Agile figures ran up from the centre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him, shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the central way. One thing he distinguished: \u201cIt is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the Sleeper,\u201d they testified.<\/p>\n

For a space Graham stood motionless. Then he became vividly aware that all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderful popularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his arm. He was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. The tumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. He became aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men in trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behind him, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; he suddenly perceived that his guardian Howard was back again and gripping his arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear.<\/p>\n

He turned, and Howard\u2019s face was white. \u201cCome back,\u201d he heard. \u201cThey will stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

He perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars behind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and all these people had anxious eager faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet him away,\u201d cried Howard.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why?\u201d said Graham. \u201cI don\u2019t see\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must come away!\u201d said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face and eyes were resolute, too. Graham\u2019s glances went from face to face, and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life, compulsion. Someone gripped his arm….<\/p>\n

He was being dragged away. It seemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts that had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into the passages of the great building behind him. Marvelling and confused, feeling an impotent desire to resist, Graham was half led, half thrust, along the passage of blue pillars, and suddenly he found himself alone with Howard in a lift and moving swiftly upward.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER VI. \u2014 THE HALL OF THE ATLAS<\/h2>\n

From the moment when the tailor had bowed his farewell to the moment when Graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely five minutes. As yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung about him, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all in this remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of the irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He was still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in life. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre. \u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat was the trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have our troubles,\u201d said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham\u2019s enquiry. \u201cThis is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking just now, has a sort of connexion\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be clearer later,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift slow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a little,\u201d said Graham puzzled. \u201cIt will be\u2014it is bound to be perplexing. At present it is all so strange. Anything seems possible. Anything. In the details even. Your counting, I understand, is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very long passage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of tubes and big cables.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a huge place this is!\u201d said Graham. \u201cIs it all one building? What place is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and so forth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it a social trouble\u2014that\u2014in the great roadway place? How are you governed? Have you still a police?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout fourteen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex to you. To tell you the truth, I don\u2019t understand it myself very clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps\u2014bye and bye. We have to go to the Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s attention was divided between the urgent necessity of his inquiries and the people in the passages and halls they were traversing. For a moment his mind would be concentrated upon Howard and the halting answers he made, and then he would lose the thread in response to some vivid unexpected impression. Along the passages, in the halls, half the people seemed to be men in the red uniform. The pale blue canvas that had been so abundant in the aisle of moving ways did not appear. Invariably these men looked at him, and saluted him and Howard as they passed.<\/p>\n

He had a clear vision of entering a long corridor, and there were a number of girls sitting on low seats, as though in a class. He saw no teacher, but only a novel apparatus from which he fancied a voice proceeded. The girls regarded him and his conductor, he thought, with curiosity and astonishment. But he was hurried on before he could form a clear idea of the gathering. He judged they knew Howard and not himself, and that they wondered who he was. This Howard, it seemed, was a person of importance. But then he was also merely Graham\u2019s guardian. That was odd.<\/p>\n

There came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hung so that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and fro thereon, but no more of them. Then vague impressions of galleries and of casual astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two of them with their red-clad guard.<\/p>\n

The stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. He was speedily fatigued by this excessive haste. He asked Howard to slacken his speed. Presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the great street space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were too high for him to see the moving platforms below. But he saw people going to and fro along cables and along strange, frail-looking bridges.<\/p>\n

Thence they passed across the street and at a vast height above it. They crossed by means of a narrow bridge closed in with glass, so clear that it made him giddy even to remember it. The floor of it also was of glass. From his memory of the cliffs between New Quay and Boscastle, so remote in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him that they must be near four hundred feet above the moving ways. He stopped, looked down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes, minute and foreshortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards the little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he had so recently been standing. A thin haze and the glare of the mighty globes of light obscured everything. A man seated in a little openwork cradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrow bridge, rushing down a cable as swiftly almost as if he were falling. Graham stopped involuntarily to watch this strange passenger vanish below, and then his eyes went back to the tumultuous struggle.<\/p>\n

Along one of the faster ways rushed a thick crowd of red spots. This broke up into individuals as it approached the balcony, and went pouring down the slower ways towards the dense struggling crowd on the central area. These men in red appeared to be armed with sticks or truncheons; they seemed to be striking and thrusting. A great shouting, cries of wrath, screaming, burst out and came up to Graham, faint and thin. \u201cGo on,\u201d cried Howard, laying hands on him.<\/p>\n

Another man rushed down a cable. Graham suddenly glanced up to see whence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network of cables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vanes of windmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. Then Howard had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a little narrow passage decorated with geometrical patterns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to see more of that,\u201d cried Graham, resisting.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no,\u201d cried Howard, still gripping his arm. \u201cThis way. You must go this way.\u201d And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce his orders.<\/p>\n

Some negroes in a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that had seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham found himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. The attendant in black and yellow crossed this, thrust up a second shutter and stood waiting.<\/p>\n

This place had the appearance of an ante-room. He saw a number of people in the central space, and at the opposite end a large and imposing doorway at the top of a flight of steps, heavily curtained but giving a glimpse of some still larger hall beyond. He perceived white men in red and other negroes in black and yellow standing stiffly about those portals.<\/p>\n

As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, \u201cThe Sleeper,\u201d and was aware of a turning of heads, a hum of observation. They entered another little passage in the wall of this ante-chamber, and then he found himself on an iron-railed gallery of metal that passed round the side of the great hall he had already seen through the curtains. He entered the place at the corner, so that he received the fullest impression of its huge proportions. The black in the wasp uniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valve behind him.<\/p>\n

Compared with any of the places Graham had seen thus far, this second hall appeared to be decorated with extreme richness. On a pedestal at the remoter end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was a gigantic white figure of Atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon his bowed shoulders. It was the first thing to strike his attention, it was so vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. Save for this figure and for a dais in the centre, the wide floor of the place was a shining vacancy. The dais was remote in the greatness of the area; it would have looked a mere slab of metal had it not been for the group of seven men who stood about a table on it, and gave an inkling of its proportions. They were all dressed in white robes, they seemed to have arisen that moment from their seats, and they were regarding Graham steadfastly. At the end of the table he perceived the glitter of some mechanical appliances.<\/p>\n

Howard led him along the end gallery until they were opposite this mighty labouring figure. Then he stopped. The two men in red who had followed them into the gallery came and stood on either hand of Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must remain here,\u201d murmured Howard, \u201cfor a few moments,\u201d and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, why<\/i>\u2014?\u201d began Graham.<\/p>\n

He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of the men in red. \u201cYou have to wait here, Sire,\u201d said the man in red.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOrders, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhose orders?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur orders, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham looked his exasperation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat place is this?\u201d he said presently. \u201cWho are those men?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are the lords of the Council, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Council?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe<\/i> Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d said Graham, and after an equally ineffectual attempt at the other man, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, who stood watching him and whispering together.<\/p>\n

The Council? He perceived there were now eight, though how the newcomer had arrived he had not observed. They made no gestures of greeting; they stood regarding him as in the nineteenth century a group of men might have stood in the street regarding a distant balloon that had suddenly floated into view. What council could it be that gathered there, that little body of men beneath the significant white Atlas, secluded from every eavesdropper in this impressive spaciousness? And why should he be brought to them, and be looked at strangely and spoken of inaudibly? Howard appeared beneath, walking quickly across the polished floor towards them. As he drew near he bowed and performed certain peculiar movements, apparently of a ceremonious nature. Then he ascended the steps of the dais, and stood by the apparatus at the end of the table.<\/p>\n

Graham watched that visible inaudible conversation. Occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants…. When he looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the white-robed men rapping the table.<\/p>\n

The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham\u2019s sense. His eyes rose to the still giant at whose feet the Council sat. Thence they wandered to the walls of the hall. It was decorated in long painted panels of a quasi-Japanese type, many of them very beautiful. These panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of dark metal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, and the great structural lines of the interior. The facile grace of these panels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centre of the scheme. Graham\u2019s eyes came back to the Council, and Howard was descending the steps. As he drew nearer his features could be distinguished, and Graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out his cheeks. His countenance was still disturbed when presently he reappeared along the gallery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis way,\u201d he said concisely, and they went on in silence to a little door that opened at their approach. The two men in red stopped on either side of this door. Howard and Graham passed in, and Graham, glancing back, saw the white-robed Council still standing in a close group and looking at him. Then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, and for the first time since his awakening he was in silence. The floor, even, was noiseless to his feet.<\/p>\n

Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous chambers furnished in white and green. \u201cWhat Council was that?\u201d began Graham. \u201cWhat were they discussing? What have they to do with me?\u201d Howard closed the door carefully, heaved a huge sigh, and said something in an undertone. He walked slantingways across the room and turned, blowing out his cheeks again. \u201cUgh!\u201d he grunted, a man relieved.<\/p>\n

Graham stood regarding him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must understand,\u201d began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham\u2019s eyes, \u201cthat our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of fact\u2014it is a case of compound interest partly\u2014your small fortune, and the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you\u2014and certain other beginnings\u2014have become very considerable. And in other ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of significance\u2014of very considerable significance\u2014involved in the world\u2019s affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have grave social troubles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThings have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to seclude you here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep me prisoner!\u201d exclaimed Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell\u2014to ask you to keep in seclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham turned on him. \u201cThis is strange!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo harm will be done you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo harm!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you must be kept here\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I learn my position, I presume.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrecisely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery well then. Begin. Why harm<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is too long a story, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the more reason I should begin at once. You say I am a person of importance. What was that shouting I heard? Why is a great multitude shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in white in that huge council chamber?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll in good time, Sire,\u201d said Howard. \u201cBut not crudely, not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your awakening\u2014no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat council?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council you saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham made a petulant movement. \u201cThis is not right,\u201d he said. \u201cI should be told what is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must wait. Really you must wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham sat down abruptly. \u201cI suppose since I have waited so long to resume life,\u201d he said, \u201cthat I must wait a little longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is better,\u201d said Howard. \u201cYes, that is much better. And I must leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the Council…. I am sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.<\/p>\n

Graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly, made the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remained sitting for some time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of chambers and passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed through these strange ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men beneath the colossal Atlas, Howard\u2019s mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind\u2014a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied\u2014of some unprecedented importance and opportunity. What had he to do? And this room\u2019s secluded silence was eloquent of imprisonment!<\/p>\n

It came into Graham\u2019s mind with irresistible conviction that this series of magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes and succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening.<\/p>\n

Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of the two small rooms in which he found himself.<\/p>\n

In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. He was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but pleasing manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a moment he did not perceive this was himself.<\/p>\n

A flash of laughter came with the recognition. \u201cTo call on old Warming like this!\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cand make him take me out to lunch!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few familiar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his amusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died many score of years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly; he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a white consternation.<\/p>\n

The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge fagade of that wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes came back clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councillors in white. He felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual, pitifully conspicuous. And all about him, the world was\u2014strange<\/i>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER VII. \u2014 IN THE SILENT ROOMS<\/h2>\n

Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived, was high, and its ceiling dome shaped, with an oblong aperture in the centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vanes seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As these vanes sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star.<\/p>\n

This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he had observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows on the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city lit day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?<\/p>\n

And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole city uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. \u201cThe world has changed indeed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so.<\/p>\n

The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed like Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain of the words.<\/p>\n

\u201cThi Man huwdbi Kin\u201d forced itself on him as \u201cThe Man who would be King.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPhonetic spelling,\u201d he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. But this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. \u201cThe Heart of Darkness\u201d he had never heard of before nor \u201cThe Madonna of the Future\u201d\u2014no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.<\/p>\n

He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. He suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it.<\/p>\n

On the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham. \u201cI have worked,\u201d said the man, \u201cbut what have you been doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh!\u201d said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard \u201cwhen the Sleeper wakes,\u201d used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed himself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knew those two people like intimate friends.<\/p>\n

At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again.<\/p>\n

It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness.<\/p>\n

He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in the latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening.<\/p>\n

He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. The clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestions of a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; it had not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the Sleeper. He had to recall precisely what they had said….<\/p>\n

He walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals of the revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noise of machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the little intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue\u2014black almost, with a dust of little stars….<\/p>\n

He resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of opening the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. His feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh sensations.<\/p>\n

He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled out the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognised what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering was realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did not go to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? A dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer.<\/p>\n

He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour of strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He liked it less as it proceeded.<\/p>\n

He had a revulsion of feeling. These were no pictures, no idealisations, but photographed realities. He wanted no more of the twenty-second century Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenth century art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung and convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day to replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found the apparatus broken….<\/p>\n

He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen, conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his thirty years of life he had never tried to shape a picture of these coming times. \u201cWe were making the future,\u201d he said, \u201cand hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst of it all?\u201d The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And the systematised sensuality of a class of rich men!<\/p>\n

He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had so oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia, no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the ancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of Howard, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What country was he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely \u201cun-English.\u201d His mind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.<\/p>\n

He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animal might do. He was very tired, with that feverish exhaustion that does not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to catch some distant echo of the tumults he felt must be proceeding in the city.<\/p>\n

He began to talk to himself. \u201cTwo hundred and three years!\u201d he said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. \u201cThen I am two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven\u2019t reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. \u2018Tis a great age! Ha ha!\u201d He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving foolishly. \u201cSteady,\u201d he said. \u201cSteady!\u201d<\/p>\n

His pacing became more regular. \u201cThis new world,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it. Why<\/i>? … But it is all why<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and remember just how it began.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his first thirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most part trivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. His boyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school books and certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salient features of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magic influence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends and betrayers, of the decision of this issue and that, and then of his last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again; dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening misery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out of a life that had become intolerable….<\/p>\n

He reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts in vain. It became an inextricable tangle. He saw the sky through the ventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark recesses of his memory. \u201cI must sleep,\u201d he said. It appeared as a delightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing pain and heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay down and was presently asleep….<\/p>\n

He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartments before he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. During that time no one, except Howard, entered the rooms. The marvel of his fate mingled with and in some way minimised the marvel of his survival. He had awakened to mankind it seemed only to be snatched away into this unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and nutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham. He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail he was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the great issues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond the sound-proof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded, as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs in the outer world.<\/p>\n

And in those three days Graham\u2019s incessant thoughts went far and wide. All that he had seen, all this elaborate contrivance to prevent him seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possible interpretation of his position he debated\u2014even as it chanced, the right interpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him at last credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of his release arrived, it found him prepared….<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s bearing went far to deepen Graham\u2019s impression of his own strange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed to admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries became more definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests and difficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened to have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion. \u201cTo explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,\u201d protested Howard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is this,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou are afraid of something I shall do. In some way I am arbitrator\u2014I might be arbitrator.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not that. But you have\u2014I may tell you this much\u2014the automatic increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with your eighteenth century notions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNineteenth century,\u201d corrected Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every feature of our State.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I a fool?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were never expected to act at all. No one counted on your awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, we thought that you were dead\u2014a mere arrest of decay. And\u2014but it is too complex. We dare not suddenly\u2014-while you are still half awake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t do,\u201d said Graham. \u201cSuppose it is as you say\u2014why am I not being crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom of the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than two days ago, if it is two days, when I awoke?\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard pulled his lip.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am beginning to feel\u2014every hour I feel more clearly\u2014a system of concealment of which you are the face. Is this Council, or committee, or whatever they are, cooking the accounts of my estate? Is that it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat note of suspicion\u2014\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

\u201cUgh!\u201d said Graham. \u201cNow, mark my words, it will be ill for those who have put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, I am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and more vigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I want to live<\/i>\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLive<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard\u2019s face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an easy confidential tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless. Naturally\u2014an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious that everything you may desire\u2014every desire\u2014every sort of desire … There may be something. Is there any sort of company?\u201d<\/p>\n

He paused meaningly.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham thoughtfully. \u201cThere is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh! Now<\/i>! We have treated you neglectfully.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowds in yonder streets of yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat,\u201d said Howard, \u201cI am afraid\u2014But\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him. The implication of Howard\u2019s suggestion was only half evident to Graham. Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of company<\/i>? Would there be any possibilities of gathering from the conversation of this additional person some vague inkling of the struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? He meditated again, and the suggestion took colour. He turned on Howard abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean by company?\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. \u201cHuman beings,\u201d he said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. \u201cOur social ideas,\u201d he said, \u201chave a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this\u2014by feminine society, for instance. We think it no scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary class, no longer despised\u2014discreet\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stopped dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would pass the time,\u201d said Howard. \u201cIt is a thing I should perhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He indicated the exterior world.<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo<\/i>!\u201d he shouted.<\/p>\n

He began striding rapidly up and down the room. \u201cEverything you say, everything you do, convinces me\u2014of some great issue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as you call it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense\u2014and Death! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked out that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a multitude\u2014. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit, he swore archaic curses. His gestures had the quality of physical threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark, and you keep me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no good purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the consequences. Once I come at my power\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI take it this is a message to the Council,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n

Graham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stun him. It must have shown upon his face; at any rate Howard\u2019s movement was quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the nineteenth century was alone.<\/p>\n

For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he flung them down. \u201cWhat a fool I have been!\u201d he said, and gave way to his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses…. For a long time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his anger\u2014because he was afraid of fear.<\/p>\n

Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms\u2014new legal forms\u2014of the time permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were two hundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victorian generation. It was not likely they would be less\u2014humane. Yet they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as chastity?<\/p>\n

His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him. The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though for the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. \u201cWhy should anything be done to me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the worst comes to the worst,\u201d he found himself saying at last, \u201cI can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don\u2019t they ask me for it instead of cooping me up?\u201d<\/p>\n

He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council\u2019s possible intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard\u2019s behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off than a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. And besides, how could anyone escape from these rooms?<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought of the tumult, the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also a Council had said:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER VIII. \u2014 THE ROOF SPACES<\/h2>\n

As the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated and permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby. And Graham, standing underneath, was startled by the sound of a voice.<\/p>\n

He peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim, the face and shoulders of a man regarding him. Then a dark hand was extended, the swift vane struck it, swung round and beat on with a little brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently.<\/p>\n

Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.<\/p>\n

He remained motionless\u2014his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness. He became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. They came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.<\/p>\n

Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He saw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering. Then a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vanes stopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before they touched the floor. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d said a voice.<\/p>\n

Graham stood under the vane. \u201cWho are you?\u201d he whispered.<\/p>\n

For a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. His face appeared nearly inverted to Graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakes of snow upon it. His arm went up into the darkness holding something unseen. He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his forehead were swollen. He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his position.<\/p>\n

For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were the Sleeper?\u201d said the stranger at last.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat do you want with me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from Ostrog, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog?\u201d<\/p>\n

The man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was towards Graham. He appeared to be listening. Suddenly there was a hasty exclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the sweep of the released fan. And when Graham peered up there was nothing visible but the slowly falling snow.<\/p>\n

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and tremulously excited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho are you? What do you want?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to speak to you, Sire,\u201d said the intruder. \u201cWe want\u2014I can\u2019t hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you\u2014these three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it rescue?\u201d whispered Graham. \u201cEscape?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, Sire. If you will.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are my party\u2014the party of the Sleeper?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

There was a struggle. The stranger\u2019s arm appeared, and his hand was bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. \u201cStand away from me,\u201d he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and one shoulder at Graham\u2019s feet. The released ventilator whirled noisily. The stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to a bruised shoulder, and with his bright eyes on Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are indeed the Sleeper,\u201d he said. \u201cI saw you asleep. When it was the law that anyone might see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the man who was in the trance,\u201d said Graham. \u201cThey have imprisoned me here. I have been here since I awoke\u2014at least three days.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly at the door, and suddenly left Graham and ran towards it, shouting quick incoherent words. A bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and he began tap, tap, a quick succession of blows upon the hinges. \u201cMind!\u201d cried a voice. \u201cOh!\u201d The voice came from above.<\/p>\n

Graham glanced up, saw the soles of two feet, ducked, was struck on the shoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. He fell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. He knelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not see you, Sire,\u201d panted the man. He rose and assisted Graham to rise. \u201cAre you hurt, Sire?\u201d he panted. A succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham\u2019s face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat upon the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is this?\u201d cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator. \u201cWho are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStand back,\u201d said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want you to come, Sire,\u201d panted the newcomer, and Graham glancing at his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood starting therefrom. \u201cYour people call for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome where? My people?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided\u2014this very day\u2014either to drug or kill you. And everything is ready. The people are drilled, the Wind-Vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearers are with us. We have the halls crowded\u2014shouting. The whole city shouts against the Council. We have arms.\u201d He wiped the blood with his hand. \u201cYour life here is not worth\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why arms?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind the opening door.<\/p>\n

As he did so Howard appeared, a little tray in one hand and his heavy face downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the tray tilted side-ways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. He went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of the outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour poison!\u201d said a voice in Graham\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n

Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights had been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three knelt on the vane. Some dim thing\u2014a ladder\u2014was being lowered through the opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.<\/p>\n

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment. And his people awaited him!<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not understand,\u201d he said. \u201cI trust. Tell me what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man with the cut brow gripped Graham\u2019s arm. \u201cClamber up the ladder,\u201d he whispered. \u201cQuick. They will have heard\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel.<\/p>\n

He shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Half a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and face and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastly violet white, and then everything was dark again.<\/p>\n

He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks.<\/p>\n

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood about him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward.<\/p>\n

Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. \u201cThis way,\u201d said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Graham across the flat roof in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Graham obeyed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMind!\u201d said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. \u201cBetween them and not across them,\u201d said the voice. And, \u201cWe must hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are the people?\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe people you said awaited me?\u201d<\/p>\n

The stranger did not answer. He left Graham\u2019s arm as the path grew narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a minute he found himself running. \u201cAre the others coming?\u201d he panted, but received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on. They came to a sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the direction they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. Graham looked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on!\u201d said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill spinning high in the air. \u201cStoop,\u201d said Graham\u2019s guide, and they avoided an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. \u201cThis way!\u201d and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow, between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. \u201cI will go first,\u201d said the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed. Then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the side once and the gulf was black. For a moment he regretted his flight. He dared not look again, and his brain spun as he waded through the half liquid snow.<\/p>\n

Then out of the gutter they clambered and hurried across a wide flat space damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstable looking substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came to and clambered up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass. Round this they went. Far below a number of people seemed to be dancing, and music filtered through the dome…. Graham fancied he heard a shouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new spurt of haste. They clambered panting to a space of huge windmills, one so vast that only the lower edge of its vanes came rushing into sight and rushed up again and was lost in the night and the snow. They hurried for a time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and came at last above a place of moving platforms like the place into which Graham had looked from the balcony. They crawled across the sloping transparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on hands and knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall.<\/p>\n

For the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon it all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way to vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. Far below, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he could not move. \u201cCome on!\u201d cried his guide, with terror in his voice. \u201cCome on!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.<\/p>\n

Over the ridge, following his guide\u2019s example, he turned about and slid backward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalanche of snow. While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle deep in slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse.<\/p>\n

Through the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vast windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels was pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling of extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every point of the compass.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have missed us already!\u201d cried Graham\u2019s guide in an accent of terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.<\/p>\n

Above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared vast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in illimitable vistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate the snowfall they glared.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet on this,\u201d cried Graham\u2019s conductor, and thrust him forward to a long grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly sloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham\u2019s benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on!\u201d shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the next range of wind-wheels. Graham, recovering from his astonishment, followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture….<\/p>\n

In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham\u2019s conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and vanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge support. In another moment Graham was beside him.<\/p>\n

They cowered panting and stared out.<\/p>\n

The scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze. Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution, passed upward and downward into the black. And with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will be chasing us,\u201d cried the leader. \u201cWe are scarcely halfway there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space\u2014at least until it snows more thickly again.\u201d<\/p>\n

His teeth chattered in his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere are the markets?\u201d asked Graham staring out. \u201cWhere are all the people?\u201d<\/p>\n

The other made no answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook<\/i>!\u201d whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.<\/p>\n

The snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and large and very swift. It came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide wings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rose with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow. And, through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to him, with field glasses. For a second they were clear, then hazy through a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow<\/i>!\u201d cried his companion. \u201cCome!\u201d<\/p>\n

He pulled Graham\u2019s sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of iron-work beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It extended as far as he could see right and left. It seemed to cut off their progress in either direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo as I do,\u201d whispered his guide. He lay down and crawled to the edge, thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung. He seemed to feel for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the gulf. His head reappeared. \u201cIt is a ledge,\u201d he whispered. \u201cIn the dark all the way along. Do as I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and peered into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courage neither to go on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felt his guide\u2019s hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding over the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a slushy gutter, impenetrably dark.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis way,\u201d whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel his hands and feet.<\/p>\n

The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feet below the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end of a cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and dropping into impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against his guide\u2019s. \u201cStill<\/i>!\u201d whispered the latter very softly.<\/p>\n

He looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machine gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band of snow-flecked grey-blue sky. In a moment it was hidden again.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeep still; they were just turning.\u201d<\/p>\n

For awhile both were motionless, then Graham\u2019s companion stood up, and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some indistinct tackle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

The only answer was a faint cry. The man crouched motionless. Graham peered and saw his face dimly. He was staring down the long ribbon of sky, and Graham, following his eyes, saw the flying machine small and faint and remote. Then he saw that the wings spread on either side, that it headed towards them, that every moment it grew larger. It was following the edge of the chasm towards them.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into Graham\u2019s hand. Graham could not see them, he ascertained their form by feeling. They were slung by thin cords to the cable. On the cord were hand grips of some soft elastic substance. \u201cPut the cross between your legs,\u201d whispered the guide hysterically, \u201cand grip the holdfasts. Grip tightly, grip!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham did as he was told.<\/p>\n

\u201cJump,\u201d said the voice. \u201cIn heaven\u2019s name, jump!\u201d<\/p>\n

For one momentous second Graham could not speak. He was glad afterwards that darkness hid his face. He said nothing. He began to tremble violently. He looked sideways at the swift shadow that swallowed up the sky as it rushed upon him.<\/p>\n

\u201cJump! Jump\u2014in God\u2019s name! Or they will have us,\u201d cried Graham\u2019s guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.<\/p>\n

Graham tottered convulsively, gave a sobbing cry, a cry in spite of himself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forward into the pit of that darkness, seated on the cross wood and holding the ropes with the clutch of death. Something cracked, something rapped smartly against a wall. He heard the pulley of the cradle hum on its rope. He heard the aeronauts shout. He felt a pair of knees digging into his back…. He was sweeping headlong through the air, falling through the air. All his strength was in his hands. He would have screamed but he had no breath.<\/p>\n

He shot into a blinding light that made him grip the tighter. He recognised the great passage with the running ways, the hanging lights and interlacing girders. They rushed upward and by him. He had a momentary impression of a great round mouth yawning to swallow him up.<\/p>\n

He was in the dark again, falling, falling, gripping with aching hands, and behold! a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. The people! His people! A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt he was travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. He distinguished shouts of \u201cSaved! The Master. He is safe!\u201d The stage rushed up towards him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then\u2014<\/p>\n

He heard the man clinging behind him shout as if suddenly terrified, and this shout was echoed by a shout from below. He felt that he was no longer gliding along the cable but falling with it. There was a tumult of yells, screams, and cries. He felt something soft against his extended hand, and the impact of a broken fall quivering through his arm….<\/p>\n

He wanted to be still and the people were lifting him. He believed afterwards he was carried to the platform and given some drink, but he was never sure. He did not notice what became of his guide. When his mind was clear again he was on his feet; eager hands were assisting him to stand. He was in a big alcove, occupying the position that in his previous experience had been devoted to the lower boxes. If this was indeed a theatre.<\/p>\n

A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a countless multitude. \u201cIt is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sleeper is with us! The Master\u2014the Owner! The Master is with us. He is safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham had a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. He saw no individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of waving arms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering. Across the nearer space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut by the men of the flying machine at its upper end, and had crumpled down into the hall. Men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. But the whole effect was vague, the very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of the voices.<\/p>\n

He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him by one arm. \u201cLet me go into a little room,\u201d he said, weeping; \u201ca little room,\u201d and could say no more. A man in black stepped forward, took his disengaged arm. He was aware of officious men opening a door before him. Someone guided him to a seat. He staggered. He sat down heavily and covered his face with his hands; he was trembling violently, his nervous control was at an end. He was relieved of his cloak, he could not remember how; his purple hose he saw were black with wet. People were running about him, things were happening, but for some time he gave no heed to them.<\/p>\n

He had escaped. A myriad of cries told him that. He was safe. These were the people who were on his side. For a space he sobbed for breath, and then he sat still with his face covered. The air was full of the shouting of innumerable men.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER IX. \u2014 THE PEOPLE MARCH<\/h2>\n

He became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon his attention, looked up and discovered this was a dark young man in a yellow garment. He took the dose forthwith, and in a moment he was glowing. A tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder, and pointed to the half open door into the hall. This man was shouting close to his ear and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the great theatre. Behind the man was a girl in a silvery grey robe, whom Graham, even in this confusion, perceived to be beautiful. Her dark eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, were fixed on him, her lips trembled apart. A partially opened door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall, and admitted a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping and shouting that died away and began again, and rose to a thunderous pitch, and so continued intermittently all the time that Graham remained in the little room. He watched the lips of the man in black and gathered that he was making some explanation.<\/p>\n

He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me!\u201d he cried. \u201cWho am I? Who am I?\u201d<\/p>\n

The others came nearer to hear his words. \u201cWho am I?\u201d His eyes searched their faces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have told him nothing!\u201d cried the girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me, tell me!\u201d cried Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. \u201cI have been awake three days\u2014a prisoner three days. I judge there is some struggle between a number of people in this city\u2014it is London?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said the younger man.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd those who meet in the great hall with the white Atlas? How does it concern me? In some way it has to do with me. Why<\/i>, I don\u2019t know. Drugs? It seems to me that while I have slept the world has gone mad. I have gone mad…. Who are those Councillors under the Atlas? Why should they try to drug me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo keep you insensible,\u201d said the man in yellow. \u201cTo prevent your interference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you<\/i> are the Atlas, Sire,\u201d said the man in yellow. \u201cThe world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could not hear each other shout.<\/p>\n

Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard. \u201cThe Council,\u201d he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a name that had struck him. \u201cBut who is Ostrog?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is the organiser\u2014the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader\u2014in your name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my name?\u2014And you? Why is he not here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2014has deputed us. I am his brother\u2014his half-brother, Lincoln. He wants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him. That is why he has sent. He is at the wind-vane offices directing. The people are marching.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn your name,\u201d shouted the younger man. \u201cThey have ruled, crushed, tyrannised. At last even\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my name! My name! Master?\u201d<\/p>\n

The younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder, indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy moustache. \u201cNo one expected you to wake. No one expected you to wake. They were cunning. Damned tyrants! But they were taken by surprise. They did not know whether to drug you, hypnotise you, kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again the hall dominated everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog is at the wind-vane offices ready\u2014. Even now there is a rumour of fighting beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. \u201cOstrog has it planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the flying stages\u2014. Even now he may be doing that. Then\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis public theatre,\u201d bawled the man in yellow, \u201cis only a contingent. We have five myriads of drilled men\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have arms,\u201d cried Lincoln. \u201cWe have plans. A leader. Their police have gone from the streets and are massed in the\u2014\u201d (inaudible). \u201cIt is now or never. The Council is rocking\u2014They cannot trust even their drilled men\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHear the people calling to you!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds, now dark and hopeless, now clear and ghastly. He was Master of the Earth, he was a man sodden with thawing snow. Of all his fluctuating impressions the dominant ones presented an antagonism; on the one hand was the White Council, powerful, disciplined, few, the White Council from which he had just escaped; and on the other, monstrous crowds, packed masses of indistinguishable people clamouring his name, hailing him Master. The other side had imprisoned him, debated his death. These shouting thousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him. But why these things should be so he could not understand.<\/p>\n

The door opened, Lincoln\u2019s voice was swept away and drowned, and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. \u201cShow us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!\u201d was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for \u201cOrder! Silence!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham glanced towards the open doorway, and saw a tall, oblong picture of the hall beyond, a waving, incessant confusion of crowded, shouting faces, men and women together, waving pale blue garments, extended hands. Many were standing, one man in rags of dark brown, a gaunt figure, stood on the seat and waved a black cloth. He met the wonder and expectation of the girl\u2019s eyes. What did these people expect from him. He was dimly aware that the tumult outside had changed its character, was in some way beating, marching. His own mind, too, changed. For a space he did not recognise the influence that was transforming him. But a moment that was near to panic passed. He tried to make audible inquiries of what was required of him.<\/p>\n

Lincoln was shouting in his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music of an organ, a woven texture of sounds, full of trumpets, full of flaunting banners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war. And the feet of the people were beating time\u2014tramp, tramp.<\/p>\n

He was urged towards the door. He obeyed mechanically. The strength of that chant took hold of him, stirred him, emboldened him. The hall opened to him, a vast welter of fluttering colour swaying to the music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWave your arm to them,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cWave your arm to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d said a voice on the other side, \u201che must have this.\u201d Arms were about his neck detaining him in the doorway, and a black subtly-folding mantle hung from his shoulders. He threw his arm free of this and followed Lincoln. He perceived the girl in grey close to him, her face lit, her gesture onward. For the instant she became to him, flushed and eager as she was, an embodiment of the song. He emerged in the alcove again. Incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon his appearing, and flashed up into a foam of shouting. Guided by Lincoln\u2019s hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the people.<\/p>\n

The hall was a vast and intricate space\u2014galleries, balconies, broad spaces of amphitheatral steps, and great archways. Far away, high up, seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity. The whole multitude was swaying in congested masses. Individual figures sprang out of the tumult, impressed him momentarily, and lost definition again. Close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman, carried by three men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. Next this group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, a great cavity of toothless mouth. A voice called that enigmatical word \u201cOstrog.\u201d All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling song. The multitude were beating time with their feet\u2014marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The green weapons waved, flashed and slanted. Then he saw those nearest to him on a level space before the stage were marching in front of him, passing towards a great archway, shouting \u201cTo the Council!\u201d Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout \u201cMarch!\u201d His mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the archway, shouting \u201cOnward!\u201d They were no longer marking time, they were marching; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. In that host were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering robed bare-armed women, girls. Men and women of the new age! Rich robes, grey rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue. A monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. He perceived a blue-clad negro, a shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tall fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. He noted two Chinamen. A tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth, white clad from top to toe, clambered up towards the platform shouting loyally, and sprang down again and receded, looking backward. Heads, shoulders, hands clutching weapons, all were swinging with those marching cadences.<\/p>\n

Faces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there, eyes met his and passed and vanished. Men gesticulated to him, shouted inaudible personal things. Most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastly white. And disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean. Men and women of the new age! Strange and incredible meeting! As the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages. Men and women mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. The garments waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly.<\/p>\n

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln\u2019s pressure he turned towards the archway, walking unconsciously in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture and song, all moved in that direction, the flow of people smote downward until the upturned faces were below the level of his feet. He was aware of a path before him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and Lincoln on his right hand. Attendants intervened, and ever and again blotted out the sight of the multitude to the left. Before him went the backs of the guards in black\u2014three and three and three. He was marched along a little railed way, and crossed above the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath, and shouting up to him. He did not know whither he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER X. \u2014 THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS<\/h2>\n

He was no longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.<\/p>\n

The song roared up to Graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways.<\/p>\n

Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on the opposite side of the way seemed deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were empty and shadowy. It came into Graham\u2019s mind that these also should have swarmed with people.<\/p>\n

He felt a curious emotion\u2014throbbing\u2014very fast! He stopped again. The guards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw anxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had something to do with the lights. He too looked up.<\/p>\n

At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply, an isolated phenomenon, having no bearing on the things below. Each huge globe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation.<\/p>\n

Graham became aware that this strange behaviour of the lights had to do with the people below. The appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vivid lights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing with steady swiftness\u2014to leap suddenly back and return reinforced. The song and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of \u201cThe lights!\u201d Voices were crying together one thing. \u201cThe lights!\u201d cried these voices. \u201cThe lights!\u201d He looked down. In this dancing death of the lights the area of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes became purple-white, purple with a reddish glow, flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering myriads of men.<\/p>\n

He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, \u201cIt is all right\u2014all right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his forehead against Lincoln\u2019s and bawled, \u201cWhat is this darkness?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must wait\u2014stop. The people will go on. They will\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, \u201cSave the Sleeper. Take care of the Sleeper.\u201d A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him as his mind reached out to grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. There were suddenly a succession of piercing screams close beneath them.<\/p>\n

A voice bawled in his ear, \u201cThe red police,\u201d and receded forthwith beyond his questions.<\/p>\n

A crackling sound grew to distinctness, and therewith a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant\u2019s dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain.<\/p>\n

A glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething expanse of struggling men confused his mind. A shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. He looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung far overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness back.<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of red a little way along the vista caught his eye. He saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed on the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edge of the contest, and other heads replaced them, the little flashes from the green weapons became little jets of smoky grey while the light lasted.<\/p>\n

Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness once more, a tumultuous mystery.<\/p>\n

He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the gallery. Someone was shouting\u2014it might be at him. He was too confused to hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a number of people blundered past him. It seemed to him that his guards were struggling with one another.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again, and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer; its apex was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle. And raising his eyes Graham saw that a number of these men had also appeared now in the darkened lower galleries of the opposite building, and were firing over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning of these things dawned upon him. The march of the people had come upon an ambush at the very outset. Thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights they were now being attacked by the red police. Then he became aware that he was standing alone, that his guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in the direction along which he had come before the darkness fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly, running back towards him. A great shouting came from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red-clad men. And they were pointing over to him and shouting. \u201cThe Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!\u201d shouted a multitude of throats.<\/p>\n

Something struck the wall above his head. He looked up at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felt his arm gripped. Then, pat, pat; he had been missed twice.<\/p>\n

For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden, everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.<\/p>\n

Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery. \u201cBefore the next light!\u201d he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham\u2019s instinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis of his incredulous astonishment. He became for a time the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare came close on its predecessors. With it came a great shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The white fagade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council attempting to recapture him.<\/p>\n

Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that the whole opposite fagade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was crowded and bawling and firing at him.<\/p>\n

Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt the writhing body.<\/p>\n

In another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a black passage, and incontinently someone, coming, it may be, in a transverse direction, blundered violently into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. He heard shouts of \u201cThey are coming!\u201d and a muffled cry close to him. His foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under foot. He heard shouts of \u201cThe Sleeper!\u201d but he was too confused to speak. He heard the green weapons crackling. For a space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrust and pressed back and writhed in the pressure, kicked presently against a step, and found himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces all about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare. One face, a young man\u2019s, was very near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time it was but a passing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back to him in his dreams. For this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot and was already dead.<\/p>\n

A fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Graham that he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed back across the lower area of the great theatre. This time the picture was livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through the people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden idea came to him, and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came to an end.<\/p>\n

In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatre walls.<\/p>\n

He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceived that a number of black-badged men were all about him firing at the reds below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames. Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the veil of darkness fell again.<\/p>\n

A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. \u201cHullo!\u201d he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching Sleeper\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and shouting, \u201cTo hell with the Council!\u201d was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham that the half of this man\u2019s neck had vanished. A drop of moisture fell on Graham\u2019s cheek. The green weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ran for his life until a step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet, turned up the gangway and ran on.<\/p>\n

When the sixth star glared he was already close to the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a corner into absolute night again. He was knocked sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one thought now was their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly, lost ground and then was clear again.<\/p>\n

For some minutes he was running through the darkness along a winding passage, and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed down a long incline, and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place. Many people were shouting, \u201cThey are coming! The guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of the fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safe in Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!\u201d There were women and children in the crowd as well as men.<\/p>\n

The crowd converged on an archway, passed through a short throat and emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left…. He perceived that he was no longer in a crowd. He stopped near the highest step. Before him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little kiosk. He went up to this and, stopping in the shadow of its eaves, looked about him panting.<\/p>\n

Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps were a series of platforms of the \u201cways,\u201d now motionless again. The platform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by. From their shouts and voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows.<\/p>\n

From very far away down the street he could hear the sound of a struggle. But it was evident to him that this was not the street into which the theatre opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly dropped out of sound and hearing. And they were fighting for him!<\/p>\n

For a space he was like a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestionably. At that time he had little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge astonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap filled, and he began to comprehend his position.<\/p>\n

It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the Silent Rooms. At least he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen \u201cOstrog\u201d as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! \u201cI do not understand,\u201d he cried. \u201cI do not understand!\u201d<\/p>\n

He had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty of the twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the red-clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black-badged revolutionists before them.<\/p>\n

At any rate chance had given him a breathing space. He could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. His eye followed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light of day. In a little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing had already dried upon him from the snow.<\/p>\n

He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one, accosted by no one\u2014a dark figure among dark figures\u2014the coveted man out of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. Wherever there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he was afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or higher level. And though he came on no more fighting, the whole city stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away from the fighting\u2014so far as he could judge. He went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. After a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at last the streets became deserted. The frontages of the buildings grew plain, and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacant warehouses. Solitude crept upon him\u2014his pace slackened.<\/p>\n

He became aware of a growing fatigue. At times he would turn aside and sit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways. But a feverish restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle, would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggle on his behalf alone?<\/p>\n

And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake\u2014a roaring and thundering\u2014a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry\u2014a series of gigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, and in the distance were shouts and running. He, too, was startled to an aimless activity, and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back.<\/p>\n

A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. \u201cWhat have they blown up?\u201d asked the man breathlessly. \u201cThat was an explosion,\u201d and before Graham could speak he had hurried on.<\/p>\n

The great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into \u201cHere is Eadhamite,\u201d or, \u201cLabour Bureau\u2014Little Side\u201d? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!<\/p>\n

The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again. And that fact realised, he had been prepared. His mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. And no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. Would he, after all, be killed before he saw? It might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him.<\/p>\n

He became fearful of corners. It seemed to him that there was safety in concealment. Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned? At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there.<\/p>\n

He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone. Suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream. It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless. Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this saner world regard him as Owner and Master?<\/p>\n

So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home. But fact takes no heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a black banner tramped athwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is no dream,\u201d he said, \u201cno dream.\u201d And he bowed his face upon his hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XI. \u2014 THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING<\/h2>\n

He was startled by a cough close at hand.<\/p>\n

He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave ye any news?\u201d asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man.<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated. \u201cNone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stay here till the lights come again,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThese blue scoundrels are everywhere\u2014everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s answer was inarticulate assent. He tried to see the old man but the darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin.<\/p>\n

\u201cDark and damnable,\u201d said the old man suddenly. \u201cDark and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s hard,\u201d ventured Graham. \u201cThat\u2019s hard on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDarkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad. War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don\u2019t they bring some negroes to protect us? … No more dark passages for me. I fell over a dead man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re safer with company,\u201d said the old man, \u201cif it\u2019s company of the right sort,\u201d and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came towards Graham.<\/p>\n

Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if relieved to be no longer alone. \u201cEh!\u201d he said, \u201cbut this is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there\u2014men, strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night.\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: \u201cGod knows where they are to-night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance. Again the old man\u2019s voice ended the pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Ostrog will win,\u201d he said. \u201cHe will win. And what the world will be like under him no one can tell. My sons are under the wind-vanes, all three. One of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a while. His mistress! We\u2019re not common people. Though they\u2019ve sent me to wander to-night and take my chance…. I knew what was going on. Before most people. But this darkness! And to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!\u201d<\/p>\n

His wheezy breathing could be heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog!\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest Boss the world has ever seen,\u201d said the voice.<\/p>\n

Graham ransacked his mind. \u201cThe Council has few friends among the people,\u201d he hazarded.<\/p>\n

\u201cFew friends. And poor ones at that. They\u2019ve had their time. Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And Ostrog\u2014. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog\u2014Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his rages at the time\u2014he was terrible. Heaven save them! For nothing on earth can now he has raised the Labour Companies upon them. No one else would have dared. All the blue canvas armed and marching! He will go through with it. He will go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was silent for a little while. \u201cThis Sleeper,\u201d he said, and stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came close. \u201cThe real Sleeper\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cDied years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d said Graham, sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cYears ago. Died. Years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t say so!\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who\u2019s woke up\u2014they changed in the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn\u2019t tell all I know. I mustn\u2019t tell all I know.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him. \u201cI don\u2019t know the ones that put him to sleep\u2014that was before my time\u2014but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again. It was ten to one\u2014wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog\u2019s way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham was so astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man\u2019s senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed awhile and spat, and then the piping, reminiscent voice resumed:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time they rejected him. I\u2019ve followed it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRejected whom?\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe Sleeper?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSleeper? No<\/i>. Ostrog. He was terrible\u2014terrible! And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were\u2014not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city\u2019s his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work\u2014the workers cut each other\u2019s throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies! Robbing! Darkness! Such a thing hasn\u2019t been this gross of years. Eh!\u2014but \u2018tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! It\u2019s ill.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you say\u2014there had not been\u2014what?\u2014for a gross of years?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh?\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat this a third time. \u201cFighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools bawling freedom and the like,\u201d said the old man. \u201cNot in all my life has there been that. These are like the old days\u2014for sure\u2014when the Paris people broke out\u2014three gross of years ago. That\u2019s what I mean hasn\u2019t been. But it\u2019s the world\u2019s way. It had to come back. I know. I know. This five years Ostrog has been working, and there has been trouble and trouble, and hunger and threats and high talk and arms. Blue canvas and murmurs. No one safe. Everything sliding and slipping. And now here we are! Revolt and fighting, and the Council come to its end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are rather well-informed on these things,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what I hear. It isn\u2019t all Babble Machine with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. \u201cAnd you are certain this Ostrog\u2014you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself\u2014because he was not elected to the Council?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows that, I should think,\u201d said the old man. \u201cExcept\u2014just fools. He meant to be master somehow. In the Council or not. Everyone who knows anything knows that. And here we are with dead bodies lying in the dark! Why, where have you been if you haven\u2019t heard all about the trouble between Ostrog and the Verneys? And what do you think the troubles are about? The Sleeper? Eh? You think the Sleeper\u2019s real and woke of his own accord\u2014eh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful,\u201d said Graham. \u201cLots of things that have happened\u2014especially of late years\u2014. If I was the Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn\u2019t know less about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh!\u201d said the voice. \u201cOld, are you? You don\u2019t sound so very old! But it\u2019s not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life\u2014truly. But these notorious things! But you\u2019re not so old as me\u2014not nearly so old as me. Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I\u2019m young\u2014for so old a man. Maybe you\u2019re old for so young.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d said Graham. \u201cAnd I\u2019ve a queer history. I know very little. And history! Practically I know no history. The Sleeper and Julius Caesar are all the same to me. It\u2019s interesting to hear you talk of these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a few things,\u201d said the old man. \u201cI know a thing or two. But\u2014. Hark!\u201d<\/p>\n

The two men became silent, listening. There was a heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. The passers-by stopped, shouted to one another. The old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man who passed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. None knew what had happened.<\/p>\n

He returned to the seat and found the old man muttering vague interrogations in an undertone. For a while they said nothing to one another.<\/p>\n

The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed Graham\u2019s imagination. Was this old man right, was the report of the people right, and were the revolutionaries winning? Or were they all in error, and were the red guards driving all before them? At any time the flood of warfare might pour into this silent quarter of the city and seize upon him again. It behoved him to learn all he could while there was time. He turned suddenly to the old man with a question and left it unsaid. But his motion moved the old man to speech again.<\/p>\n

\u201cEh! but how things work together!\u201d said the old man. \u201cThis Sleeper that all the fools put their trust in! I\u2019ve the whole history of it\u2014I was always a good one for histories. When I was a boy\u2014I\u2019m that old\u2014I used to read printed books. You\u2019d hardly think it. Likely you\u2019ve seen none\u2014they rot and dust so\u2014and the Sanitary Company burns them to make ashlarite. But they were convenient in their dirty way. One learnt a lot. These new-fangled Babble Machines\u2014they don\u2019t seem new-fangled to you, eh?\u2014they\u2019re easy to hear, easy to forget. But I\u2019ve traced all the Sleeper business from the first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will scarcely believe it,\u201d said Graham slowly, \u201cI\u2019m so ignorant\u2014I\u2019ve been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my circumstances have been so odd\u2014I know nothing of this Sleeper\u2019s history. Who was he?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh!\u201d said the old man. \u201cI know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There\u2019s the old things they had, those brown things\u2014silver photographs\u2014still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago\u2014a gross and a half of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSet on a playful woman, poor soul,\u201d said Graham softly to himself, and then aloud, \u201cYes\u2014well go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads\u2014the first Eadhamite roads. But surely you\u2019ve heard? No? Why? He bought all the patent rights and made a big company. In those days there were grosses of grosses of separate businesses and business companies. Grosses of grosses! His roads killed the railroads\u2014the old things\u2014in two dozen years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn\u2019t want to break up his great property or let in shareholders, he left it all to the Sleeper, and put it under a Board of Trustees that he had picked and trained. He knew then the Sleeper wouldn\u2019t wake, that he would go on sleeping, sleeping till he died. He knew that quite well! And plump! a man in the United States, who had lost two sons in a boat accident, followed that up with another great bequest. His trustees found themselves with a dozen myriads of lions\u2019-worth or more of property at the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was his name?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGraham.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2014I mean\u2014that American\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsbister.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsbister!\u201d cried Graham. \u201cWhy, I don\u2019t even know the name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course not,\u201d said the old man. \u201cOf course not. People don\u2019t learn much in the schools nowadays. But I know all about him. He was a rich American who went from England, and he left the Sleeper even more than Warming. How he made it? That I don\u2019t know. Something about pictures by machinery. But he made it and left it, and so the Council had its start. It was just a council of trustees at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how did it grow?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh!\u2014but you\u2019re not up to things. Money attracts money\u2014and twelve brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. They grew\u2014they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the Sleeper\u2019s estate under double names and company titles and all that. The Council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper they bought. If you listen to the old stories you will see the Council growing and growing. Billions and billions of lions at last\u2014the Sleeper\u2019s estate. And all growing out of a whim\u2014out of this Warming\u2019s will, and an accident to Isbister\u2019s sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen are strange,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThe strange thing to me is how the Council worked together so long. As many as twelve. But they worked in cliques from the first. And they\u2019ve slipped back. In my young days speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We didn\u2019t think they could do wrong. We didn\u2019t know of their women and all that! Or else I\u2019ve got wiser.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen are strange,\u201d said the old man. \u201cHere are you, young and ignorant, and me\u2014sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before getting\u2014explaining it all to you short and clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cSevendy,\u201d he said, \u201csevendy, and I hear and see\u2014hear better than I see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of things. Sevendy!<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him long before he\u2019d pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control. I\u2019ve seen many changes. Eh! I\u2019ve worn the blue. And at last I\u2019ve come to see this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heaps on the ways. And all his doing! All his doing!\u201d<\/p>\n

His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.<\/p>\n

Graham thought. \u201cLet me see,\u201d he said, \u201cif I have it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. \u201cThe Sleeper has been asleep\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChanged,\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper\u2019s property grew in the hands of Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of the world. The Twelve Trustees\u2014by virtue of this property have become masters of the world. Because they are the paying power\u2014just as the old English Parliament used to be\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh!\u201d said the old man. \u201cThat\u2019s so\u2014that\u2019s a good comparison. You\u2019re not so\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now this Ostrog\u2014has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the Sleeper\u2014whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt would wake again\u2014raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the Council, after all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. \u201cIt\u2019s strange,\u201d he said, \u201cto meet a man who learns these things for the first time to-night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAye,\u201d said Graham, \u201cit\u2019s strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you been in a Pleasure City?\u201d said the old man. \u201cAll my life I\u2019ve longed\u2014\u201d He laughed. \u201cEven now,\u201d he said, \u201cI could enjoy a little fun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow.\u201d He mumbled a sentence Graham did not understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sleeper\u2014when did he awake?\u201d said Graham suddenly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree days ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog has him. He escaped from the Council not four hours ago. My dear sir, where were you at the time? He was in the hall of the markets\u2014where the fighting has been. All the city was screaming about it. All the Babble Machines. Everywhere it was shouted. Even the fools who speak for the Council were admitting it. Everyone was rushing off to see him\u2014everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even then! But you\u2019re joking! Surely you\u2019re pretending. It was to stop the shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that they turned off the electricity\u2014and put this damned darkness upon us. Do you mean to say\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had heard the Sleeper was rescued,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut\u2014to come back a minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe won\u2019t let him go,\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn\u2019t a thousand things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell you? In a way I\u2019m a sort of relation of Ostrog\u2019s. A sort of relation. Through my daughter-in-law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose there\u2019s no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose he\u2019s certain to be a puppet\u2014in Ostrog\u2019s hands or the Council\u2019s, as soon as the struggle is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Ostrog\u2019s hands\u2014certainly. Why shouldn\u2019t he be a puppet? Look at his position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he want to assert himself?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are these Pleasure Cities?\u201d said Graham, abruptly.<\/p>\n

The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of Graham\u2019s words, he nudged him violently. \u201cThat\u2019s too<\/i> much,\u201d said he. \u201cYou\u2019re poking fun at an old man. I\u2019ve been suspecting you know more than you pretend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps I do,\u201d said Graham. \u201cBut no! why should I go on acting? No, I do not know what a Pleasure City is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The old man laughed in an intimate way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is more, I do not know how to read your letters, I do not know what money you use, I do not know what foreign countries there are. I do not know where I am. I cannot count. I do not know where to get food, nor drink, nor shelter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome, come,\u201d said the old man, \u201cif you had a glass of drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to tell me all these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun.\u201d A withered hand caressed Graham\u2019s arm for a moment. \u201cSilk. Well, well! But, all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He\u2019ll have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He\u2019s a queer looking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I\u2019ve got tickets and been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this substitute used to be. Yellow. But he\u2019ll get fed up. It\u2019s a queer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he\u2019ll be sent to Capri. It\u2019s the best fun for a greener.\u201d<\/p>\n

His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. \u201cThe luck of it, the luck of it! All my life I\u2019ve been in London, hoping to get my chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you don\u2019t know that the Sleeper died,\u201d said Graham, suddenly.<\/p>\n

The old man made him repeat his words.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen don\u2019t live beyond ten dozen. It\u2019s not in the order of things,\u201d said the old man. \u201cI\u2019m not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham became angry with the old man\u2019s assurance. \u201cWhether you are a fool or not,\u201d he said, \u201cit happens you are wrong about the Sleeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven\u2019t told you before, but I will tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know? I thought you didn\u2019t know anything\u2014not even about Pleasure Cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham paused.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know,\u201d said the old man. \u201cHow are you to know? It\u2019s very few men\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am<\/i> the Sleeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had to repeat it.<\/p>\n

There was a brief pause. \u201cThere\u2019s a silly thing to say, sir, if you\u2019ll excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this,\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was saying I was the Sleeper. That years and years ago I did, indeed, fall asleep, in a little stone-built village, in the days when there were hedgerows, and villages, and inns, and all the countryside cut up into little pieces, little fields. Have you never heard of those days? And it is I\u2014I who speak to you\u2014who awakened again these four days since.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFour days since!\u2014the Sleeper! But they\u2019ve got<\/i> the Sleeper. They have him and they won\u2019t let him go. Nonsense! You\u2019ve been talking sensibly enough up to now. I can see it as though I was there. There will be Lincoln like a keeper just behind him; they won\u2019t let him go about alone. Trust them. You\u2019re a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why you have been clipping your words so oddly, but\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you\u2019re telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What\u2019s your game? And besides, we\u2019ve been talking of the Sleeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stood up. \u201cListen,\u201d he said. \u201cI am the Sleeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re an odd man,\u201d said the old man, \u201cto sit here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s exasperation fell to laughter. \u201cIt is preposterous,\u201d he cried. \u201cPreposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I\u2014in this damned twilight\u2014I never knew a dream in twilight before\u2014an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I am myself, and meanwhile\u2014Ugh!\u201d<\/p>\n

He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man was pursuing him. \u201cEh! but don\u2019t go!\u201d cried the old man. \u201cI\u2019m an old fool, I know. Don\u2019t go. Don\u2019t leave me in all this darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret flashed into his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to offend you\u2014disbelieving you,\u201d said the old man coming near. \u201cIt\u2019s no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases you. \u2018Tis a foolish trick\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.<\/p>\n

For a time he heard the old man\u2019s hobbling pursuit and his wheezy cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him no more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XII. \u2014 OSTROG<\/h2>\n

Graham could now take a clearer view of his position. For a long time yet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of this Ostrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. One thing was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt had succeeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance. But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of his recapture by the Council.<\/p>\n

Presently a man stopped before him. \u201cHave you heard?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo!\u201d said Graham, starting.<\/p>\n

\u201cNear a dozand,\u201d said the man, \u201ca dozand men!\u201d and hurried on.<\/p>\n

A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and shouting: \u201cCapitulated! Given up!\u201d \u201cA dozand of men.\u201d \u201cTwo dozand of men.\u201d \u201cOstrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!\u201d These cries receded, became indistinct.<\/p>\n

Other shouting men followed. For a time his attention was absorbed in the fragments of speech he heard. He had a doubt whether all were speaking English. Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like \u201cnigger\u201d dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He dared accost no one with questions. The impression the people gave him jarred altogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man\u2019s faith in Ostrog. It was only slowly he could bring himself to believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of the Council, that the Council which had pursued him with such power and vigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict. And if that was so, how did it affect him? Several times he hesitated on the verge of fundamental questions. Once he turned and walked for a long way after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable to master confidence to address him.<\/p>\n

It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the \u201cwind-vane offices\u201d whatever the \u201cwind-vane offices\u201d might be. His first enquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towards Westminster. His second led to the discovery of a short cut in which he was speedily lost. He was told to leave the ways to which he had hitherto confined himself\u2014knowing no other means of transit\u2014and to plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of a cross-way. Thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these an ambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking in a strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow of speech with the drifting corpses of English Words therein, the dialect of the latter-day vile. Then another voice drew near, a girl\u2019s voice singing, \u201ctralala tralala.\u201d She spoke to Graham, her English touched with something of the same quality. She professed to have lost her sister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of him and laughed. But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseen again.<\/p>\n

The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking excitedly. \u201cThey have surrendered!\u201d \u201cThe Council! Surely not the Council!\u201d \u201cThey are saying so in the Ways.\u201d The passage seemed wider. Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people were stirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. \u201cStrike straight across,\u201d said a woman\u2019s voice. He left his guiding wall, and in a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of glass. Graham\u2019s eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vista with tables on either side. He went down this. At one or two of the tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There were people then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a meal in spite of social convulsion and darkness. Far off and high up he presently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. As he approached this, a black edge came up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and found himself in a gallery. He heard a sobbing, and found two scared little girls crouched by a railing. These children became silent at the near sound of feet. He tried to console them, but they were very still until he left them. Then as he receded he could hear them sobbing again.<\/p>\n

Presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wide opening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the blackness into a street of moving ways again. Along this a disorderly swarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the song of the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flared creating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twice puzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answer he could understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices in Westminster, but the way was easy to follow.<\/p>\n

When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices it seemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along the Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration of the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council must already be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to his ears.<\/p>\n

The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless intention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.<\/p>\n

For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and weary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in his cause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by some moving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite of his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his approaching it. From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it conveyed news of the fighting about the Council House. Ignorance and indecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. For a time he could not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken fagade of this place. He made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people, until he realised that the descending staircase of the central way led to the interior of the buildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowding in the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reach it. And even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hour of vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before he could get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eager to see him. His story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser for that, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply to have news of extraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he would not say. They sent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited in a little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last came Lincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorway scrutinising Graham, then rushed forward effusively.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he cried. \u201cIt is you. And you are not dead!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham made a brief explanation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother is waiting,\u201d explained Lincoln. \u201cHe is alone in the wind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted\u2014and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them there<\/i>\u2014or he would have come to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

They ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed a great hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered a comparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and a large oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall. There Lincoln left Graham for a space, and he remained alone without understanding the smoky shapes that drove slowly across this disc.<\/p>\n

His attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It was cheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a roaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound heard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room was a noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain was running over the teeth of a wheel.<\/p>\n

Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. \u201cIt is Ostrog!\u201d he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then everything was still again.<\/p>\n

Presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footsteps of some one person detached itself from the other sounds, and drew near, firm, evenly measured steps. The curtain lifted slowly. A tall, white-haired man, clad in garments of cream-coloured silk, appeared, regarding Graham from under his raised arm.<\/p>\n

For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it and stood before it. Graham\u2019s first impression was of a very broad forehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquiline nose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over the eyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted the upright bearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feet instinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regarding each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are Ostrog?\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am Ostrog.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Boss?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I am called.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. \u201cI have to thank you chiefly, I understand, for my safety,\u201d he said presently.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were afraid you were killed,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cOr sent to sleep again\u2014for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret\u2014the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham told him briefly.<\/p>\n

Ostrog listened in silence.<\/p>\n

He smiled faintly. \u201cDo you know what I was doing when they came to tell me you had come?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow can I guess?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPreparing your double.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy double?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA man as like you as we could find. We were going to hypnotise him, to save him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of this revolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Even now a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouring to see you. They do not trust…. You know, of course\u2014something of your position?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cVery little,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is like this.\u201d Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned. \u201cYou are absolute owner,\u201d he said, \u201cof the world. You are King of the Earth. Your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are the figure-head, the popular symbol of government. This White Council, the Council of Trustees as it is called\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard the vague outline of these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wondered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI came upon a garrulous old man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see…. Our masses\u2014the word comes from your days\u2014you know, of course, that we still have masses\u2014regard you as our actual ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented\u2014the masses all over the earth\u2014with the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness\u2014the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certain matters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms\u2014when your waking came. Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunely.\u201d He smiled. \u201cThe public mind, making no allowance for your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing to you, and\u2014Flash!\u201d<\/p>\n

He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show that he understood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council muddled\u2014quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see. I see. And now\u2014we win?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe win. Indeed we win. To-night, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struck everywhere. The wind-vane people, the Labour Company and its millions, burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeroplanes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All the city rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all the public services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red police. You were rescued, and their own police of the ways\u2014not half of them could be massed at the Council House\u2014have been broken up, disarmed or killed. All London is ours\u2014now. Only the Council House remains.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in that foolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lost you. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off from the Council House there. Truly to-night has been a night of victory. Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago\u2014the White Council ruled as it has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years, and then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there, suddenly\u2014So!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very ignorant,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI suppose\u2014I do not clearly understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where is the Council? Where is the fight?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.<\/p>\n

Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, had assumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strange unfamiliar scene.<\/p>\n

At the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be. It was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear. Across the picture, and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoter view, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then he perceived that the rows of great wind-wheels he saw, the wide intervals, the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he had fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of red figures marching across an open space between files of men in black, and realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the upper surface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judged that this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, but that matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of red figures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of the picture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that the picture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a moment you will see the fighting,\u201d said Ostrog at his elbow. \u201cThose fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of London\u2014all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggested a man. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept across the oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picture was clear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among the wind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out little smoky flashes. They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating\u2014it might be they were shouting, but of that the picture told nothing. They and the wind-wheels passed slowly and steadily across the field of the mirror.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201ccomes the Council House,\u201d and slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered Graham\u2019s attention. Soon it was no longer an edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clustering edifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid winter sky. Gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers and girders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over these vestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering, leaping, swarming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the Council House,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cTheir last stronghold. And the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the buildings all about them\u2014to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It shattered half the brittle glass in the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white building. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods. And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clothed defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashes illuminated the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Graham that an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, but then he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.<\/p>\n

And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening in the world!<\/p>\n

Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across the centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building was surrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe in concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to isolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that huge downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvised mortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He was more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, the distribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contest that had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It was no tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but a splendidly organised coup d’itat<\/i>. Ostrog\u2019s grasp of details was astonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot of black and red specks that crawled amidst these places.<\/p>\n

He stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showed the room whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins the course of his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutter ran, and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine. The rest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. He looked again at the Council House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right a hillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant, was gliding into view.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the Council is really overthrown?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverthrown,\u201d said Ostrog.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2014. Is it indeed true that I\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are Master of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that white flag\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the flag of the Council\u2014the flag of the Rule of the World. It will fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their last frantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of these men will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are reviving the ancient arts. We are casting guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2014help. Is this city the world?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPractically this is all they have left to them of their empire. Abroad the cities have either revolted with us or wait the issue. Your awakening has perplexed them, paralysed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut haven\u2019t the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting with them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with us. They wouldn\u2019t take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would not stir against us. We had<\/i> to get a pull with the aeronauts. Quite half were with us, and the others knew it. Directly they knew you had got away, those looking for you dropped. We killed the man who shot at you\u2014an hour ago. And we occupied the flying stages at the outset in every city we could, and so stopped and captured the greater aeroplanes, and as for the little flying machines that turned out\u2014for some did\u2014we kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council House. If they dropped they couldn\u2019t rise again, because there\u2019s no clear space about there for them to get up. Several we have smashed, several others have dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to the Continent to find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out. Most of these men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out of harm\u2019s way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn\u2019t a very attractive prospect. There\u2019s no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done.\u201d<\/p>\n

He laughed and turned to the oval reflection again to show Graham what he meant by flying stages. Even the four nearer ones were remote and obscured by a thin morning haze. But Graham could perceive they were very vast structures, judged even by the standard of the things about them.<\/p>\n

And then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders were no longer firing.<\/p>\n

So, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw the closing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of his rule. With a quality of startling discovery it came to him that this was his world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was no spectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whatever life was still before him, lay all his duties and dangers and responsibilities. He turned with fresh questions. Ostrog began to answer them, and then broke off abruptly. \u201cBut these things I must explain more fully later. At present there are\u2014duties. The people are coming by the moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city\u2014the markets and theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. They are clamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. Paris, New York, Chicago, Denver, Capri\u2014thousands of cities are up and in a tumult, undecided, and clamouring to see you. They have clamoured that you should be awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcely believe\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut surely\u2014I can\u2019t go …\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog answered from the other side of the room, and the picture on the oval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again. \u201cThere are kineto-telephoto-graphs,\u201d he said. \u201cAs you bow to the people here\u2014all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course\u2014not like this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd there is an optical contrivance we shall use,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201cused by some of the posturers and women dancers. It may be novel to you. You stand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnified image of you thrown on a screen\u2014so that even the furtherest man in the remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. \u201cWhat is the population of London?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight and twaindy myriads.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEight and what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than thirty-three millions.\u201d<\/p>\n

These figures went beyond Graham\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will be expected to say something,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cNot what you used to call a Speech, but what our people call a word\u2014just one sentence, six or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest\u2014\u2018I have awakened and my heart is with you.\u2019 That is the sort of thing they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was that?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I am awakened and my heart is with you.\u2019 And bow\u2014bow royally. But first we must get you black robes\u2014for black is your colour. Do you mind? And then they will disperse to their homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated. \u201cI am in your hands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ostrog was clearly of that opinion. He thought for a moment, turned to the curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants. Almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robe Graham had worn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it about his shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of a high-pitched bell. Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled the curtain aside and disappeared.<\/p>\n

For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to Ostrog\u2019s retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question and answer and of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrog reappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed the room in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Graham\u2019s arm and pointed to the mirror.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as we turned away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Graham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirrored Council House. For a moment he did not understand. And then he perceived that the flagstaff that had carried the white banner was bare.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you mean\u2014?\u201d he began.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook!\u201d and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.<\/p>\n

The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are clamorous,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ostrog kept his grip of Graham\u2019s arm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have raised the people,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have given them arms. For to-day at least their wishes must be law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through….<\/p>\n

On his way to the markets Graham had a transitory glance of a long narrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvas were carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medical purple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towards the markets….<\/p>\n

The roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. And, arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving of blue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatre near the public markets came into view down a long passage. The picture opened out. He perceived they were entering the great theatre of his first appearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-work of glare and blackness in his flight from the red police. This time he entered it along a gallery at a level high above the stage. The place was now brilliantly lit again. His eyes sought the gangway up which he had fled, but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; nor could he see anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and such like traces of the fight because of the density of the people. Except the stage the whole place was closely packed. Looking down the effect was a vast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned face regarding him. At his appearance with Ostrog the cheering died away, the singing died away, a common interest stilled and unified the disorder. It seemed as though every individual of those myriads was watching him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XIII. \u2014 THE END OF THE OLD ORDER<\/h2>\n

So far as Graham was able to judge, it was near midday when the white banner of the Council fell. But some hours had to elapse before it was possible to effect the formal capitulation, and so after he had spoken his \u201cWord\u201d he retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. The continuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left him inordinately fatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space he sat inert and passive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. He was roused by two medical attendants, come prepared with stimulants to sustain him through the next occasion. After he had taken their drugs and bathed by their advice in cold water, he felt a rapid return of interest and energy, and was presently able and willing to accompany Ostrog through several miles (as it seemed) of passages, lifts, and slides to the closing scene of the White Council\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n

The way ran deviously through a maze of buildings. They came at last to a passage that curved about, and showed broadening before him an oblong opening, clouds hot with sunset, and the ragged skyline of the ruinous Council House. A tumult of shouts came drifting up to him. In another moment they had come out high up on the brow of the cliff of torn buildings that overhung the wreckage. The vast area opened to Graham\u2019s eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had of it in the oval mirror.<\/p>\n

This rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the better part of a mile to its outer edge. It was gold lit on the left hand, catching the sunlight, and below and to the right clear and cold in the shadow. Above the shadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset. Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken masses of metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound of trumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; the smashed and blackened masses, the gaunt foundations and ruinous lumber of the fabric that had been destroyed by the Council\u2019s orders, skeletons of girders, Titanic masses of wall, forests of stout pillars. Amongst the sombre wreckage beneath, running water flashed and glistened, and far away across the space, out of the midst of a vague vast mass of buildings, there thrust the twisted end of a water-main, two hundred feet in the air, thunderously spouting a shining cascade. And everywhere great multitudes of people.<\/p>\n

Wherever there was space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed along the edges of the circle of ruins. The air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central space.<\/p>\n

The upper storeys of the Council House seemed deserted, not a human being was visible. Only the drooping banner of the surrender hung heavily against the light. The dead were within the Council House, or hidden by the swarming people, or carried away. Graham could see only a few neglected bodies in gaps and corners of the ruins, and amidst the flowing water.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill you let them see you, Sire?\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey are very anxious to see you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken verge of wall dropped sheer. He stood looking down, a lonely, tall, black figure against the sky.<\/p>\n

Very slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. And as they did so little bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting through the crowds towards the Council House. He saw little black heads become pink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweep across the space. It occurred to him that he should accord them some recognition. He held up his arm, then pointed to the Council House and dropped his hand. The voices below became unanimous, gathered volume, came up to him as multitudinous wavelets of cheering.<\/p>\n

The western sky was a pallid bluish green, and Jupiter shone high in the south, before the capitulation was accomplished. Above was a slow insensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below was hurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within those long passages and chambers….<\/p>\n

Guards in black lined the way that the Council would come, and as far as the eye could reach into the hazy blue twilight of the ruins, and swarming now at every possible point in the captured Council House and along the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent buildings, were innumerable people, and their voices, even when they were not cheering, were as the soughing of the sea upon a pebble beach. Ostrog had chosen a huge commanding pile of crushed and overthrown masonry, and on this a stage of timbers and metal girders was being hastily constructed. Its essential parts were complete, but humming and clangorous machinery still glared fitfully in the shadows beneath this temporary edifice.<\/p>\n

The stage had a small higher portion on which Graham stood with Ostrog and Lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minor officers. A broader lower stage surrounded this quarter-deck, and on this were the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the little green weapons whose very names Graham still did not know. Those standing about him perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarming people in the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the White Council House, whence the Trustees would presently come, and to the gaunt cliffs of ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. The voices of the crowd swelled to a deafening tumult.<\/p>\n

He saw the Councillors first afar off in the glare of one of the temporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figures in a black archway. In the Council House they had been in darkness. He watched them approaching, drawing nearer past first this blazing electric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd over whom their power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched along beside them. As they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, white, and anxious. He saw them blinking up through the glare about him and Ostrog. He contrasted their strange cold looks in the Hall of Atlas…. Presently he could recognise several of them; the man who had rapped the table at Howard, a burly man with a red beard, and one delicate-featured, short, dark man with a peculiarly long skull. He noted that two were whispering together and looking behind him at Ostrog. Next there came a tall, dark and handsome man, walking downcast. Abruptly he glanced up, his eyes touched Graham for a moment, and passed beyond him to Ostrog. The way that had been made for them was so contrived that they had to march past and curve about before they came to the sloping path of planks that ascended to the stage where their surrender was to be made.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Master, the Master! God and the Master,\u201d shouted the people. \u201cTo hell with the Council!\u201d Graham looked at their multitudes, receding beyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him, white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little group of White Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet stars overhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Could that be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred years gone by\u2014and this as well?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XIV. \u2014 FROM THE CROW\u2019S NEST<\/h2>\n

And so after strange delays and through an avenue of doubt and battle, this man from the nineteenth century came at last to his position at the head of that complex world.<\/p>\n

At first when he rose from the long deep sleep that followed his rescue and the surrender of the Council, he did not recognise his surroundings. By an effort he gained a clue in his mind, and all that had happened came back to him, at first with a quality of insincerity like a story heard, like something read out of a book. And even before his memories were clear, the exultation of his escape, the wonder of his prominence were back in his mind. He was owner of the world; Master of the Earth. This new great age was in the completest sense his. He no longer hoped to discover his experiences a dream; he became anxious now to convince himself that they were real.<\/p>\n

An obsequious valet assisted him to dress under the direction of a dignified chief attendant, a little man whose face proclaimed him Japanese, albeit he spoke English like an Englishman. From the latter he learnt something of the state of affairs. Already the revolution was an accepted fact; already business was being resumed throughout the city. Abroad the downfall of the Council had been received for the most part with delight. Nowhere was the Council popular, and the thousand cities of Western America, after two hundred years still jealous of New York, London, and the East, had risen almost unanimously two days before at the news of Graham\u2019s imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest of the world hung in suspense.<\/p>\n

While he was breaking his fast, the sound of a telephone bell jetted from a corner, and his chief attendant called his attention to the voice of Ostrog making polite enquiries. Graham interrupted his refreshment to reply. Very shortly Lincoln arrived, and Graham at once expressed a strong desire to talk to people and to be shown more of the new life that was opening before him. Lincoln informed him that in three hours\u2019 time a representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham\u2019s desire to traverse the ways of the city was, however, at present impossible, because of the enormous excitement of the people. It was, however, quite possible for him to take a bird\u2019s-eye view of the city from the crow\u2019s nest of the wind-vane keeper. To this accordingly Graham was conducted by his attendant. Lincoln; with a graceful compliment to the attendant, apologised for not accompanying them, on account of the present pressure of administrative work.<\/p>\n

Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow\u2019s nest, a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes\u2014minute they looked from above\u2014rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the specula, en rapport<\/i> with the wind-vane keeper\u2019s mirrors, in one of which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. His Japanese attendant ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking and answering questions.<\/p>\n

It was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of the wind warmed. The sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of London shone dazzling under the morning sun. The air was clear of smoke and haze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen.<\/p>\n

Save for the irregular oval of ruins about the House of the Council and the black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty city seen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, to his imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of the world. A multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and the huge openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times of peace the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of Europe and America, were also black with the victors. Across a narrow way of planking raised on trestles that crossed the ruins a crowd of workmen were busy restoring the connection between the cables and wires of the Council House and the rest of the city, preparatory to the transfer thither of Ostrog\u2019s headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.<\/p>\n

For the rest the luminous expanse was undisturbed. So vast was its serenity in comparison with the areas of disturbance, that presently Graham, looking beyond them, could almost forget the thousands of men lying out of sight in the artificial glare within the quasi-subterranean labyrinth, dead or dying of the overnight wounds, forget the improvised wards with the hosts of surgeons, nurses, and bearers feverishly busy, forget, indeed, all the wonder, consternation and novelty under the electric lights. Down there in the hidden ways of the anthill he knew that the revolution triumphed, that black everywhere carried the day, black favours, black banners, black festoons across the streets. And out here, under the fresh sunlight, beyond the crater of the fight, as if nothing had happened to the earth, the forest of wind vanes that had grown from one or two while the Council had ruled, roared peacefully upon their incessant duty.<\/p>\n

Far away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the Surrey Hills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contours of Highgate and Muswell Hill were similarly jagged. And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farm houses had nestled among their trees, wind-wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like them vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. And underneath these wandered the countless flocks and herds of the British Food Trust, his property, with their lonely guards and keepers.<\/p>\n

Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes below. St. Paul\u2019s he knew survived, and many of the old buildings in Westminster, embedded out of sight, arched over and covered in among the giant growths of this great age. The Thames, too, made no fall and gleam of silver to break the wilderness of the city; the thirsty water mains drank up every drop of its waters before they reached the walls. Its bed and estuary, scoured and sunken, was now a canal of sea water, and a race of grimy bargemen brought the heavy materials of trade from the Pool thereby beneath the very feet of the workers. Faint and dim in the eastward between earth and sky hung the clustering masts of the colossal shipping in the Pool. For all the heavy traffic, for which there was no need of haste, came in gigantic sailing ships from the ends of the earth, and the heavy goods for which there was urgency in mechanical ships of a smaller swifter sort.<\/p>\n

And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines\u2014the roads, stippled with moving grey specks. On the first occasion that offered he was determined to go out and see these roads. That would come after the flying ship he was presently to try. His attendant officer described them as a pair of gently curving surfaces a hundred yards wide, each one for the traffic going in one direction, and made of a substance called Eadhamite\u2014an artificial substance, so far as he could gather, resembling toughened glass. Along this shot a strange traffic of narrow rubber-shod vehicles, great single wheels, two and four wheeled vehicles, sweeping along at velocities of from one to six miles a minute. Railroads had vanished; a few embankments remained as rust-crowned trenches here and there. Some few formed the cores of Eadhamite ways.<\/p>\n

Among the first things to strike his attention had been the great fleets of advertisement balloons and kites that receded in irregular vistas northward and southward along the lines of the aeroplane journeys. No great aeroplanes were to be seen. Their passages had ceased, and only one little-seeming monoplane circled high in the blue distance above the Surrey Hills, an unimpressive soaring speck.<\/p>\n

A thing Graham had already learnt, and which he found very hard to imagine, was that nearly all the towns in the country, and almost all the villages, had disappeared. Here and there only, he understood, some gigantic hotel-like edifice stood amid square miles of some single cultivation and preserved the name of a town\u2014as Bournemouth, Wareham, or Swanage. Yet the officer had speedily convinced him how inevitable such a change had been. The old order had dotted the country with farmhouses, and every two or three miles was the ruling landlord\u2019s estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer\u2019s shop and church\u2014the village. Every eight miles or so was the country town, where lawyer, corn merchant, wool-stapler, saddler, veterinary surgeon, doctor, draper, milliner and so forth lived. Every eight miles\u2014simply because that eight mile marketing journey, four there and back, was as much as was comfortable for the farmer. But directly the railways came into play, and after them the light railways, and all the swift new motor cars that had replaced waggons and horses, and so soon as the high roads began to be made of wood, and rubber, and Eadhamite, and all sorts of elastic durable substances\u2014the necessity of having such frequent market towns disappeared. And the big towns grew. They drew the worker with the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the employer with their suggestion of an infinite ocean of labour.<\/p>\n

And as the standard of comfort rose, as the complexity of the mechanism of living increased, life in the country had become more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. The disappearance of vicar and squire, the extinction of the general practitioner by the city specialist; had robbed the village of its last touch of culture. After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book, schoolmaster, and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage. In the country were neither means of being clothed nor fed (according to the refined conceptions of the time), no efficient doctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits.<\/p>\n

Moreover, mechanical appliances in agriculture made one engineer the equivalent of thirty labourers. So, inverting the condition of the city clerk in the days when London was scarce inhabitable because of the coaly foulness of its air, the labourers now came to the city and its life and delights at night to leave it again in the morning. The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development. First had come the nomad, the hunter, then had followed the agriculturist of the agricultural state, whose towns and cities and ports were but the headquarters and markets of the countryside. And now, logical consequence of an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation of men.<\/p>\n

Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to contemporary men, strained Graham\u2019s imagination to picture. And when he glanced \u201cover beyond there\u201d at the strange things that existed on the Continent, it failed him altogether.<\/p>\n

He had a vision of city beyond city; cities on great plains, cities beside great rivers, vast cities along the sea margin, cities girdled by snowy mountains. Over a great part of the earth the English tongue was spoken; taken together with its Spanish American and Hindoo and Negro and \u201cPidgin\u201d dialects, it was the everyday-language of two-thirds of humanity. On the Continent, save as remote and curious survivals, three other languages alone held sway\u2014German, which reached to Antioch and Genoa and jostled Spanish-English at Cadiz; a Gallicised Russian which met the Indian English in Persia and Kurdistan and the \u201cPidgin\u201d English in Pekin; and French still clear and brilliant, the language of lucidity, which shared the Mediterranean with the Indian English and German and reached through a negro dialect to the Congo.<\/p>\n

And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered \u201cblack belt\u201d territories of the tropics, the same cosmopolitan social organisation prevailed, and everywhere from Pole to Equator his property and his responsibilities extended. The whole world was civilised; the whole world dwelt in cities; the whole world was his property….<\/p>\n

Out of the dim south-west, glittering and strange, voluptuous, and in some way terrible, shone those Pleasure Cities of which the kinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the street had spoken. Strange places reminiscent of the legendary Sybaris, cities of art and beauty, mercenary art and mercenary beauty, sterile wonderful cities of motion and music, whither repaired all who profited by the fierce, inglorious, economic struggle that went on in the glaring labyrinth below.<\/p>\n

Fierce he knew it was. How fierce he could judge from the fact that these latter-day people referred back to the England of the nineteenth century as the figure of an idyllic easy-going life. He turned his eyes to the scene immediately before him again, trying to conceive the big factories of that intricate maze….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XV. \u2014 PROMINENT PEOPLE<\/h2>\n

The state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have astonished Graham had he entered them fresh from his nineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to the scale of the new time. He came out through one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a plateau of landing at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, with men and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seen, ascending and descending. From this position he looked down a vista of subtle and varied ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned by bridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminating far off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens.<\/p>\n

Glancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending galleries with faces looking down upon him. The air was full of the babble of innumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay and exhilarating music whose source he did not discover.<\/p>\n

The central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortably crowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands. They were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifully as the women, for the sobering influence of the Puritan conception of dignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. The hair of the men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled in a manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished from the earth. Frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed Rossetti abounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to Graham under the mysterious title of an \u201camorist,\u201d wore his hair in two becoming plaits ` la<\/i> Marguerite. The pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizens of Chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. There was little uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. The more shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here were puffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. The fashions of the days of Leo the Tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, but the aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. Masculine embonpoint, which, in Victorian times, would have been subjected to the buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-legged tight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth of dignity and drooping folds. Graceful slenderness abounded also. To Graham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not only did these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether too expressive in their vividly expressive faces. They gesticulated, they expressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressed the emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them with astonishing frankness. Even at the first glance it was evident that women were in a great majority.<\/p>\n

The ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearing and manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected a classical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashion of the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders as Graham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or belt at the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. The delightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by the passage of two centuries.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he saw men as Raphael\u2019s cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich person\u2019s education. The Master\u2019s entry was greeted with a sort of tittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished manners by not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, as he descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle.<\/p>\n

He had already learnt from Lincoln that these were the leaders of existing London society; almost every person there that night was either a powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official. Many had returned from the European Pleasure Cities expressly to welcome him. The aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a part in the overthrow of the Council only second to Graham\u2019s, were very prominent, and so, too, was the Wind Vane Control. Amongst others there were several of the more prominent officers of the Food Department; the controller of the European Piggeries had a particularly melancholy and interesting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. A bishop in full canonicals passed athwart Graham\u2019s vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is that?\u201d he asked almost involuntarily.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bishop of London,\u201d said Lincoln.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo\u2014the other, I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPoet Laureate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou still\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe doesn\u2019t make poetry, of course. He\u2019s a cousin of Wotton\u2014one of the Councillors. But he\u2019s one of the Red Rose Royalists\u2014a delightful club\u2014and they keep up the tradition of these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsano told me there was a King.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe King doesn\u2019t belong. They had to expel him. It\u2019s the Stuart blood, I suppose; but really\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToo much?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFar too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham did not quite follow all this, but it seemed part of the general inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his first introduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailed even in this assembly, that only to a small proportion of the guests, to an inner group, did Lincoln consider it appropriate to introduce him. This first introduction was the Master Aeronaut, a man whose sun-tanned face contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Just at present his critical defection from the Council made him a very important person indeed.<\/p>\n

His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham\u2019s ideas, with the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master\u2019s health. His manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. He made it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff \u201caerial dog\u201d\u2014he used that phrase\u2014that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn\u2019t profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing. He made a curt bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness, and passed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am glad to see that type endures,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhonographs and kinematographs,\u201d said Lincoln, a little spitefully. \u201cHe has studied from the life.\u201d Graham glanced at the burly form again. It was oddly reminiscent.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a matter of fact we bought him,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cPartly. And partly he was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public Schools. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, he beamed down upon Graham through pince-nez<\/i> of a Victorian pattern, and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand. Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman\u2019s functions, and asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General seemed quietly amused at the Master\u2019s fundamental bluntness. He was a little vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; it was done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous London Municipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progress since the Victorian times. \u201cWe have conquered Cram,\u201d he said, \u201ccompletely conquered Cram\u2014there is not an examination left in the world. Aren\u2019t you glad?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you get the work done?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe make it attractive\u2014as attractive as possible. And if it does not attract then\u2014we let it go. We cover an immense field.\u201d<\/p>\n

He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. \u201cThere is a certain type of girl, for example,\u201d said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of his usefulness, \u201cwith a perfect passion for severe studies\u2014when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. At this moment,\u201d he said with a Napoleonic touch, \u201cnearly five hundred phonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influence exercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt, and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how your little germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days has quite passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout the public elementary schools,\u201d said Graham. \u201cDo you control them?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Surveyor-General did, \u201centirely.\u201d Now, Graham, in his later democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning quickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. The Surveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man\u2019s words. \u201cWe try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple principles\u2014obedience\u2014industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou teach them very little?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them. Even as it is\u2014there are troubles\u2014agitations. Where the labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic dreams\u2014anarchy even! Agitators will<\/i> get to work among them. I take it\u2014I have always taken it\u2014that my foremost duty is to fight against popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham thoughtfully. \u201cBut there are a great many things I want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham\u2019s face throughout the conversation, intervened. \u201cThere are others,\u201d he said in an undertone.<\/p>\n

The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. \u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, \u201cyou would like to know some of these ladies?\u201d<\/p>\n

The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the \u201cdear old days,\u201d as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. As she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demanded reciprocity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have tried,\u201d she said, \u201ccountless times\u2014to imagine those old romantic days. And to you\u2014they are memories. How strange and crowded the world must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the past, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud and all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black coats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the streets. And suddenly, you have come into this!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInto this,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of your life\u2014out of all that was familiar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old life was not a happy one,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI do not regret that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed encouragingly. \u201cNo?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIt was a little life\u2014and unmeaning. But this\u2014We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I see\u2014although in this world I am barely four days old\u2014looking back on my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time\u2014the mere beginning of this new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to understand how little I know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may ask me what you like,\u201d she said, smiling at him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen tell me who these people are. I\u2019m still very much in the dark about them. It\u2019s puzzling. Are there any Generals?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMen in hats and feathers?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat? He\u2019s a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managing director of the Antibilious Pill Department. I have heard that his workers sometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours. Fancy a myriad myriad!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud,\u201d said Graham. \u201cPills! What a wonderful time it is! That man in purple?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. He is really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of the Medical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, wear that purple. But, of course, people who are paid by fees for doing<\/i> something\u2014\u201d She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre any of your great artists or authors here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo authors. They are mostly such queer people\u2014and so preoccupied about themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn\u2019t it? But I think Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCapillotomist,\u201d said Graham. \u201cAh! I remember. An artist! Why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to cultivate him,\u201d she said apologetically. \u201cOur heads are in his hands.\u201d She smiled.<\/p>\n

Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was expressive. \u201cHave the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?\u201d he said. \u201cWho are your great painters?\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. \u201cFor a moment,\u201d she said, \u201cI thought you meant\u2014\u201d She laughed again. \u201cYou mean, of course, those good men you used to think so much of because they could cover great spaces of canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put the things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. We haven\u2019t any. People grew tired of that sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what did you think I meant?\u201d<\/p>\n

She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. \u201cAnd here,\u201d and she indicated her eyelid.<\/p>\n

Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picture he had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the widow flashed across his mind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that he was visible to a great number of interested people. \u201cI see,\u201d he remarked inadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her fascinating facility. He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupied themselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. \u201cWho is that talking with the lady in saffron?\u201d he asked, avoiding her eyes.<\/p>\n

The person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of the American theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. His face reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking looking man was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deep impression, but afterwards it recurred;\u2014the Black Labour Master? The little lady in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charming little woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop of London. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage\u2014hitherto there had been a rule of clerical monogamy\u2014\u201cneither a natural nor an expedient condition of things. Why should the natural development of the affections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd, bye the bye,\u201d she added, \u201care you an Anglican?\u201d Graham was on the verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a \u201csubsidiary wife,\u201d apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln\u2019s return broke off this very suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle to where a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume (as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities he passed to other presentations.<\/p>\n

In a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organise themselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gathering had raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile and satirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of courteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skilfully modulated voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a time forgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to the intoxication of the position that was conceded him, his manner became more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, the black robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. After all, this was a brilliant interesting world.<\/p>\n

He looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and looking down upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face of the girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatre after his escape from the Council. And she was watching him.<\/p>\n

For the moment he did not remember when he had seen her, and then came a vague memory of the stirring emotions of their first encounter. But the dancing web of melody about him kept the air of that great marching song from his memory.<\/p>\n

The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.<\/p>\n

Yet, unaccountably, a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew to dissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by some half forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping from him amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these ladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no longer gave vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances that he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wandered for another sight of the girl of the first revolt.<\/p>\n

Where, precisely, had he seen her?…<\/p>\n

Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite\u2014the subject was his choice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personal devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had already found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed than charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer melody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down to him.<\/p>\n

Ah! Now he remembered!<\/p>\n

He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an oeil de boeuf<\/i> through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses of cable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the public ways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. He perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platforms and a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could not account for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways a huge crowd must be watching this place in which their Master amused himself.<\/p>\n

Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this gathering reasserted itself, the motif<\/i> of the marching song, once it had begun, lingered in his mind.<\/p>\n

The bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries of Eadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again. She was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her first before she saw him. She was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her dark hair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold light from the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face.<\/p>\n

The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. \u201cWould you care to know that girl, Sire?\u201d she asked boldly. \u201cShe is Helen Wotton\u2014a niece of Ostrog\u2019s. She knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed lady had fluttered away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember you quite well,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou were in that little room. When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before I walked across the Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face was steady. \u201cIt was wonderful,\u201d she said, hesitated, and spoke with a sudden effort. \u201cAll those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless people did die for you that night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard her words.<\/p>\n

Lincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way through the press towards them. She saw him and turned to Graham strangely eager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. \u201cSire,\u201d she said quickly, \u201cI cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very unhappy; they are oppressed\u2014they are misgoverned. Do not forget the people, who faced death\u2014death that you might live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know nothing\u2014\u201d began Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cannot tell you now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln\u2019s face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou find the new world amusing, Sire?\u201d asked Lincoln, with smiling deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one comprehensive gesture. \u201cAt any rate, you find it changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham, \u201cchanged. And yet, after all, not so greatly changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWait till you are in the air,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cThe wind has fallen; even now an aeroplane awaits you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The girl\u2019s attitude awaited dismissal.<\/p>\n

Graham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found a warning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany Lincoln.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XVI. \u2014 THE MONOPLANE<\/h2>\n

The Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups of two each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages. They were named in order, Roehampton, Wimbledon Park, Streatham, Norwood, Blackheath, and Shooter\u2019s Hill. They were uniform structures rising high above the general roof surfaces. Each was about four thousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum and iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended. The upper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions\u2014the starting carriers\u2014that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric.<\/p>\n

Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompanied by Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who was busy with his administrative concerns. A strong guard of the Wind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, and they cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passage to the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowd gathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he could hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and children in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He was struck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poor of the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediately surrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him that some had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared a passage for him with difficulty.<\/p>\n

He found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on the westward stage. Seen close this mechanism was no longer small. As it lay on its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its aluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Its lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost like the nerves of a bee\u2019s wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. The chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft the middle. The passenger\u2019s chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novel experiences, and desired that it should be left open. The aeronaut sat behind a glass that sheltered his face. The passenger could secure himself firmly in his seat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move along by means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the central engine that projected to the propeller at the stern.<\/p>\n

The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite of attendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Asano stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand. He seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish.<\/p>\n

The engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally past Graham\u2019s eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. He gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. He felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic impulses\u2014one, two, three, pause; one, two, three\u2014which the engineer controlled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration that continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Looking sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw\u2014a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognised the Council House and the Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straight down between his feet.<\/p>\n

For a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense of insecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift his eyes. Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots. These things seemed to be falling away from him. For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. He set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed.<\/p>\n

He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky. Throb, throb, throb\u2014beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb\u2014beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return\u2014perhaps a little artificially. \u201cA little strange at first,\u201d he shouted before he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He stared over the aeronaut\u2019s head to where a rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. For a little while he could not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb\u2014beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose\u2014! He made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he went steadily, higher and higher into the clear air.<\/p>\n

Once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily pleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found the pulsating movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-west breeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on to broad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a good sailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked up and saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye came cautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white birds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Then going lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of the Wind-Vane keeper\u2019s crow\u2019s nest shining golden in the sunlight and growing smaller every moment. As his eye fell with more confidence now, there came a blue line of hills, and then London, already to leeward, an intricate space of roofing. Its near edge came sharp and clear, and banished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. For the boundary of London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a complex decorative fagade.<\/p>\n

That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it here but a waste of ruins, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of winter greens. The latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. But for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time.<\/p>\n

The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. That winter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foeman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the first prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled. And when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw below him the vegetable fields of the Thames valley\u2014innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.<\/p>\n

His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. He found himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring to shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and he shouted. They curved about towards the south. They drove with a slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short, sharp ascent and then a long downward glide that was very swift and pleasing. During these downward glides the propeller was inactive altogether. These ascents gave Graham a glorious sense of successful effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience. He wanted never to leave the upper air again.<\/p>\n

For a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northward beneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. He was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villages had gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had known the thing was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out familiar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that the Thames valley was left behind. Soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he recognised as the Guildford Hog\u2019s Back, because of the familiar outline of the gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the town that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. And from that he made out other points, Leith Hill, the sandy wastes of Aldershot, and so forth. Save where the broad Eadhamite Portsmouth Road, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the wey was choked with thickets.<\/p>\n

The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey haze permitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest of the city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motion before the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dotted with the sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mounted shepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of the monoplane came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, and Leith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather was speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these swept behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that were swallowed up in haze.<\/p>\n

And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewit wailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth Landing Stage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment there came into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little white cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent in a moment, and in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, and then beneath him spread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller and smaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line\u2014sunlit and pleasant\u2014the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the Downland of England was speeding by below.<\/p>\n

In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hung there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circled about to the north. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower still standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point Colossus. And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about \u201ctrouble in the under-ways,\u201d that Graham did not heed. But he marked the minarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Paris still kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. \u201cWhat?\u201d said Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. \u201cLondon aeroplane, Sire,\u201d bawled the aeronaut, pointing.<\/p>\n

They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb\u2014beat, of the monoplane\u2019s flight, that had seemed so potent, and so swift, suddenly appeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great the monster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneath them, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucent wings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows and rows of wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behind wind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale along a ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of the whirling wind screw, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted in the sight. And in an instant the thing had passed.<\/p>\n

It rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of its flight. It fell and grew smaller. Scarcely had they moved, as it seemed, before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. This was the aeroplane that went to and fro between London and Paris. In fair weather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day.<\/p>\n

They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham\u2019s enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cLand,\u201d called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of the air over the wind-screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot yet,\u201d bawled Graham, laughing. \u201cNot land yet. I want to learn more of this machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI meant\u2014\u201d said the aeronaut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to learn more of this machine,\u201d repeated Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m coming to you,\u201d he said, and had flung himself free of his chair and taken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for a moment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. Another step and he was clinging close to the aeronaut. He felt a weight on his shoulder, the pressure of the air. His hat was a whirling speck behind. The wind came in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers past his cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting of the centres of gravity and pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to have these things explained,\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat do you do when you move that engine forward?\u201d<\/p>\n

The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, \u201cThey are complex, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mind,\u201d shouted Graham. \u201cI don\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a moment\u2019s pause. \u201cAeronautics is the secret\u2014the privilege\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. But I\u2019m the Master, and I mean to know.\u201d He laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.<\/p>\n

The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham\u2019s face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the west. The two men looked into each other\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSire, there are rules\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot where I am concerned,\u201d said Graham, \u201cYou seem to forget.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aeronaut scrutinised his face \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not forget, Sire. But in all the earth\u2014no man who is not a sworn aeronaut\u2014has ever a chance. They come as passengers\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard something of the sort. But I\u2019m not going to argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSire,\u201d said the aeronaut, \u201cthe rules\u2014if I break the rules\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham waved the penalties aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen if you will watch me\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its nose again for an ascent. \u201cThat\u2019s not my game. I want to do it myself. Do it myself if I smash for it! No! I will. See I am going to clamber by this\u2014to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my own accord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay for my sleep. Of all other things\u2014. In my past it was my dream to fly. Now\u2014keep your balance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA dozen spies are watching me, Sire!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s temper was at end. Perhaps he chose it should be. He swore. He swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and the monoplane swayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I Master of the earth?\u201d he said. \u201cOr is your Society? Now. Take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes\u2014so. And now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSire,\u201d said the aeronaut.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will protect me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly to your advantage, this journey,\u201d he said with a loud laugh\u2014for the air was like strong wine\u2014\u201cto teach me quickly and well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBack, Sire! Back!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBack\u2014right. One\u2014two\u2014three\u2014good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this is living!\u201d<\/p>\n

And now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Now it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. In one of these descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park of balloons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by a sudden recovery of dexterity. The extraordinary swiftness and smoothness of the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon his constitution, threw Graham into a careless fury.<\/p>\n

But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles. As he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. \u201cWhat was that?\u201d he asked. \u201cI did not see.\u201d<\/p>\n

The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping down. When the monoplane was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied, \u201cThat,\u201d and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, \u201cwas a swan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI never saw it,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his forehead.<\/p>\n

They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger\u2019s place out of the lash of the wind. And then came a swift rush down, with the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold.<\/p>\n

Soon men could be seen as little specks. He heard a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw that the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his people rejoicing over his safe return. A black mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XVII. \u2014 THREE DAYS<\/h2>\n

Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. He seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the extraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying. Graham was in a mood of enthusiasm. \u201cI must learn to fly,\u201d he cried. \u201cI must master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without this opportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will find our new times full of wonderful experiences,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cI do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that may seem novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the present,\u201d said Graham, \u201cflying holds me. Let me learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to one\u2019s learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is, I believe,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cBut for you\u2014! If you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a while. \u201cAnd as for affairs,\u201d he asked abruptly. \u201cHow are things going on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln waved affairs aside. \u201cOstrog will tell you that to-morrow,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itself all over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course; but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it, forthwith\u2014before I sleep?\u201d said Graham, pacing. \u201cThen I could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again….\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be possible,\u201d said Lincoln thoughtfully. \u201cQuite possible. Indeed, it shall be done.\u201d He laughed. \u201cI came prepared to suggest amusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to the aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in the Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts will be able to come. You don\u2019t think that after you have dined you might prefer\u2014?\u201d He paused.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had prepared a show of dancers\u2014they have been brought from the Capri theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate ballets,\u201d said Graham, shortly. \u201cAlways did. That other\u2014. That\u2019s not what I want to see. We had dancers in the old days. For the matter of that, they had them in ancient Egypt. But flying\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue,\u201d said Lincoln. \u201cThough our dancers\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can afford to wait,\u201d said Graham; \u201cthey can afford to wait. I know. I\u2019m not a Latin. There\u2019s questions I want to ask some expert\u2014about your machinery. I\u2019m keen. I want no distractions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the world to choose from,\u201d said Lincoln; \u201cwhatever you want is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned through the city streets to Graham\u2019s apartments. Far larger crowds had assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned Lincoln\u2019s answers to the endless questions Graham\u2019s aerial journey had suggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such a recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, already a little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the remainder of his public progress.<\/p>\n

Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched Graham\u2019s commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by a number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habit of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish for that indulgence, enquiries were made and some excellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him by pneumatic despatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity of counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating to Graham than any bayadhre. \u201cWe were savages,\u201d was his refrain, \u201cwe were savages. We were in the stone age\u2014compared with this…. And what else have you?\u201d<\/p>\n

There came also practical psychologists with some very interesting developments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell, Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, bore a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Several practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anesthetics in medicine; was employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. A real enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this direction. The feats of \u201ccalculating boys,\u201d the wonders, as Graham had been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long ago the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these expedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply to repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a suggestion of the post-hypnotic recollection of these points. In process mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual dexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conducted under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now systematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion, and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children of the labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long thoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street were hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyone desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced, habits removed, and desires eradicated\u2014a sort of psychic surgery was, in fact, in general use. Indignities, humbling experiences, were thus forgotten, widows would obliterate their previous husbands, angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. To graft desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositions with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a troupe of pale-faced children in blue.<\/p>\n

Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many painful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln\u2019s assurances he held to the old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of his personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderful experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain absolutely himself.<\/p>\n

The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such interests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the glorious entertainment of flying. On the third, he soared across middle France, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia of his first awakening. And whenever he was not in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strange things they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an hour or so. He found his interest in his contemporaries becoming personal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly for unfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, any discordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status and manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon that strangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it, disappeared; how soon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and see the old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found himself particularly amused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the European Piggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of a latter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And after that, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved to suggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but this Graham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists in his aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London; he found a delight in topographical identifications that he would have missed abroad. \u201cHere\u2014or a hundred feet below here,\u201d he could say, \u201cI used to eat my midday cutlets during my London University days. Underneath here was Waterloo and the tiresome hunt for confusing trains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and stared up into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I should walk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky that was once a grey smoke canopy, I circle in a monoplane.\u201d<\/p>\n

During those three days Graham was so occupied with these distractions that the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters had but a small share of his attention. Those about him told him little. Daily came Ostrog, the Boss, his Grand Vizier, his mayor of the palace, to report in vague terms the steady establishment of his rule; \u201ca little trouble\u201d soon to be settled in this city, \u201ca slight disturbance\u201d in that. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he never learned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all the great emotions of the crow\u2019s nest slumbered in his mind.<\/p>\n

But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spite of his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girl Helen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper\u2019s gathering. The impression, she had made was a deep one, albeit the incessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from brooding upon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. He wondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences; the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more vivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her slender beauty came compellingly between him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But he did not see her again until three full days were past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XVIII. \u2014 GRAHAM REMEMBERS<\/h2>\n

She came upon him at last in a little gallery that ran from the Wind-Vane Offices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long and narrow, with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration that looked upon a court of palms. He came upon her suddenly in one of these recesses. She was seated. She turned her head at the sound of his footsteps and started at the sight of him. Every touch of colour vanished from her face. She rose instantly, made a step toward him as if to address him, and hesitated. He stopped and stood still, expectant. Then he perceived that a nervous tumult silenced her, perceived, too, that she must have sought speech with him to be waiting for him in this place.<\/p>\n

He felt a regal impulse to assist her. \u201cI have wanted to see you,\u201d he said. \u201cA few days ago you wanted to tell me something\u2014you wanted to tell me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked at him with troubled eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou said the people were unhappy?\u201d<\/p>\n

For a moment she was silent still.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt must have seemed strange to you,\u201d she said abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did. And yet\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an impulse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is all.\u201d<\/p>\n

She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort. \u201cYou forget,\u201d she said, drawing a deep breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you mean\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou forget the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked interrogative.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are. You do not know the things that are happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do not understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot clearly, perhaps. But\u2014tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She turned to him with sudden resolution. \u201cIt is so hard to explain. I have meant to, I have wanted to. And now\u2014I cannot. I am not ready with words. But about you\u2014there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep\u2014your awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least\u2014and to all the common people. You who lived and suffered and died, you who were a common citizen, wake again, live again, to find yourself Master almost of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaster of the earth,\u201d he said. \u201cSo they tell me. But try and imagine how little I know of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCities\u2014Trusts\u2014the Labour Department\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPrincipalities, powers, dominions\u2014the power and the glory. Yes, I have heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog, the Boss\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He paused.<\/p>\n

She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny. \u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

He smiled. \u201cTo take the responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what we have begun to fear.\u201d For a moment she said no more. \u201cNo,\u201d she said slowly. \u201cYou<\/i> will take the responsibility. You will take the responsibility. The people look to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She spoke softly. \u201cListen! For at least half the years of your sleep\u2014in every generation\u2014multitudes of people, in every generation greater multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake\u2014prayed<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham moved to speak and did not.<\/p>\n

She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. \u201cDo you know that you have been to myriads\u2014King Arthur, Barbarossa\u2014the King who would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose the imagination of the people\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you not heard our proverb, \u2018When the Sleeper wakes\u2019? While you lay insensible and motionless there\u2014thousands came. Thousands. Every first of the month you lay in state with a white robe upon you and the people filed by you. When I was a little girl I saw you like that, with your face white and calm.\u201d<\/p>\n

She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted wall before her. Her voice fell. \u201cWhen I was a little girl I used to look at your face…. It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is what we thought of you,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is how you seemed to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. \u201cIn the city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what you will do, full of strange incredible expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog\u2014no one\u2014can take that responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham looked at her in surprise, at her face lit with emotion. She seemed at first to have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herself by speaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think,\u201d she said, \u201cthat you who have lived that little life so far away in the past, you who have fallen into and risen out of this miracle of sleep\u2014do you think that the wonder and reverence and hope of half the world has gathered about you only that you may live another little life?… That you may shift the responsibility to any other man?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how great this kingship of mine is,\u201d he said haltingly. \u201cI know how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible\u2014dreamlike. Is it real, or is it only a great delusion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is real,\u201d she said; \u201cif you dare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion in the minds of men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you dare!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCountless men,\u201d she said, \u201cand while it is in their minds\u2014they will obey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And these others\u2014the Councillors, Ostrog. They are wiser, cooler, they know so much, every detail. And, indeed, what are these miseries of which you speak? What am I to know? Do you mean\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped blankly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am still hardly more than a girl,\u201d she said. \u201cBut to me the world seems full of wretchedness. The world has altered since your day, altered very strangely. I have prayed that I might see you and tell you these things. The world has changed. As if a canker had seized it\u2014and robbed life of\u2014everything worth having.\u201d<\/p>\n

She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. \u201cYour days were the days of freedom. Yes\u2014I have thought. I have been made to think, for my life\u2014has not been happy. Men are no longer free\u2014no greater, no better than the men of your time. That is not all. This city\u2014is a prison. Every city now is a prison. Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads, countless myriads, toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right? Is that to be\u2014for ever? Yes, far worse than in your time. All about us, beneath us, sorrow and pain. All the shallow delight of such life as you find about you, is separated by just a little from a life of wretchedness beyond any telling. Yes, the poor know it\u2014they know they suffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since\u2014! You owe your life to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Graham, slowly. \u201cYes. I owe my life to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou come,\u201d she said, \u201cfrom the days when this new tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny\u2014a tyranny. In your days the feudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had still to come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the free countryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard the stories out of the old books\u2014there was nobility! Common men led lives of love and faithfulness then\u2014they did a thousand things. And you\u2014you come from that time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not\u2014. But never mind. How is it now\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery\u2014unthanked, unhonoured, slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlavery!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say that human beings are chattels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWorse. That is what I want you to know, what I want you to see. I know you do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take you presently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women and children in pale blue canvas, with thin yellow faces and dull eyes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are the slaves\u2014your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour Department you own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Labour Department! In some way\u2014that is familiar. Ah! now I remember. I saw it when I was wandering about the city, after the lights returned, great fronts of buildings coloured pale blue. Do you really mean\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you. Nearly a third of our people wear it\u2014more assume it now every day. This Labour Department has grown imperceptibly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is<\/i> this Labour Department?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the old times, how did you manage with starving people?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was the workhouse\u2014which the parishes maintained.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkhouse! Yes\u2014there was something. In our history lessons. I remember now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew\u2014partly\u2014out of something\u2014you, perhaps, may remember it\u2014an emotional religious organisation called the Salvation Army\u2014that became a business company. In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people from workhouse rigours. There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now I come to think of it, it was one of the earliest properties your Trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation Army and reconstructed it as this. The idea in the first place was to organise the labour of starving homeless people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but that Department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and with neither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Department in the end\u2014or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means\u2014for the poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or night there is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers\u2014that is the first condition of the Department\u2019s incorporation\u2014and in return for a day\u2019s shelter the Department extracts a day\u2019s work, and then returns the visitor\u2019s proper clothing and sends him or her out again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved in your streets. That was bad. But they died\u2014men<\/i>. These people in blue\u2014. The proverb runs: \u2018Blue canvas once and ever.\u2019 The Department trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the supply. People come to it starving and helpless\u2014they eat and sleep for a night and day, they work for a day, and at the end of the day they go out again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so\u2014enough for a theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, or a dinner or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented by the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They come back again the next day or the day after\u2014brought back by the same incapacity that brought them first. At last their proper clothing wears out, or their rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must work for months to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number of children are born under the Department\u2019s care. The mother owes them a month thereafter\u2014the children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay two years\u2019 service. You may be sure these children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Department works.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd none are destitute in the city?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished destitution. It is engraved upon the Department\u2019s checks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they will not work?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers. There are stages of unpleasantness in the work\u2014stoppage of food\u2014and a man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking system in the Department\u2019s offices all over the world. Besides, who can leave the city poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And for insubordination there are the prisons\u2014dark and miserable\u2014out of sight below. There are prisons now for many things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a third of the people wear this blue canvas?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than a third. Toilers, living without pride or delight or hope, with the stories of Pleasure Cities ringing in their ears, mocking their shameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for the Euthanasy, the rich man\u2019s refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions, countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything but limitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwarted and they die. That is the state to which we have come.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a space Graham sat downcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there has been a revolution,\u201d he said. \u201cAll these things will be changed. Ostrog\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is our hope. That is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will not do it. He is a politician. To him it seems things must be like this. He does not mind. He takes it for granted. All the rich, all the influential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries for granted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease by their degradation. But you\u2014you who come from a happier age\u2014it is to you the people look. To you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at her face. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felt a rush of emotion. For a moment he forgot this city, he forgot the race, and all those vague remote voices, in the immediate humanity of her beauty.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what am I to do?\u201d he said with his eyes upon her.<\/p>\n

\u201cRule,\u201d she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone. \u201cRule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of men. For you might rule it\u2014you could rule it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It wants but a word\u2014but a word from you\u2014to bring them all together. Even the middle sort of people are restless\u2014unhappy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will not go back to their drudgery\u2014they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of\u2014he has awakened hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n

His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh considerations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey only want their leader,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could do what you would;\u2014the world is yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. \u201cThe old dreams, and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one man\u2014one man<\/i>\u2014?\u201d His voice sank and ceased.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot one man, but all men\u2014give them only a leader to speak the desire of their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.<\/p>\n

He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. \u201cI have not your faith,\u201d he said, \u201cI have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No\u2014let me speak. I want to do\u2014not right\u2014I have not the strength for that\u2014but something rather right than wrong. It will bring no millennium, but I am resolved now, that I will rule. What you have said has awakened me… You are right. Ostrog must know his place. And I will learn\u2014…. One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery shall end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you will rule?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Provided\u2014. There is one thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat you will help me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI<\/i>\u2014a girl!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?\u201d<\/p>\n

She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. \u201cNeed you ask whether I will help you?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the hour. Graham rose.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven now,\u201d he said, \u201cOstrog will be waiting.\u201d He hesitated, facing her. \u201cWhen I have asked him certain questions\u2014. There is much I do not know. It may be, that I will go to see with my own eyes the things of which you have spoken. And when I return\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again.\u201d<\/p>\n

They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned from her towards the Wind-Vane office.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XIX. \u2014 OSTROG\u2019S POINT OF VIEW<\/h2>\n

Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day\u2019s stewardship. On previous occasions he had passed over this ceremony as speedily as possible, in order to resume his aerial experiences, but now he began to ask quick short questions. He was very anxious to take up his empire forthwith. Ostrog brought flattering reports of the development of affairs abroad. In Paris and Berlin, Graham perceived that he was saying, there had been trouble, not organised resistance indeed, but insubordinate proceedings. \u201cAfter all these years,\u201d said Ostrog, when Graham pressed enquiries; \u201cthe Commune has lifted its head again. That is the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit.\u201d But order had been restored in these cities. Graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting. \u201cA little,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cIn one quarter only. But the Senegalese division of our African agricultural police\u2014the Consolidated African Companies have a very well drilled police\u2014was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in America. But things are very quiet in America. They are satisfied with the overthrow of the Council. For the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should you expect trouble?\u201d asked Graham abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of discontent\u2014social discontent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Labour Department?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are learning,\u201d said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. \u201cYes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow\u2014that and your awakening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. \u201cWe had to stir up their discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness\u2014all men equal\u2014all men happy\u2014no luxury that everyone may not share\u2014ideas that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive these ideals, impossible as they are\u2014in order to overthrow the Council. And now\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up\u2014remain surging. There was scarcely enough fighting…. We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread. We who sowed the seed even, have been astonished. In Paris, as I say\u2014we have had to call in a little external help.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is trouble. Multitudes will not go back to work. There is a general strike. Half the factories are empty and the people are swarming in the ways. They are talking of a Commune. Men in silk and satin have been insulted in the streets. The blue canvas is expecting all sorts of things from you…. Of course there is no need for you to trouble. We are setting the Babble Machines to work with counter suggestions in the cause of law and order. We must keep the grip tight; that is all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke with restraint.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven to the pitch of bringing a negro police,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are useful,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads\u2014such as our rabble has. The Council should have had them as police of the ways, and things might have been different. Of course, there is nothing to fear except rioting and wreckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to Capri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. We have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one of any ability is organising against us. They have no leaders\u2014only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. Mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are and bitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for a central figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. To be frank\u2014that may happen. But it won\u2019t interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make revolutions are past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose they are,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI suppose they are.\u201d He mused. \u201cThis world of yours has been full of surprises to me. In the old days we dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would be equal and happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. \u201cThe day of democracy is past,\u201d he said. \u201cPast for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Cregy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealth now is power as it never was power before\u2014it commands earth and sea and sky. All power is for those who can handle wealth. On your behalf…. You must accept facts, and these are facts. The world for the Crowd! The Crowd as Ruler! Even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. To-day it has only one believer\u2014a multiplex, silly one\u2014the man in the Crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre preoccupations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThe day of the common man is past. On the open countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. The earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity. They were tempered\u2014tempered. There were insurrections, duels, riots. The first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in with castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. But this is the second aristocracy. The real one. Those days of gunpowder and democracy were only an eddy in the stream. The common man now is a helpless unit. In these days we have this great machine of the city, and an organisation complex beyond his understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYet,\u201d said Graham, \u201cthere is something resists, something you are holding down\u2014something that stirs and presses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will see,\u201d said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these difficult questions aside. \u201cI have not roused the force to destroy myself\u2014trust me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

Ostrog stared.<\/p>\n

\u201cMust<\/i> the world go this way?\u201d said Graham with his emotions at the speaking point. \u201cMust it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cHopes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u2014but you are the chief tyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham shook his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d said Ostrog, \u201ctake the general question. It is the way that change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best\u2014the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut aristocracy! those people I met\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh! not those<\/i>!\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cBut for the most part they go to their death. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff will die out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPleasant extinction,\u201d said Graham. \u201cYet\u2014.\u201d He thought for an instant. \u201cThere is that other thing\u2014the Crowd, the great mass of poor men. Will that die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly than before.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t trouble about these things,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything will be settled in a few days now. The Crowd is a huge foolish beast. What if it does not die out? Even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven. I have no sympathy with servile men. You heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago. They were taught<\/i> that song. If you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you. They think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you. Just then they were ready to slaughter the Council. To-day\u2014they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the Council.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Graham. \u201cThey shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me\u2014in me\u2014they hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what was their hope? What is their hope? What right have they to hope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. The hope of mankind\u2014what is it? That some day the Over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty\u2014it\u2019s a fine duty too!\u2014is to die. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. \u201cI can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government\u2014their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils, and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery. You feel moved against our Pleasure Cities. I might have thought of that,\u2014had I not been busy. But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy\u2014they would be in sympathy with you. Even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities. But the Pleasure Cities are the excretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. They go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. If the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. And you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to what they are fit for.\u201d He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. \u201cYou will learn better. I know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelley and dreamt of Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within\u2014not without. It is each man\u2019s own affair. Suppose\u2014which is impossible\u2014that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand of us, what then? They will only fall to other masters. So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts of prey. It would mean but a few hundred years\u2019 delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured. The end will be the Over-man\u2014for all the mad protests of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will arise\u2014other masters. The end will be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Graham doggedly.<\/p>\n

For a moment he stood downcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I must see these things for myself,\u201d he said, suddenly assuming a tone of confident mastery. \u201cOnly by seeing can I understand. I must learn. That is what I want to tell you, Ostrog. I do not want to be King in a Pleasure City; that is not my pleasure. I have spent enough time with aeronautics\u2014and those other things. I must learn how people live now, how the common life has developed. Then I shall understand these things better. I must learn how common people live\u2014the labour people more especially\u2014how they work, marry, bear children, die\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get that from our realistic novelists,\u201d suggested Ostrog, suddenly preoccupied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want reality,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are difficulties,\u201d said Ostrog, and thought. \u201cOn the whole\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not expect\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had thought\u2014. And yet perhaps\u2014. You say you want to go through the ways of the city and see the common people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly he came to some conclusion. \u201cYou would need to go disguised,\u201d he said. \u201cThe city is intensely excited, and the discovery of your presence among them might create a fearful tumult. Still this wish of yours to go into this city\u2014this idea of yours\u2014. Yes, now I think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether\u2014. It can be contrived. If you would really find an interest in that! You are, of course, Master. You can go soon if you like. A disguise Asano will be able to manage. He would go with you. After all it is not a bad idea of yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will not want to consult me in any matter?\u201d asked Graham suddenly, struck by an odd suspicion.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any rate,\u201d said Ostrog, smiling. \u201cEven if we differ\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham glanced at him sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no fighting likely to happen soon?\u201d he asked abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been thinking about these negroes. I don\u2019t believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do not want any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Even about Paris\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. \u201cI am not bringing negroes to London,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cBut if\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIn that matter I am quite decided.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XX. \u2014 IN THE CITY WAYS<\/h2>\n

And that night, unknown and unsuspected, Graham, dressed in the costume of an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied by Asano in Labour Department canvas, surveyed the city through which he had wandered when it was veiled in darkness. But now he saw it lit and waking, a whirlpool of life. In spite of the surging and swaying of the forces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutterings of the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude, the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. He knew now something of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was not prepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrent of colour and vivid impressions that poured past him.<\/p>\n

This was his first real contact with the people of these latter days. He realised that all that had gone before, saving his glimpses of the public theatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had been a movement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that all his previous experiences had revolved immediately about the question of his own position. But here was the city at the busiest hours of night, the people to a large extent returned to their own immediate interests, the resumption of the real informal life, the common habits of the new time.<\/p>\n

They emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowded with the blue canvas liveries. This swarm Graham saw was a portion of a procession\u2014it was odd to see a procession parading the city seated<\/i>. They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. \u201cNo disarmament,\u201d said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed letters and with variant spelling, and \u201cWhy should we disarm?\u201d \u201cNo disarming.\u201d \u201cNo disarming.\u201d Banner after banner went by, a stream of banners flowing past, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt and a noisy band of strange instruments. \u201cThey all ought to be at work,\u201d said Asano. \u201cThey have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presently Asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gaped upon the occasional passage of dead bodies from hospital to a mortuary, the gleanings after death\u2019s harvest of the first revolt.<\/p>\n

That night few people were sleeping, everyone was abroad. A vast excitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded Graham; his mind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the cries and enigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yet only beginning. Everywhere festoons and banners of black and strange decorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. Everywhere he caught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterate class, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, in their commonplace intercourse. Everywhere this trouble of disarmament was in the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had no inkling during his seclusion in the Wind-Vane quarter. He perceived that as soon as he returned he must discuss this with Ostrog, this and the greater issues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusive way than he had so far done. Perpetually that night, even in the earlier hours of their wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest and revolt swamped his attention, to the exclusion of countless strange things he might otherwise have observed.<\/p>\n

This preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. Yet amidst so much that was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent, could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionary movement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtain from before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed his mind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times when she, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, for example, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, for the easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways rendered sporadic churches and chapels no longer necessary\u2014and his attention was vividly arrested by the fagade of one of the Christian sects.<\/p>\n

They were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the place leapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It was covered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, save where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented a realistic New Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to show that the popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across the lettering. Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writing and these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were \u201cSalvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right.\u201d \u201cPut your Money on your Maker.\u201d \u201cThe Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!\u201d \u201cWhat Christ would say to the Sleeper;\u2014Join the Up-to-date Saints!\u201d \u201cBe a Christian\u2014without hindrance to your present Occupation.\u201d \u201cAll the Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual.\u201d \u201cBrisk Blessings for Busy Business Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this is appalling!\u201d said Graham, as that deafening scream of mercantile piety towered above them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is appalling?\u201d asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis<\/i>! Surely the essence of religion is reverence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh that<\/i>!\u201d Asano looked at Graham. \u201cDoes it shock you?\u201d he said in the tone of one who makes a discovery. \u201cI suppose it would, of course. I had forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people simply haven\u2019t the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do.\u201d He smiled. \u201cIn the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the countryside. Though somewhere I\u2019ve read of Sunday afternoons that\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that<\/i>,\u201d said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white. \u201cThat is surely not the only\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn\u2019t tell<\/i> it doesn\u2019t pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high class sects with quieter ways\u2014costly incense and personal attentions and all that. These people are extremely popular and prosperous. They pay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council\u2014to you, I should say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention of a dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment the screaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this new interest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the idea that gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which had begun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned. The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extension of the system of cheques that had even in his previous life already practically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. The common traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world, was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink council cheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had several with him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in his set. They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparent fabric of silken flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them all sprawled a facsimile of Graham\u2019s signature, his first encounter with the curves and turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.<\/p>\n

Some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid to prevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again; a blurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES in enormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, but then came the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue. That interested him very greatly.<\/p>\n

By the energy and thought of Asano he was able to view this place from a little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. The building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the lights on the night of his solitary wandering.<\/p>\n

He had grown accustomed to vastness and great numbers of people, nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as he watched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersed with many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisation of the full significance of the feast of several thousand people came to him.<\/p>\n

It was his constant surprise to find that points that one might have expected to strike vividly at the very outset never occurred to him until some trivial detail suddenly shaped as a riddle and pointed to the obvious thing he had overlooked. He discovered only now that this continuity of the city, this exclusion of weather, these vast halls and ways, involved the disappearance of the household; that the typical Victorian \u201cHome,\u201d the little brick cell containing kitchen and scullery, living rooms and bedrooms, had, save for the ruins that diversified the countryside, vanished as surely as the wattle hut. But now he saw what had indeed been manifest from the first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer an aggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousand classes of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres, markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises, of which he chiefly was the owner. People had their sleeping rooms, with, it might be, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever the degree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as many people had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days, eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of public resort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city or doing business in their offices in the trading section.<\/p>\n

He perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developed from the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city had ever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent the merging of the separate households in his own generation was simply the still imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride, passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of the middle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separation of contiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, had been in rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previous life he had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming meals from home, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had given place to the open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women\u2019s clubs had had their beginning, and an immense development of reading rooms, lounges and libraries had witnessed to the growth of social confidence. These promises had by this time attained to their complete fulfilment. The locked and barred household had passed away.<\/p>\n

These people below him belonged, he learnt, to the lower middle class, the class just above the blue labourers, a class so accustomed in the Victorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and certainly quite at their ease with regard to one another.<\/p>\n

He noted a slight significant thing; the table, as far as he could see, was and remained delightfully neat, there was nothing to parallel the confusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment, the overturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have marked the stormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture was very different. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table was without a cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance having the texture and appearance of damask. He discerned that this damask substance was patterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements.<\/p>\n

In a sort of recess before each diner was a complex apparatus of porcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and by means of taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed this himself between the courses; he also washed his elegant white metal knife and fork and spoon as occasion required.<\/p>\n

Soup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were delivered by similar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically in tastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The diner stopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared at a little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. That turn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls, which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong he found among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details that it was only as he was leaving the place that he remarked the huge advertisement dioramas that marched majestically along the upper walls and proclaimed the most remarkable commodities.<\/p>\n

Beyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered the cause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile at which a payment was made.<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot, followed by a vast leathery voice. \u201cThe Master is sleeping peacefully,\u201d it vociferated. \u201cHe is in excellent health. He is going to devote the rest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautiful than ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes him beyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in Boss Ostrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chief minister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers\u2014all patronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of Boss Ostrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison above the Council House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld a foolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the General Intelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath, and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then it trumpeted \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d and broke out again.<\/p>\n

\u201cParis is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The black police hold every position of importance in the city. They fought with great bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors by the poet Kipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured and mutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral\u2014don\u2019t go rebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Lively brave fellows. Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of this city. Yah! Banderlog! Filth of the earth! Galloop, Galloop!\u201d<\/p>\n

The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the crowd. \u201cDamned niggers.\u201d A man began to harangue near them. \u201cIs this the Master\u2019s doing, brothers? Is this the Master\u2019s doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack police!\u201d said Graham. \u201cWhat is that? You don\u2019t mean\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Asano touched his arm and gave him a warning look, and forthwith another of these mechanisms screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrill voice. \u201cYahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha! Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by the black police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savage times come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!\u201d The nearer Babble Machine hooted stupendously, \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d drowned the end of the sentence, and proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the horrors of disorder. \u201cLaw and order must be maintained,\u201d said the nearer Babble Machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d began Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t ask questions here,\u201d said Asano, \u201cor you will be involved in an argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen let us go on,\u201d said Graham, \u201cfor I want to know more of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he and his companion pushed their way through the excited crowd that swarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived more clearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, great and small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections, piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each with its crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in blue canvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossiping mechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, through a number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had first hooted over Graham.<\/p>\n

This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interest in the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been much more savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms were discoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made the huge hive buzz with such phrases as \u201cLynched policemen,\u201d \u201cWomen burnt alive,\u201d \u201cFuzzy Wuzzy.\u201d \u201cBut does the Master allow such things?\u201d asked a man near him. \u201cIs this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule?\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule? For a long time after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines pursued him; \u201cGalloop, Galloop,\u201d \u201cYahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!\u201d Is this<\/i> the beginning of the Master\u2019s rule?<\/p>\n

Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely on the nature of the Parisian struggle. \u201cThis disarmament! What was their trouble? What does it all mean?\u201d Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure him that it was \u201call right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut these outrages!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot have an omelette,\u201d said Asano, \u201cwithout breaking eggs. It is only the rough people. Only in one part of the city. All the rest is all right. The Parisian labourers are the wildest in the world, except ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat! the Londoners?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut burning women alive!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA Commune!\u201d said Asano. \u201cThey would rob you of your property. They would do away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You are Master, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There is no need for black police here.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes\u2014French speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegiments?\u201d said Graham, \u201cI thought there was only one\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Asano, and glanced at him. \u201cThere is more than one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not think,\u201d he began and stopped abruptly. He went off at a tangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the most part, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, and Graham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned, in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixed Babble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenant of the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the great News Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, he demanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments. Asano was embarrassed. \u201cI never thought,\u201d he said. \u201cOstrog must have had them removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stared. \u201cHow was I to know?\u201d he exclaimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps he thought they would annoy you,\u201d said Asano.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey must be replaced directly I return,\u201d said Graham after an interval.<\/p>\n

He found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and the dining hall were not great central places, that such establishments were repeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and again during the night\u2019s expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, \u201cGalloop, Galloop!\u201d or the shrill \u201cYahaha, Yaha Yap!\u2014Hear a live paper yelp!\u201d of its chief rival.<\/p>\n

Repeated, too, everywhere, were such crhches<\/i> as the one he now entered. It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flung across the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle. To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of his solvent signature under Asano\u2019s direction. They were immediately attended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia of practising medical men. He perceived from this man\u2019s manner that his identity was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place without reserve.<\/p>\n

On either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as if to deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size and arrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upper portion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff that had enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in every case, a very young baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatus watched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office at the slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. A system of such crhches<\/i> had almost entirely replaced the hazardous adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called Graham\u2019s attention to the wet nurses, a vista of mechanical figures, with arms, shoulders, and breasts of astonishingly realistic modelling, articulation, and texture, but mere brass tripods below, and having in the place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be of interest to mothers.<\/p>\n

Of all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarred more upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of the little pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vague first movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was wholly repugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. His statistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian times the most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, that there human mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other hand this crhche<\/i> company, the International Crhche Syndicate, lost not one-half per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But Graham\u2019s prejudice was too strong even for those figures.<\/p>\n

Along one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon a young couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparency and laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. Graham\u2019s face must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceased and they looked abashed. But this little incident accentuated his sudden realisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways of the new age. He passed on to the crawling rooms and the Kindergarten, perplexed and distressed. He found the endless long playrooms were empty! the latter-day children at least still spent their nights in sleep. As they went through these, the little officer pointed out the nature of the toys, developments of those devised by that inspired sentimentalist Froebel. There were nurses here, but much was done by machines that sang and danced and dandled.<\/p>\n

Graham was still not clear upon many points. \u201cBut so many orphans,\u201d he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that they were not orphans.<\/p>\n

So soon as they had left the crhche<\/i> he began to speak of the horror the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. \u201cIs motherhood gone?\u201d he said. \u201cWas it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so unnatural\u2014abominable almost.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlong here we shall come to the dancing place,\u201d said Asano by way of reply. \u201cIt is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics\u2014except a few here and there. You will see the mothers\u2014most young women in London are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have one child\u2014a proof of animation. Few middle class people have more than one. With the Labour Department it is different. As for motherhood! They still take an immense pride in the children. They come here to look at them quite often.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen do you mean that the population of the World\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In spite of scientific discipline they are reckless\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

The air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approached obliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst, flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries and laughter. He saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricate flutter of gamboge pass triumphant across the picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will see,\u201d said Asano with a faint smile. \u201cThe world has changed. In a moment you will see the mothers of the new age. Come this way. We shall see those yonder again very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

They ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slower one. As they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near and full and splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they could distinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. They made a payment at a turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked the dancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere,\u201d said Asano, \u201care the fathers and mothers of the little ones you saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hall was not so richly decorated as that of the Atlas, but saving that, it was, for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. The beautiful white-limbed figures that supported the galleries reminded him once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemed to writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of the music that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floor was thick with dancing couples. \u201cLook at them,\u201d said the little officer, \u201csee how much they show of motherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

The gallery they stood upon ran along the upper edge of a huge screen that cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall that showed through broad arches the incessant onward rush of the city ways. In this outer hall was a great crowd of less brilliantly dressed people, as numerous almost as those who danced within, the great majority wearing the blue uniform of the Labour Department that was now so familiar to Graham. Too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they were yet unable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. Some of them even had cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags in the air. Some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions Graham did not understand. Once someone began whistling the refrain of the revolutionary song, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptly suppressed. The corner was dark and Graham could not see. He turned to the hall again. Above the caryatids were marble busts of men whom that age esteemed great moral emancipators and pioneers; for the most part their names were strange to Graham, though he recognised Grant Allen, Le Gallienne, Nietzsche, Shelley and Goodwin. Great black festoons and eloquent sentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partially defaced the upper end of the dancing place, and asserted that \u201cThe Festival of the Awakening\u201d was in progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cMyriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite apart from the labourers who refuse to go back,\u201d said Asano. \u201cThese people are always ready for holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at the dancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolen apart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath of scent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightly clad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the city permitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured cheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with elaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with eyes half closed in pleasure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat sort of people are these?\u201d he asked abruptly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkers\u2014prosperous workers. What you would have called the middle class. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses have vanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers of a hundred sorts. To-night is a holiday of course, and every dancing place in the city will be crowded, and every place of worship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2014the women?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same. There\u2019s a thousand forms of work for women now. But you had the beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most women are independent now. Most of these are married more or less\u2014there are a number of methods of contract\u2014and that gives them more money, and enables them to enjoy themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI see,\u201d said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs. \u201cAnd these are\u2014mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems. This, for instance, is a surprise. That news from Paris was a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a little while he spoke again:<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me\u2014habits based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Of course, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them\u2014all the essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother. Or went without. Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly, there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies. I see that! Only there was an ideal\u2014that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men\u2014to love her was a sort of worship\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped and repeated, \u201cA sort of worship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIdeals change,\u201d said the little man, \u201cas needs change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words. Graham\u2019s mind returned to the thing at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course I see the perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man\u2019s tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes\u2014his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black police\u2014and life is joyous.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looked at the dancers again. \u201cJoyous,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are weary moments,\u201d said the little officer, reflectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are young. There are few old people in this class in the work cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOld people\u2019s lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless they are rich to hire lovers and helpers. And we have an institution called Euthanasy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh! that Euthanasy!\u201d said Graham. \u201cThe easy death?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it well. People will pay the sum\u2014it is a costly thing\u2014long beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot left for me to understand,\u201d said Graham after a pause. \u201cYet I see the logic of it all. Our array of angry virtues and sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, the Puritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days man was armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies the difference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off\u2014for well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been asleep two hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore God,\u201d said Graham, suddenly, \u201cI would rather be a wounded sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the snow,\u201d said Asano, \u201cone might think differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am uncivilised,\u201d said Graham, not heeding him. \u201cThat is the trouble. I am primitive\u2014Paleolithic. Their<\/i> fountain of rage and fear and anger is sealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful and easy and delightful. You must bear with my nineteenth century shocks and disgusts. These people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. And while these dance, men are fighting\u2014men are dying in Paris to keep the world\u2014that they may dance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asano smiled faintly. \u201cFor that matter, men are dying in London,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There was a moment\u2019s silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere do these sleep?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbove and below\u2014an intricate warren.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd where do they work? This is\u2014the domestic life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will see little work to-night. Half the workers are out or under arms. Half these people are keeping holiday. But we will go to the work places if you wish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. \u201cI want to see the workers. I have seen enough of these,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. Presently they came to a transverse passage that brought a breath of fresher, colder air.<\/p>\n

Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to it, and turned to Graham with a smile. \u201cHere, Sire,\u201d he said, \u201cis something\u2014will be familiar to you at least\u2014and yet\u2014. But I will not tell you. Come!\u201d<\/p>\n

He led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. The reverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. They came into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather, and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though Graham could not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. In this was a ladder\u2014the first ladder he had seen since his awakening\u2014up which they went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.<\/p>\n

But at the top he understood, and recognised the metallic bars to which he clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul\u2019s. The dome rose but a little way above the general contour of the city, into the still twilight, and sloped away, shining greasily under a few distant lights, into a circumambient ditch of darkness.<\/p>\n

Out between the bars he looked upon the wind-clear northern sky and saw the starry constellations all unchanged. Capella hung in the west, Vega was rising, and the seven glittering points of the Great Bear swept overhead in their stately circle about the Pole.<\/p>\n

He saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. To the east and south the great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens, so that the glare about the Council House was hidden. To the southwest hung Orion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery of iron-work and interlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights. A bellowing and siren screaming that came from the flying stages warned the world that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained for a space gazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to the northward constellations.<\/p>\n

For a long time he was silent. \u201cThis,\u201d he said at last, smiling in the shadow, \u201cseems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St. Paul\u2019s and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!\u201d<\/p>\n

Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the great gambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into which opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude of bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and cable leaps. And here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violent advertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. \u201cSkin your eyes and slide,\u201d \u201cGewhoop, Bonanza,\u201d \u201cGollipers come and hark!\u201d<\/p>\n

The place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundly agitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the place was comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the last few days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In one huge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited, undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-faced women and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of an absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes, paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion of its shares by means of a lottery wheel.<\/p>\n

These business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readily passed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at its centre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teeth and nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something still remained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehement announcement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the height of a man, that \u201cWE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET\u2019R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET\u2019R.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s the proprietor?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what do they assure me?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhat do they assure me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you have assurance?\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham thought. \u201cInsurance?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes\u2014Insurance. I remember that was the older word. They are insuring your life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lions are being put on you. And further on other people are buying annuities. They do that on everybody who is at all prominent. Look there!\u201d<\/p>\n

A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. \u201cAnuetes on the Propraiet\u2019r\u2014x 5 pr. G.\u201d The people began to boo and shout at this, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past, clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush about a little doorway.<\/p>\n

Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. \u201cSeventeen per cent, per annum is their annuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent, if they could see you now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuities used to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course. This is probably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will get their money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some time they could move neither forward nor backward. Graham noticed what appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex. They seemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd, using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost. One curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, and then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as Chaldea that he had found favour in her eyes. And then a lank, grey-bearded man, perspiring copiously in a noble passion of self-help, blind to all earthly things save that glaring bait, thrust between them in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring \u201cX 5 pr. G.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get out of this,\u201d said Graham to Asano. \u201cThis is not what I came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These parasitic lunatics\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XXI. \u2014 THE UNDER-SIDE<\/h2>\n

From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures was done. On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from the North. In both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid. The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with receding lights. A string of black barges passed seaward, manned by blue-clad men. The road was a long and very broad and high tunnel, along which big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, the distinctive blue of the Labour Department was in abundance. The smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightness of the big pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struck Graham most vividly. One lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested his attention unduly. Abruptly the edge of the archway cut and blotted out the picture.<\/p>\n

Presently they left the way and descended by a lift and traversed a passage that sloped downward, and so came to a descending lift again. The appearance of things changed. Even the pretence of architectural ornament disappeared, the lights diminished in number and size, the architecture became more and more massive in proportion to the spaces as the factory quarters were reached. And in the dusty biscuit-making place of the potters, among the felspar mills, in the furnace rooms of the metal workers, among the incandescent lakes of crude Eadhamite, the blue canvas clothing was on man, woman and child.<\/p>\n

Many of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues of machinery, endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to the revolutionary dislocation, but wherever there was work it was being done by slow-moving workers in blue canvas. The only people not in blue canvas were the overlookers of the work-places and the orange-clad Labour Police. And fresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary vigours of the business quarter, Graham could note the pinched faces, the feeble muscles, and weary eyes of many of the latter-day workers. Such as he saw at work were noticeably inferior in physique to the few gaily dressed managers and forewomen who were directing their labours. The burly labourers of the old Victorian times had followed that dray horse and all such living force producers, to extinction; the place of his costly muscles was taken by some dexterous machine. The latter-day labourer, male as well as female, was essentially a machine-minder and feeder, a servant and attendant, or an artist under direction.<\/p>\n

The women, in comparison with those Graham remembered, were as a class distinctly plain and flat-chested. Two hundred years of emancipation from the moral restraints of Puritanical religion, two hundred years of city life, had done their work in eliminating the strain of feminine beauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliant physically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, had been and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a line of escape to the Pleasure City and its splendours and delights, and at last to the Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against such inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. In the young cities of Graham\u2019s former life, the newly aggregated labouring mass had been a diverse multitude, still stirred by the tradition of personal honour and a high morality; now it was differentiating into an instinct class, with a moral and physical difference of its own\u2014even with a dialect of its own.<\/p>\n

They penetrated downward, ever downward, towards the working places. Presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways, and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks of white lights between the transverse slits. The factories that were not working were sparsely lighted; to Graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was going on the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways.<\/p>\n

Beyond the blazing lakes of Eadhamite he came to the warren of the jewellers, and, with some difficulty and by using his signature, obtained admission to these galleries. They were high and dark, and rather cold. In the first a few men were making ornaments of gold filigree, each man at a little bench by himself, and with a little shaded light. The long vista of light patches, with the nimble fingers brightly lit and moving among the gleaming yellow coils, and the intent face like the face of a ghost, in each shadow, had the oddest effect.<\/p>\n

The work was beautifully executed, but without any strength of modelling or drawing, for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing of the changes on a geometrical motif<\/i>. These workers wore a peculiar white uniform without pockets or sleeves. They assumed this on coming to work, but at night they were stripped and examined before they left the premises of the Department. In spite of every precaution, the Labour policeman told them in a depressed tone, the Department was not infrequently robbed.<\/p>\n

Beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs of artificial ruby, and next these were men and women working together upon the slabs of copper net that formed the basis of cloisonni<\/i> tiles. Many of these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a disease caused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion. Asano apologised to Graham for this offensive sight, but excused himself on the score of the convenience of this route. \u201cThis is what I wanted to see,\u201d said Graham; \u201cthis is what I wanted to see,\u201d trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe might have done better with herself than that,\u201d said Asano.<\/p>\n

Graham made some indignant comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,\u201d said Asano. \u201cIn your days people could stand such crudities, they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years.\u201d<\/p>\n

They continued along one of the lower galleries of this cloisonni<\/i> factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. Looking over the parapet, Graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet more tremendous archings than any he had seen. Three barges, smothered in floury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar by a multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dust filled the place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glare yellow. The vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their feet, and rushed to and fro against a long stretch of white-washed wall. Every now and then one would stop to cough.<\/p>\n

A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to Graham\u2019s mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and lifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. The men worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police; their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went to and fro. And as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in the darkness began to sing.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop that!\u201d shouted one of the policemen, but the order was disobeyed, and first one and then all the white-stained men who were working there had taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly\u2014the Song of the Revolt. The feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the song, tramp, tramp, tramp. The policeman who had shouted glanced at his fellow, and Graham saw him shrug his shoulders. He made no further effort to stop the singing.<\/p>\n

And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham\u2019s mind a maze of memories, fluctuating pictures of swathed halls, and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust, of intricate machines, the racing threads of looms, the heavy beat of stamping machinery, the roar and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. Here was the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. Everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as Graham had never before seen, thick Titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity. And everywhere were pale features, lean limbs, disfigurement and degradation.<\/p>\n

Once and again, and again a third time, Graham heard the song of the revolt during his long, unpleasant research in these places, and once he saw a confused struggle down a passage, and learnt that a number of these serfs had seized their bread before their work was done. Graham was ascending towards the ways again when he saw a number of blue-clad children running down a transverse passage, and presently perceived the reason of their panic in a company of the Labour Police armed with clubs, trotting towards some unknown disturbance. And then came a remote disorder. But for the most part this remnant that worked, worked hopelessly. All the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above in the streets that night, calling for the Master, and valiantly and noisily keeping its arms.<\/p>\n

They emerged from these wanderings and stood blinking in the bright light of the middle passage of the platforms again. They became aware of the remote hooting and yelping of the machines of one of the General Intelligence Offices, and suddenly came men running, and along the platforms and about the ways everywhere was a shouting and crying. Then a woman with a face of mute white terror, and another who gasped and shrieked as she ran.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has happened now?\u201d said Graham, puzzled, for he could not understand their thick speech. Then he heard it in English and perceived that the thing that everyone was shouting, that men yelled to one another, that women took up screaming, that was passing like the first breeze of a thunderstorm, chill and sudden through the city, was this: \u201cOstrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are coming from South Africa…. The Black Police. The Black Police.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asano\u2019s face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham\u2019s face, and told him the thing he already knew. \u201cBut how can they know?\u201d asked Asano.<\/p>\n

Graham heard someone shouting. \u201cStop all work. Stop all work,\u201d and a swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, \u201cThis is Ostrog\u2019s doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed.\u201d His voice was hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. He yelled an unspeakable horror that the Black Police had done in Paris, and so passed shrieking, \u201cOstrog the Knave!\u201d<\/p>\n

For a moment Graham stood still, for it had come upon him again that these things were a dream. He looked up at the great cliff of buildings on either side, vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights, and down to the roaring tiers of platforms, and the shouting, running people who were gesticulating past. \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d they cried. \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His heart began to beat fast and strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has come,\u201d he said. \u201cI might have known. The hour has come.\u201d<\/p>\n

He thought swiftly. \u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo back to the Council House,\u201d said Asano.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should I not appeal\u2014? The people are here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will lose time. They will doubt if it is you. But they will mass about the Council House. There you will find their leaders. Your strength is there\u2014with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSuppose this is only a rumour?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds true,\u201d said Asano.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us have the facts,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

Asano shrugged his shoulders. \u201cWe had better get towards the Council House,\u201d he cried. \u201cThat is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may be impassable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.<\/p>\n

They went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one, and there Asano accosted a labourer. The answers to his questions were in the thick, vulgar speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived here before the people knew\u2014had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices learnt. He said a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA girl? Not\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said a girl\u2014he did not know who she was. Who came out from the Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street. \u201cTo your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to his ward!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XXII. \u2014 THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE<\/h2>\n

As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House, they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. \u201cTo your wards! To your wards!\u201d Everywhere men and women in blue were hurrying from unknown subterranean employments, up the staircases of the middle path; at one place Graham saw an arsenal of the revolutionary committee besieged by a crowd of shouting men, at another a couple of men in the hated yellow uniform of the Labour Police, pursued by a gathering crowd, fled precipitately along the swift way that went in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

The cries of \u201cTo your wards!\u201d became at last a continuous shouting as they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were unintelligible. \u201cOstrog has betrayed us,\u201d one man bawled in a hoarse voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham\u2019s ear until it haunted him. This person stayed close beside Graham and Asano on the swift way, shouting to the people who swarmed on the lower platforms as he rushed past them. His cry about Ostrog alternated with some incomprehensible orders. Presently he went leaping down and disappeared.<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s mind was filled with the din. His plans were vague and unformed. He had one picture of some commanding position from which he could address the multitudes, another of meeting Ostrog face to face. He was full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, his lips were pressed together.<\/p>\n

The way to the Council House across the ruins was impassable, but Asano met that difficulty and took Graham into the premises of the central post-office. The post-office was nominally at work, but the blue-clothed porters moved sluggishly or had stopped to stare through the arches of their galleries at the shouting men who were going by outside. \u201cEvery man to his ward! Every man to his ward!\u201d Here, by Asano\u2019s advice, Graham revealed his identity.<\/p>\n

They crossed to the Council House by a cable cradle. Already in the brief interval since the capitulation of the Councillors a great change had been wrought in the appearance of the ruins. The spurting cascades of the ruptured sea-water mains had been captured and tamed, and huge temporary pipes ran overhead along a flimsy looking fabric of girders. The sky was laced with restored cables and wires that served the Council House, and a mass of new fabric with cranes and other building machines going to and fro upon it projected to the left of the white pile.<\/p>\n

The moving ways that ran across this area had been restored, albeit for once running under the open sky. These were the ways that Graham had seen from the little balcony in the hour of his awakening, not nine days since, and the hall of his Trance had been on the further side, where now shapeless piles of smashed and shattered masonry were heaped together.<\/p>\n

It was already high day and the sun was shining brightly. Out of their tall caverns of blue electric light came the swift ways crowded with multitudes of people, who poured off them and gathered ever denser over the wreckage and confusion of the ruins. The air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central building. For the most part that shouting mass consisted of shapeless swarms, but here and there Graham could see that a rude discipline struggled to establish itself. And every voice clamoured for order in the chaos. \u201cTo your wards! Every man to his ward!\u201d<\/p>\n

The cable carried them into a hall which Graham recognised as the ante-chamber to the Hall of the Atlas, about the gallery of which he had walked days ago with Howard to show himself to the Vanished Council, an hour from his awakening. Now the place was empty except for two cable attendants. These men seemed hugely astonished to recognise the Sleeper in the man who swung down from the cross seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere is Ostrog?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI must see Ostrog forthwith. He has disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands.\u201d Without waiting for Asano, he went straight across the place, ascended the steps at the further end, and, pulling the curtain aside, found himself facing the perpetually labouring Titan.<\/p>\n

The hall was empty. Its appearance had changed very greatly since his first sight of it. It had suffered serious injury in the violent struggle of the first outbreak. On the right hand side of the great figure the upper half of the wall had been torn away for nearly two hundred feet of its length, and a sheet of the same glassy film that had enclosed Graham at his awakening had been drawn across the gap. This deadened, but did not altogether exclude the roar of the people outside. \u201cWards! Wards! Wards!\u201d they seemed to be saying. Through it there were visible the beams and supports of metal scaffoldings that rose and fell according to the requirements of a great crowd of workmen. An idle building machine, with lank arms of red painted metal stretched gauntly across this green tinted picture. On it were still a number of workmen staring at the crowd below. For a moment he stood regarding these things, and Asano overtook him.<\/p>\n

\u201cOstrog,\u201d said Asano, \u201cwill be in the small offices beyond there.\u201d The little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

They had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a little panel to the left of the Atlas rolled up, and Ostrog, accompanied by Lincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appeared crossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that was raised and open. \u201cOstrog,\u201d shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice the little party turned astonished.<\/p>\n

Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.<\/p>\n

Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. \u201cWhat is this I hear?\u201d he asked. \u201cAre you bringing negroes here\u2014to keep the people down?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is none too soon,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cThey have been getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the way. As it is, you have seen the people\u2014outside?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo wonder! But\u2014after what was said. You have taken too much on yourself, Ostrog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese negroes must not come to London,\u201d said Graham. \u201cI am Master and they shall not come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two attendants close behind him. \u201cWhy not?\u201d asked Ostrog.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhite men must be mastered by white men. Besides\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe negroes are only an instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master. And I tell you these negroes shall not come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe in the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past\u2014an accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally\u2014legally. But you are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master.\u201d<\/p>\n

He glanced at Lincoln again. \u201cI know now what you think\u2014I can guess something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn you. You dream of human equality\u2014of some sort of socialistic order\u2014you have all those worn-out dreams of the nineteenth century fresh and vivid in your mind, and you would rule this age that you do not understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cListen!\u201d said Graham. \u201cYou can hear it\u2014a sound like the sea. Not voices\u2014but a voice. Do you<\/i> altogether understand?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe taught them that,\u201d said Ostrog.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These negroes must not come.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI forbid it,\u201d said Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have started.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Ostrog. \u201cSorry as I am to follow the method of the Council\u2014. For your own good\u2014you must not side with\u2014Disorder. And now that you are here\u2014. It was kind of you to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln laid his hand on Graham\u2019s shoulder. Abruptly Graham realised the enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the ante-chamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment Lincoln had grasped Graham\u2019s cloak.<\/p>\n

He turned and struck at Lincoln\u2019s face, and incontinently a negro had him by collar and arm. He wrenched himself away, his sleeve tore noisily, and he stumbled back, to be tripped by the other attendant. Then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distant ceiling of the hall.<\/p>\n

He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant\u2019s leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.<\/p>\n

Lincoln appeared before him, went down heavily again with a blow under the point of the jaw and lay still. Graham made two strides, stumbled. And then Ostrog\u2019s arm was round his neck, he was pulled over backward, fell heavily, and his arms were pinned to the ground. After a few violent efforts he ceased to struggle and lay staring at Ostrog\u2019s heaving throat.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2014are\u2014a prisoner,\u201d panted Ostrog, exulting. \u201cYou\u2014were rather a fool\u2014to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham turned his head about and perceived through the irregular green window in the walls of the hall the men who had been working the building cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them. They had seen!<\/p>\n

Ostrog followed his eyes and started. He shouted something to Lincoln, but Lincoln did not move. A bullet smashed among the mouldings above the Atlas. The two sheets of transparent matter that had been stretched across this gap were rent, the edges of the torn aperture darkened, curved, ran rapidly towards the framework, and in a moment the Council chamber stood open to the air. A chilly gust blew in by the gap, bringing with it a war of voices from the ruinous spaces without, an elvish babblement, \u201cSave the Master!\u201d \u201cWhat are they doing to the Master?\u201d \u201cThe Master is betrayed!\u201d<\/p>\n

And then he realised that Ostrog\u2019s attention was distracted, that Ostrog\u2019s grip had relaxed, and, wrenching his arms free, he struggled to his knees. In another moment he had thrust Ostrog back, and he was on one foot, his hand gripping Ostrog\u2019s throat, and Ostrog\u2019s hands clutching the silk about his neck.<\/p>\n

But now men were coming towards them from the dais\u2014men whose intentions he misunderstood. He had a glimpse of someone running in the distance towards the curtains of the antechamber, and then Ostrog had slipped from him and these newcomers were upon him. To his infinite astonishment, they seized him. They obeyed the shouts of Ostrog.<\/p>\n

He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not friends\u2014that they were dragging him towards the open panel. When he saw this he pulled back, he tried to fling himself down, he shouted for help with all his strength. And this time there were answering cries.<\/p>\n

The grip upon his neck relaxed, and behold! in the lower corner of the rent upon the wall, first one and then a number of little black figures appeared shouting and waving arms. They came leaping down from the gap into the light gallery that had led to the Silent Rooms. They ran along it, so near were they that Graham could see the weapons in their hands. Then Ostrog was shouting in his ear to the men who held him, and once more he was struggling with all his strength against their endeavours to thrust him towards the opening that yawned to receive him. \u201cThey can\u2019t come down,\u201d panted Ostrog. \u201cThey daren\u2019t fire. It\u2019s all right. We\u2019ll save him from them yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

For long minutes as it seemed to Graham that inglorious struggle continued. His clothes were rent in a dozen places, he was covered in dust, one hand had been trodden upon. He could hear the shouts of his supporters, and once he heard shots. He could feel his strength giving way, feel his efforts wild and aimless. But no help came, and surely, irresistibly, that black, yawning opening came nearer.<\/p>\n

The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog\u2019s grey head receding and perceived that he was no longer held. He turned about and came full into a man in black. One of the green weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed. The huge chamber span about him.<\/p>\n

He saw a man in pale blue stabbing one of the black and yellow attendants not three yards from his face. Then hands were upon him again.<\/p>\n

He was being pulled in two directions now. It seemed as though people were shouting to him. He wanted to understand and could not. Someone was clutching about his thighs, he was being hoisted in spite of his vigorous efforts. He understood suddenly, he ceased to struggle. He was lifted up on men\u2019s shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten thousand throats were cheering.<\/p>\n

He saw men in blue and black hurrying after the retreating Ostrogites and firing. Lifted up, he saw now across the whole expanse of the hall beneath the Atlas image, saw that he was being carried towards the raised platform in the centre of the place. The far end of the hall was already full of people running towards him. They were looking at him and cheering.<\/p>\n

He became aware that a bodyguard surrounded him. Active men about him shouted vague orders. He saw close at hand the black moustached man in yellow who had been among those who had greeted him in the public theatre, shouting directions. The hall was already densely packed with swaying people, the little metal gallery sagged with a shouting load, the curtains at the end had been torn away, and the antechamber was revealed densely crowded. He could scarcely make the man near him hear for the tumult about them. \u201cWhere has Ostrog gone?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

The man he questioned pointed over the heads towards the lower panels about the hall on the side opposite the gap. They stood open, and armed men, blue clad with black sashes, were running through them and vanishing into the chambers and passages beyond. It seemed to Graham that a sound of firing drifted through the riot. He was carried in a staggering curve across the great hall towards an opening beneath the gap.<\/p>\n

He perceived men working with a sort of rude discipline to keep the crowd off him, to make a space clear about him. He passed out of the hall, and saw a crude, new wall rising blankly before him topped by blue sky. He was swung down to his feet; someone gripped his arm and guided him. He found the man in yellow close at hand. They were taking him up a narrow stairway of brick, and close at hand rose the great red painted masses, the cranes and levers and the still engines of the big building machine.<\/p>\n

He was at the top of the steps. He was hurried across a narrow railed footway, and suddenly with a vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruins opened again before him. \u201cThe Master is with us! The Master! The Master!\u201d The shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, broke against the distant cliff of ruins, and came back in a welter of cries. \u201cThe Master is on our side!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham perceived that he was no longer encompassed by people, that he was standing upon a little temporary platform of white metal, part of a flimsy seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass of the Council House. Over all the huge expanse of the ruins swayed and eddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners of the revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare nuclei of organisation in the chaos. Up the steep stairs of wall and scaffolding by which his rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging to pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested, masses to stir. Behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number of men struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon the packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. A solitary monoplane beat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming aeroplanes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has become of Ostrog?\u201d asked Graham, and even as he spoke he saw that all eyes were turned from him towards the crest of the Council House building. He looked also in this direction of universal attention. For a moment he saw nothing but the jagged corner of a wall, hard and clear against the sky. Then in the shadow he perceived the interior of a room and recognised with a start the green and white decorations of his former prison. And coming quickly across this opened room and up to the very verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figure followed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. He heard the man beside him exclaim \u201cOstrog,\u201d and turned to ask a question. But he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another of those who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. He looked, and behold! the monoplane that had been rising from the flying stage when last he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. The swift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention.<\/p>\n

Nearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger, until it had swept over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes below. It drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, rising to clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyond the skyline of the ruins.<\/p>\n

Graham transferred his attention to Ostrog. He was signalling with his hands, and his attendants were busy breaking down the wall beside him. In another moment the monoplane came into view again, a little thing far away, coming round in a wide curve and going slower.<\/p>\n

Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: \u201cWhat are they doing? What are the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They will lift him\u2014the monoplane will lift him! Ah!\u201d<\/p>\n

The exclamation was echoed by a shout from the ruins. The rattling sound of the green weapons drifted across the intervening gulf to Graham, and, looking down, he saw a number of black and yellow uniforms running along one of the galleries that lay open to the air below the promontory upon which Ostrog stood. They fired as they ran at men unseen, and then emerged a number of pale blue figures in pursuit. These minute fighting figures had the oddest effect; they seemed as they ran like little model soldiers in a toy. This queer appearance of a house cut open gave that struggle amidst furniture and passages a quality of unreality. It was perhaps two hundred yards away from him, and very nearly fifty above the heads in the ruins below. The black and yellow men ran into an open archway, and turned and fired a volley. One of the blue pursuers striding forward close to the edge, flung up his arms, staggered sideways, seemed to Graham\u2019s sense to hang over the edge for several seconds, and fell headlong down. Graham saw him strike a projecting corner, fly out, head over heels, head over heels, and vanish behind the red arm of the building machine.<\/p>\n

And then a shadow came between Graham and the sun. He looked up and the sky was clear, but he knew the little monoplane had passed. Ostrog had vanished. The man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and perspiring, pointing and blatant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are grounding!\u201d cried the man in yellow. \u201cThey are grounding. Tell the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these enigmatical orders.<\/p>\n

Suddenly he saw the prow of the monoplane come gliding over the edge of the ruins and stop with a jerk. In a moment Graham understood that the thing had grounded in order that Ostrog might escape by it. He saw a blue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him were now firing up at the projecting stem.<\/p>\n

A man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebels had gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and yellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along the open passage.<\/p>\n

And suddenly the monoplane slipped over the edge of the Council House and fell like a diving swallow. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most of those below, that it could not possibly rise again.<\/p>\n

It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the guides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut wrenching over the lever that turned the machine upward. He heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below.<\/p>\n

Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an age. The lower vane of the monoplane passed within an ace of touching the people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below.<\/p>\n

And then it rose.<\/p>\n

For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that rotated beyond.<\/p>\n

And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward, upward into the wind-swept sky.<\/p>\n

The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belated activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar, until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the thin smoke of their weapons.<\/p>\n

Too late! The flying machine dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved about and swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had so lately risen. Ostrog had escaped.<\/p>\n

For a while a confused babblement arose from the ruins, and then the universal attention came back to Graham, perched high among the scaffolding. He saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heard their shouts at his rescue. From the throat of the ways came the song of the revolt spreading like a breeze across that swaying sea of men.<\/p>\n

The little group of men about him shouted congratulations on his escape. The man in yellow was close to him, with a set face and shining eyes. And the song was rising, louder and louder; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.<\/p>\n

Slowly the realisation came of the full meaning of these things to him, the perception of the swift change in his position. Ostrog, who had stood beside him whenever he had faced that shouting multitude before, was beyond there\u2014the antagonist. There was no one to rule for him any longer. Even the people about him, the leaders and organisers of the multitude, looked to see what he would do, looked to him to act, awaited his orders. He was king indeed. His puppet reign was at an end.<\/p>\n

He was very intent to do the thing that was expected of him. His nerves and muscles were quivering, his mind was perhaps a little confused, but he felt neither fear nor anger. His hand that had been trodden upon throbbed and was hot. He was a little nervous about his bearing. He knew he was not afraid, but he was anxious not to seem afraid. In his former life he had often been more excited in playing games of skill. He was desirous of immediate action, he knew he must not think too much in detail of the huge complexity of the struggle about him lest be should be paralysed by the sense of its intricacy.<\/p>\n

Over there those square blue shapes, the flying stages, meant Ostrog; against Ostrog, who was so clear and definite and decisive, he who was so vague and undecided, was fighting for the whole future of the world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XXIII. \u2014 GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD<\/h2>\n

For a time the Master of the Earth was not even master of his own mind. Even his will seemed a will not his own, his own acts surprised him and were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that poured across his being. These things were definite, the negroes were coming, Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he was Master of the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for complete possession of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarming halls, elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council, kinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seething sea of marching men. The men in yellow, and men whom he fancied were called Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or following him obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little of both. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected propelled them all. He was aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of the Earth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as the thing he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he found himself with the man in yellow entering a little room where this proclamation of his was to be made.<\/p>\n

This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centre was a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The rest was in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he came from the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The dead thud of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of the tumult in which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle of light, the whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visible attendants in the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The huge ears of a phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, the black eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyond metal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with a droning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drew together black and sharp to a little blot at his feet.<\/p>\n

The vague shape of the thing he meant to say was already in his mind. But this silence, this isolation, the withdrawal from that contagious crowd, this audience of gaping, glaring machines, had not been in his anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawn together; he seemed to have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to have discovered himself. In a moment he was changed. He found that he now feared to be inadequate, he feared to be theatrical, he feared the quality of his voice, the quality of his wit; astonished, he turned to the man in yellow with a propitiatory gesture. \u201cFor a moment,\u201d he said, \u201cI must wait. I did not think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat news of the flying stages?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people of the south-west wards are ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReady!\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose it must be a sort of speech. Would to God I knew certainly the thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Madrid! They must have started before the main fleet.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?\u201d he said, and felt the light grow brighter.<\/p>\n

He had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenly doubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and calling he found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of a little strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destinies replaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revolt against Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse of passionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of that swift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He was astonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In that final emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determined at all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And he could find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating, with an indiscreet apology for his inability trembling on his lips, came the noise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of feet. \u201cWait,\u201d cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the watching lights waned.<\/p>\n

Through the open doorway he saw a slight girlish figure approaching. His heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. The man in yellow came out of the nearer shadows into the circle of light.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to interrupt Graham\u2019s eloquence…. But his doubts and questionings fled before her presence. He remembered the things that he had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about him grew brighter. He turned back to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have helped me,\u201d he said lamely\u2014\u201chelped me very much…. This is very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen and women of the new age,\u201d he said; \u201cyou have arisen to do battle for the race!… There is no easy victory before us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of moving speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis night is a beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cThis battle that is coming, this battle that rushes upon us to-night, is only a beginning. All your lives, it may be, you must fight. Take no thought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. I think I may be overthrown.\u201d<\/p>\n

He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He paused momentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush of speech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitarian commonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touched it to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of the new age, to the girl at his side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come out of the past to you,\u201d he said, \u201cwith the memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams\u2014of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the world we had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread the desire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and women might live nobly, in freedom and peace…. So we hoped in the days that are past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundred years?<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat cities, vast powers, a collective greatness beyond our dreams. For that we did not work, and that has come. But how is it with the little lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the common lives? As it has ever been\u2014sorrow and labour, lives cramped and unfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone to waste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith\u2014. Is there a new faith?<\/p>\n

\u201cCharity and mercy,\u201d he floundered; \u201cbeauty and the love of beautiful things\u2014effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself\u2014as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You know<\/i>\u2014in the core of your hearts you know<\/i>. There is no promise, there is no security\u2014nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith\u2014faith which is courage….\u201d<\/p>\n

Things that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. He spoke gustily, in broken incomplete sentences, but with all his heart and strength, of this new faith within him. He spoke of the greatness of self-abnegation, of his belief in an immortal life of Humanity in which we live and move and have our being. His voice rose and fell, and the recording appliances hummed as he spoke, dim attendants watched him out of the shadow….<\/p>\n

His sense of that silent spectator beside him sustained his sincerity. For a few glorious moments he was carried away; he felt no doubt of his heroic quality, no doubt of his heroic words, he had it all straight and plain. His eloquence limped no longer. And at last he made an end to speaking. \u201cHere and now,\u201d he cried, \u201cI make my will. All that is mine in the world I give to the people of the world. All that is mine in the world I give to the people of the world. To all of you. I give it to you, and myself I give to you. And as God wills to-night, I will live for you, or I will die.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ended. He found the light of his present exaltation reflected in the face of the girl. Their eyes met; her eyes were swimming with tears of enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew,\u201d she whispered. \u201cOh! Father of the World\u2014Sire<\/i>! I knew you would say these things….\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have said what I could,\u201d he answered lamely and grasped and clung to her outstretched hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XXIV. \u2014 WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING<\/h2>\n

The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was saying that the south-west wards were marching. \u201cI never expected it so soon,\u201d he cried. \u201cThey have done wonders. You must send them a word to help them on their way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is good, that is good.\u201d He weighed a message. \u201cTell them;\u2014well done South West.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle between conflicting ideas. \u201cWe must capture the flying stages,\u201d he explained. \u201cUnless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we must prevent that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He felt even as he spoke that this was not what had been in his mind before the interruption. He saw a touch of surprise in her eyes. She seemed about to speak and a shrill bell drowned her voice.<\/p>\n

It occurred to Graham that she expected him to lead these marching people, that that was the thing he had to do. He made the offer abruptly. He addressed the man in yellow, but he spoke to her. He saw her face respond. \u201cHere I am doing nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is impossible,\u201d protested the man in yellow. \u201cIt is a fight in a warren. Your place is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must wait, he insisted no other course was possible. \u201cWe must know where you are,\u201d he said. \u201cAt any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence and decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

A picture had drifted through his mind of such a vast dramatic struggle as the masses in the ruins had suggested. But here was no spectacular battle-field such as he imagined. Instead was seclusion\u2014and suspense. It was only as the afternoon wore on that he pieced together a truer picture of the fight that was raging, inaudibly and invisibly, within four miles of him, beneath the Roehampton stage. A strange and unprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousand little battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought out of sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either side was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture and sudden distribution in enormous quantities had been one of Ostrog\u2019s culminating moves against the Council. Few had had any experience with this weapon, many had never discharged one, many who carried it came unprovided with ammunition; never was wilder firing in the history of warfare. It was a battle of amateurs, a hideous experimental warfare, armed rioters fighting armed rioters, armed rioters swept forward by the words and fury of a song, by the tramping sympathy of their numbers, pouring in countless myriads towards the smaller ways, the disabled lifts, the galleries slippery with blood, the halls and passages choked with smoke, beneath the flying stages, to learn there when retreat was hopeless the ancient mysteries of warfare. And overhead save for a few sharpshooters upon the roof spaces and for a few bands and threads of vapour that multiplied and darkened towards the evening, the day was a clear serenity. Ostrog it seems had no bombs at command and in all the earlier phases of the battle the flying machines played no part. Not the smallest cloud was there to break the empty brilliance of the sky. It seemed as though it held itself vacant until the aeroplanes should come.<\/p>\n

Ever and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from this Spanish town and then that, and presently from France. But of the new guns that Ostrog had made and which were known to be in the city came no news in spite of Graham\u2019s urgency, nor any report of successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flying stages. Section after section of the Labour-Societies reported itself assembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare. What was happening there? Even the busy ward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative.<\/p>\n

His isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening. It had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. A tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bells and broken mirror!<\/p>\n

Now the door would be closed and Graham and Helen were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. Then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. They became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world.<\/p>\n

There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.<\/p>\n

Metallic voices were shouting \u201cVictory!\u201d Yes it was \u201cVictory!\u201d<\/p>\n

Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and dishevelled with excitement, \u201cVictory,\u201d he cried, \u201cvictory! The people are winning. Ostrog\u2019s people have collapsed.\u201d<\/p>\n

She rose. \u201cVictory?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d asked Graham. \u201cTell me! What<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours<\/i>!\u2014and we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon.\u201d<\/p>\n

A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of the Ward Leaders. \u201cIt is all over,\u201d he cried.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been sighted at Boulogne!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Channel!\u201d said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly. \u201cHalf an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey still have three of the flying stages,\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose guns?\u201d cried Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot mount them\u2014in half an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you mean they are found?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToo late,\u201d said the old man.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we could stop them another hour!\u201d cried the man in yellow.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing can stop them now,\u201d said the old man. \u201cThey have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother hour?\u201d asked Graham.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be so near!\u201d said the Ward Leader. \u201cNow that we have found those guns. To be so near\u2014. If once we could get them out upon the roof spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long would that take?\u201d asked Graham suddenly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn hour\u2014certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToo late,\u201d cried the Ward Leader, \u201ctoo late.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs<\/i> it too late?\u201d said Graham. \u201cEven now\u2014. An hour!\u201d<\/p>\n

He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his face was white. \u201cThere is are chance. You said there was a monoplane\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the Roehampton stage, Sire.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSmashed?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the guides\u2014easily. But there is no aeronaut\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long pause. \u201cWe<\/i> have no aeronauts?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. \u201cI must do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo to this flying stage\u2014to this machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am an aeronaut. After all\u2014. Those days for which you reproached me were not altogether wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

He turned to the old man in yellow. \u201cTell them to put it upon the guides.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man in yellow hesitated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean to do?\u201d cried Helen.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis monoplane\u2014it is a chance\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t mean\u2014?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo fight\u2014yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before\u2014. A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man\u2014!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2014never since flying began\u2014\u201d cried the man in yellow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now\u2014send them my message\u2014to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I see now why I am here!\u201d<\/p>\n

The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.<\/p>\n

Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. \u201cBut, Sire!\u2014How can one fight? You will be killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps. Yet, not to do it\u2014or to let some one else attempt it\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will be killed,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said my word. Do you not see? It may save\u2014London!\u201d<\/p>\n

He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a gesture, and they stood looking at one another.<\/p>\n

They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these towering heroisms.<\/p>\n

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She came towards him with a curious movement of her hands, as though she felt her way and could not see; she seized his hand and kissed it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo wake,\u201d she cried, \u201cfor this!\u201d<\/p>\n

He held her clumsily for a moment, and kissed the hair of her bowed head, and then thrust her away, and turned towards the man in yellow.<\/p>\n

He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said \u201cOnward.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CHAPTER XXV. \u2014 THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES<\/h2>\n

Two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched along the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called Wimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke the mutilated English of their class and period. The fire of the Ostrogites had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some time. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the staccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describing to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too far. \u201cHe\u2019s down there still,\u201d said the marksman. \u201cSee that little patch. Yes. Between those bars.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few yards behind them lay a dead stranger, face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smouldering in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face and watched the progress of that burning. Behind them, athwart the carrier lay the captured monoplane.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t see him now<\/i>,\u201d said the second man in a tone of provocation.<\/p>\n

The marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest endeavour to make things plain. And suddenly, interrupting him, came a noisy shouting from the substage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on now?\u201d he said, and raised himself on one arm to survey the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of blue figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want all these fools,\u201d said his friend. \u201cThey only crowd up and spoil shots. What are they after?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSsh!\u2014they\u2019re shouting something.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two men listened. The new-comers had crowded densely about the machine. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and file flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. One of the marksmen knelt up. \u201cThey\u2019re putting it on the carrier\u2014that\u2019s what they\u2019re after.\u201d<\/p>\n

He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. \u201cWhat\u2019s the good?\u201d said his friend. \u201cWe\u2019ve got no aeronauts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what they\u2019re doing anyhow.\u201d He looked at his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. \u201cMind these, mate,\u201d he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a moment he was running towards the monoplane. For a quarter of an hour he was lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts, and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of others cheering their own achievement. By this time he knew, what indeed everyone in the city knew, that the Master, raw learner though he was, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to take control of it, would let no other man attempt it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King,\u201d so the Master was reported to have spoken. And even as this man cheered, and while the beads of sweat still chased one another from the disorder of his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitful snatches the beat and impulse of the revolutionary song. He saw through a gap in the people that a thick stream of heads still poured up the stairway. \u201cThe Master is coming,\u201d shouted voices, \u201cthe Master is coming,\u201d and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to thrust himself towards the central groove. \u201cThe Master is coming!\u201d \u201cThe Sleeper, the Master!\u201d \u201cGod and the Master!\u201d roared the voices.<\/p>\n

And suddenly quite close to him were the black uniforms of the revolutionary guard, and for the first and last time in his life he saw Graham, saw him quite nearly. A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe he was, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man who for all the little things about him had neither ears nor eyes nor thoughts….<\/p>\n

For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham\u2019s bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fighting in the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling \u201cClear for the start, you fools!\u201d The bell that cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.<\/p>\n

With that clanging in his ears Graham drew near the monoplane, marched into the shadow of its tilting wing. He became aware that a number of people about him were offering to accompany him, and waved their offers aside. He wanted to think how one started the engine. The bell clanged faster and faster, and the feet of the retreating people roared faster and louder. The man in yellow was assisting him to mount through the ribs of the body. He clambered into the aeronaut\u2019s place, fixing himself very carefully and deliberately. What was it? The man in yellow was pointing to two small flying machines driving upward in the southern sky. No doubt they were looking for the coming aeroplanes. That\u2014presently\u2014the thing to do now was to start. Things were being shouted at him, questions, warnings. They bothered him. He wanted to think about the machine, to recall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people from him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd cleft down the line of the girders by his gesture.<\/p>\n

For a moment he was motionless, staring at the levers, the wheel by which the engine shifted, and all the delicate appliances of which he knew so little. His eye caught a spirit level with the bubble towards him, and he remembered something, spent a dozen seconds in swinging the engine forward until the bubble floated in the centre of the tube. He noted that the people were not shouting, knew they watched his deliberation. A bullet smashed on the bar above his head. Who fired? Was the line clear of people? He stood up to see and sat down again.<\/p>\n

In another second the propeller was spinning and he was rushing down the guides. He gripped the wheel and swung the engine back to lift the stem. Then it was the people shouted. In a moment he was throbbing with the quiver of the engine, and the shouts dwindled swiftly behind, rushed down to silence. The wind whistled over the edges of the screen, and the world sank away from him very swiftly.<\/p>\n

Throb, throb, throb\u2014throb, throb, throb; up he drove. He fancied himself free of all excitement, felt cool and deliberate. He lifted the stem still more, opened one valve on his left wing and swept round and up. He looked down with a steady head, and up. One of the Ostrogite monoplanes was driving across his course, so that he drove obliquely towards it and would pass below it at a steep angle. Its little aeronauts were peering down at him. What did they mean to do? His mind became active. One, he saw held a weapon pointing, seemed prepared to fire. What did they think he meant to do? In a moment he understood their tactics, and his resolution was taken. His momentary lethargy was past. He opened two more valves to his left, swung round, end on to this hostile machine, closed his valves, and shot straight at it, stem and wind-screen shielding him from the shot. They tilted a little as if to clear him. He flung up his stem.<\/p>\n

Throb, throb, throb\u2014pause\u2014throb, throb\u2014he set his teeth, his face into an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath the nearer wing.<\/p>\n

Very slowly the wing of his antagonist seemed to broaden as the impetus of his blow turned it up. He saw the full breadth of it and then it slid downward out of his sight.<\/p>\n

He felt his stem going down, his hands tightened on the levers, whirled and rammed the engine back. He felt the jerk of a clearance, the nose of the machine jerked upward steeply, and for a moment he seemed to be lying on his back. The machine was reeling and staggering, it seemed to be dancing on its screw. He made a huge effort, hung for a moment on the levers, and slowly the engine came forward again. He was driving upward but no longer so steeply. He gasped for a moment and flung himself at the levers again. The wind whistled about him. One further effort and he was almost level. He could breathe. He turned his head for the first time to see what had become of his antagonists. Turned back to the levers for a moment and looked again. For a moment he could have believed they were annihilated. And then he saw between the two stages to the east was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge, fell swiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a crack.<\/p>\n

At first he did not understand, and then a wild joy possessed him. He shouted at the top of his voice, an inarticulate shout, and drove higher and higher up the sky. Throb, throb, throb, pause, throb, throb, throb. \u201cWhere was the other?\u201d he thought. \u201cThey too\u2014.\u201d As he looked round the empty heavens he had a momentary fear that this second machine had risen above him, and then he saw it alighting on the Norwood stage. They had meant shooting. To risk being rammed headlong two thousand feet in the air was beyond their latter-day courage….<\/p>\n

For a little while he circled, then swooped in a steep descent towards the westward stage. Throb throb throb, throb throb throb. The twilight was creeping on apace, the smoke from the Streatham stage that had been so dense and dark, was now a pillar of fire, and all the laced curves of the moving ways and the translucent roofs and domes and the chasms between the buildings were glowing softly now, lit by the tempered radiance of the electric light that the glare of the day overpowered. The three efficient stages that the Ostrogites held\u2014for Wimbledon Park was useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a furnace\u2014were glowing with guide lights for the coming aeroplanes. As he swept over the Roehampton stage he saw the dark masses of the people thereon. He heard a clap of frantic cheering, heard a bullet from the Wimbledon Park stage tweet through the air, and went beating up above the Surrey wastes. He felt a breath of wind from the southwest, and lifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upward heeling into the rare swift upper air. Whirr, whirr, whirr.<\/p>\n

Up he drove and up, to that pulsating rhythm, until the country beneath was blue and indistinct, and London spread like a little map traced in light, like the mere model of a city near the brim of the horizon. The southwest was a sky of sapphire over the shadowy rim of the world, and ever as he drove upward the multitude of stars increased.<\/p>\n

And behold! In the southward, low down and glittering swiftly nearer, were two little patches of nebulous light. And then two more, and then a glow of swiftly driving shapes. Presently he could count them. There were four and twenty. The first fleet of aeroplanes had come! Beyond appeared a yet greater glow.<\/p>\n

He swept round in a half circle, staring at this advancing fleet. It flew in a wedge-like shape, a triangular flight of gigantic phosphorescent shapes sweeping nearer through the lower air. He made a swift calculation of their pace, and spun the little wheel that brought the engine forward. He touched a lever and the throbbing effort of the engine ceased. He began to fall, fell swifter and swifter. He aimed at the apex of the wedge. He dropped like a stone through the whistling air. It seemed scarce a second from that soaring moment before he struck the foremost aeroplane.<\/p>\n

No man of all that black multitude saw the coming of his fate, no man among them dreamt of the hawk that struck downward upon him out of the sky. Those who were not limp in the agonies of air-sickness, were craning their black necks and staring to see the filmy city that was rising out of the haze, the rich and splendid city to which \u201cMassa Boss\u201d had brought their obedient muscles. Bright teeth gleamed and the glossy faces shone. They had heard of Paris. They knew they were to have lordly times among the poor white trash.<\/p>\n

Suddenly Graham hit them.<\/p>\n

He had aimed at the body of the aeroplane, but at the very last instant a better idea had flashed into his mind. He twisted about and struck near the edge of the starboard wing with all his accumulated weight. He was jerked back as he struck. His prow went gliding across its smooth expanse towards the rim. He felt the forward rush of the huge fabric sweeping him and his monoplane along with it, and for a moment that seemed an age he could not tell what was happening. He heard a thousand throats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edge of the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulder and saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. He had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, and hands clutching at the tilting guide bars. The fenestrations in the further float flashed open as the aeronaut tried to right her. Beyond, he saw a second aeroplane leaping steeply to escape the whirl of its heeling fellow. The broad area of swaying wings seemed to jerk upward. He felt he had dropped clear, that the monstrous fabric, clean overturned, hung like a sloping wall above him.<\/p>\n

He did not clearly understand that he had struck the side float of the aeroplane and slipped off, but he perceived that he was flying free on the down glide and rapidly nearing earth. What had he done? His heart throbbed like a noisy engine in his throat and for a perilous instant he could not move his levers because of the paralysis of his hands. He wrenched the levers to throw his engine back, fought for two seconds against the weight of it, felt himself righting, driving horizontally, set the engine beating again.<\/p>\n

He looked upward and saw two aeroplanes glide shouting far overhead, looked back, and saw the main body of the fleet opening out and rushing upward and outward; saw the one he had struck fall edgewise on and strike like a gigantic knife-blade along the wind-wheels below it.<\/p>\n

He put down his stern and looked again. He drove up heedless of his direction as he watched. He saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabric strike the earth, saw its downward vanes crumple with the weight of its descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down, upon the sloping wheels. Then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the zenith. He was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge\u2014if it was a charge\u2014of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the gust of its close passage.<\/p>\n

He became aware of three others rushing towards him, aware of the urgent necessity of beating above them. Aeroplanes were all about him, circling wildly to avoid him, as it seemed. They drove past him, above, below, eastward and westward. Far away to the westward was the sound of a collision, and two falling flares. Far away to the southward a second squadron was coming. Steadily he beat upward. Presently all the aeroplanes were below him, but for a moment he doubted the height he had of them, and did not swoop again. And then he came down upon a second victim and all its load of soldiers saw him coming. The big machine heeled and swayed as the fear-maddened men scrambled to the stern for their weapons. A score of bullets sung through the air, and there flashed a star in the thick glass wind-screen that protected him. The aeroplane slowed and dropped to foil his stroke, and dropped too low. Just in time he saw the wind-wheels of Bromley hill rushing up towards him, and spun about and up as the aeroplane he had chased crashed among them. All its voices wove into a felt of yelling. The great fabric seemed to be standing on end for a second among the heeling and splintering vans, and then it flew to pieces. Huge splinters came flying through the air, its engines burst like shells. A hot rush of flame shot overhead into the darkling sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo<\/i>!\u201d he cried, with a bomb from overhead bursting as it fell, and forthwith he was beating up again. A glorious exhilaration possessed him now, a giant activity. His troubles about humanity, about his inadequacy, were gone for ever. He was a man in battle rejoicing in his power. Aeroplanes seemed radiating from him in every direction, intent only upon avoiding him, the yelling of their packed passengers came in short gusts as they swept by. He chose his third quarry, struck hastily and did but turn it on edge. It escaped him, to smash against the tall cliff of London wall. Flying from that impact he skimmed the darkling ground so nearly he could see a frightened rabbit bolting up a slope. He jerked up steeply, and found himself driving over south London with the air about him vacant. To the right of him a wild riot of signal rockets from the Ostrogites banged tumultuously in the sky. To the south the wreckage of half a dozen air ships flamed, and east and west and north they fled before him. They drove away to the east and north, and went about in the south, for they could not pause in the air. In their present confusion any attempt at evolution would have meant disastrous collisions.<\/p>\n

He passed two hundred feet or so above the Roehampton stage. It was black with people and noisy with their frantic shouting. But why was the Wimbledon Park stage black and cheering, too? The smoke and flame of Streatham now hid the three further stages. He curved about and rose to see them and the northern quarters. First came the square masses of Shooter\u2019s Hill into sight, from behind the smoke, lit and orderly with the aeroplane that had landed and its disembarking negroes. Then came Blackheath, and then under the corner of the reek the Norwood stage. On Blackheath no aeroplane had landed. Norwood was covered by a swarm of little figures running to and fro in a passionate confusion. Why? Abruptly he understood. The stubborn defence of the flying stages was over, the people were pouring into the under-ways of these last strongholds of Ostrog\u2019s usurpation. And then, from far away on the northern border of the city, full of glorious import to him, came a sound, a signal, a note of triumph, the leaden thud of a gun. His lips fell apart, his face was disturbed with emotion.<\/p>\n

He drew an immense breath. \u201cThey win,\u201d he shouted to the empty air; \u201cthe people win!\u201d The sound of a second gun came like an answer. And then he saw the monoplane on Blackheath was running down its guides to launch. It lifted clean and rose. It shot up into the air, driving straight southward and away from him.<\/p>\n

In an instant it came to him what this meant. It must needs be Ostrog in flight. He shouted and dropped towards it. He had the momentum of his elevation and fell slanting down the air and very swiftly. It rose steeply at his approach. He allowed for its velocity and drove straight upon it.<\/p>\n

It suddenly became a mere flat edge, and behold! he was past it, and driving headlong down with all the force of his futile blow.<\/p>\n

He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and went circling up. He saw Ostrog\u2019s machine beating up a spiral before him. He rose straight towards it, won above it by virtue of the impetus of his swoop and by the advantage and weight of a man. He dropped headlong\u2014dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog\u2019s aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog\u2019s attitude a wincing resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him\u2014to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Below he saw the Croydon hills. He jerked upward and once more he gained on his enemy.<\/p>\n

He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The eastward stage, the one on Shooter\u2019s Hill, appeared to lift; a flash changing to a tall grey shape, a cowled figure of smoke and dust, jerked into the air. For a moment this cowled figure stood motionless, dropping huge masses of metal from its shoulders, and then it began to uncoil a dense head of smoke. The people had blown it up, aeroplane and all! As suddenly a second flash and grey shape sprang up from the Norwood stage. And even as he stared at this came a dead report; and the air wave of the first explosion struck him. He was flung up and sideways.<\/p>\n

For a moment his monoplane fell nearly edgewise with her nose down, and seemed to hesitate whether to overset altogether. He stood on his wind-shield, wrenching the wheel that swayed up over his head. And then the shock of the second explosion took his machine sideways.<\/p>\n

He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the air was blowing past him and upward<\/i>. He seemed to be hanging quite still in the air, with the wind blowing up past him. It occurred to him that he was falling. Then he was sure that he was falling. He could not look down.<\/p>\n

He found himself recapitulating with incredible swiftness all that had happened since his awakening, the days of doubt, the days of Empire, and at last the tumultuous discovery of Ostrog\u2019s calculated treachery.<\/p>\n

The vision had a quality of utter unreality. Who was he? Why was he holding so tightly with his hands? Why could he not let go? In such a fall as this countless dreams have ended. But in a moment he would wake….<\/p>\n

His thoughts ran swifter and swifter. He wondered if he should see Helen again. It seemed so unreasonable that he should not see her again. It must<\/i> be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real. She was real. He would wake and meet her.<\/p>\n

Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth was very near.<\/p>\n

THE END<\/h3>\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t

Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Public domain content<\/div>