initial commit of ebook 12163HEADmain

13 files changed, 58013 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/12163-0.txt b/12163-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaf1d0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12163-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8733 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12163 ***
+
+                           THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+              A Revised Edition of "When the Sleeper Wakes"
+
+                               H.G. WELLS
+
+                                  1899
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+
+_When the Sleeper Wakes_, whose title I have now altered to _The Sleeper
+Awakes_, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial appearance
+in the _Graphic_ and one or two American and colonial periodicals. It is
+one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I have
+taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of
+excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work, it was written
+under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the
+writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story.
+Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an almost
+unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the writing
+of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic that
+instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely
+interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. I was at
+that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
+various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, _Love
+and Mr. Lewisham_, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But
+fortune was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall
+dangerously ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my
+attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my
+temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't endure the thought of
+leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from
+the consequences of that febrile spurt--_Love and Mr. Lewisham_ is indeed
+one of my most carefully balanced books--but the Sleeper escaped me.
+
+It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+sluggish _driven_ pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at the
+end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what
+the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of Helen. There was
+even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the flying-machine
+to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married Helen. I have
+now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities. Not the
+slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have arisen
+between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl and
+her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found it
+possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that
+the People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+certainty of either victory or defeat.
+
+Who will win--Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+
+H.G. WELLS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       I. INSOMNIA
+
+      II. THE TRANCE
+
+     III. THE AWAKENING
+
+      IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+       V. THE MOVING WAYS
+
+      VI. THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+     VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+    VIII. THE ROOF SPACES
+
+      IX. THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+       X. THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+      XI. THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+     XII. OSTROG
+
+    XIII. THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+     XIV. FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+      XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+     XVI. THE MONOPLANE
+
+    XVII. THREE DAYS
+
+   XVIII. GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+     XIX. OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+      XX. IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+     XXI. THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+    XXII. THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+   XXIII. GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+    XXIV. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+     XXV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INSOMNIA
+
+
+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.
+
+He glanced round at Isbister's 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.
+
+"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a
+colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
+
+Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
+conveyed his helpful impulse.
+
+"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
+Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
+have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."
+
+"Had advice?"
+
+"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They are
+all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare not
+take ... sufficiently powerful drugs."
+
+"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
+
+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. "I've never suffered from
+sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
+those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"
+
+"I dare make no experiments."
+
+He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
+men were silent.
+
+"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
+interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.
+
+"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
+day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
+mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
+something--"
+
+He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
+hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
+
+"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
+have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
+as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
+find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
+myself to do.
+
+"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
+dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
+don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
+exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
+in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
+complacencies--or 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's
+day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+rest--black coffee, cocaine--"
+
+"I see," said Isbister.
+
+"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
+
+"And this is the price?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+
+"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a 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--" He paused. "Towards
+the gulf."
+
+"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
+discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."
+
+"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
+of this sweet world of sanity--down--"
+
+"But," expostulated Isbister.
+
+The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at 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."
+
+"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
+gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."
+
+"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
+
+Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
+"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
+little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."
+
+"But those rocks there?"
+
+"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones
+grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"
+
+Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
+of devil-may-careish brilliance. "But a suicide over that cliff (or any
+cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's
+so damned amateurish."
+
+"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
+thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"
+
+"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll 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--eh?"
+
+Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+
+"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of
+gesture. "Look 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--"
+
+He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
+misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery."
+
+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.
+
+He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a
+night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take
+my word for it."
+
+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.
+
+His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. But he
+made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.
+
+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. "What can be happening?" he
+asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be happening? Spin, spin,
+spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore."
+
+He stood with his hand circling.
+
+"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
+"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me,"
+
+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.
+
+"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of
+expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
+oppression, a weight. No--not 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't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on
+it--steadily enough to tell you."
+
+He stopped feebly.
+
+"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
+any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me,
+you know."
+
+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. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
+show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
+
+The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+
+Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said
+Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+If you take alcohol?"
+
+The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden path,
+and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--I don't drink. It
+goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"
+
+He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+who sees nothing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
+unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with ideas of a
+furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
+passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
+momentary silence.
+
+The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
+regarding him.
+
+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. "Perhaps," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I wonder," ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+complacency. "At any rate one must give him a chance." He struck a match
+in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind; he started, and leaning over the
+table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became
+conviction. Astonishment seized him and became--dread!
+
+No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+
+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.
+
+Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He started
+violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.
+
+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. "Are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping, and again, "Are
+you asleep?"
+
+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.
+
+"Please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "There is
+something wrong with my friend."
+
+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. "I must fetch a doctor," he said. "It is either death or a fit. Is
+there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TRANCE
+
+
+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.
+
+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--neither 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?
+
+"It seems only yesterday," said Isbister. "I remember it all as though it
+happened yesterday--clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I 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."
+
+"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.
+
+"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too
+serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of
+the time."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
+
+"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and
+white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
+Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
+
+"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see
+them there."
+
+"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
+satisfaction. "The 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't expect that some day my pigments would
+glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again
+to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."
+
+Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "I just missed seeing
+you, if I recollect aright."
+
+"You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It
+was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the
+seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea."
+
+"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."
+
+"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at
+Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My
+landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer
+when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And
+the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before
+him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights
+and so forth."
+
+"Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?"
+
+"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
+head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
+this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
+quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"
+
+"Smithers?"
+
+"Smithers it was--was 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--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little
+things, not dynamos--"
+
+"Coils."
+
+"Yes. 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_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made
+me dream."
+
+Pause.
+
+"It's a strange state," said Warming.
+
+"It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body,
+empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and
+marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not
+a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In
+a sense it's 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--"
+
+"I know," said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.
+
+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--but 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.
+
+"And while he has been lying here," said Isbister, with the zest of a
+life freely spent, "I have changed my plans in life; married, raised a
+family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an
+American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's 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's curious to think of."
+
+Warming turned. "And 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_ a young man nevertheless."
+
+"And there's been the War," said Isbister.
+
+"From beginning to end."
+
+"And these Martians."
+
+"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some
+moderate property of his own?"
+
+"That is so," said Warming. He coughed primly. "As it happens--I have
+charge of it."
+
+"Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here is
+not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"
+
+"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when
+he slept."
+
+"As a business man," said Isbister, "that 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--"
+
+"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said Warming. "He was
+not a far-sighted man. In fact--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"We 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--. 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?"
+
+"It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change
+these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."
+
+"There has been a lot of change certainly," said Warming. "And, among
+other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."
+
+Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn't
+have thought it."
+
+"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his
+bankers--sent on to me."
+
+"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.
+
+"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.
+
+There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of
+hesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall
+some day into the hands of--someone else, you know."
+
+"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most
+constantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, there
+are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+unprecedented position."
+
+"Rather," said Isbister.
+
+"It seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically
+undying guardian. If he really is going on living--as 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."
+
+"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the
+British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit
+odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd."
+
+"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
+
+"Red tape, I suppose?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Pause. "It's a curious business, certainly," said Isbister. "And compound
+interest has a way of mounting up."
+
+"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies are running short
+there is a tendency towards ... appreciation."
+
+"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it better
+for _him_."
+
+"_If_ he wakes."
+
+"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-in look of his
+nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?"
+
+Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt if he will wake," he
+said at last.
+
+"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what it was brought this
+on. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious."
+
+"He 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--a Socialist--or typical
+Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school.
+Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this
+for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote--a 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."
+
+"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just to hear what he
+would say to it all."
+
+"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would I," with an old man's sudden
+turn to self pity. "But I shall never see him wake."
+
+He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "He will never awake,"
+he said at last. He sighed. "He will never awake again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+
+What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity--the 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's 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.
+
+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--he could not tell what name--that 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....
+
+Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some
+unfamiliar thing.
+
+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.
+
+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--but 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....
+
+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--and amazed.
+
+He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+mind was quite clear--evidently 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--and he saw
+with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--a
+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--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of
+the armchairs.
+
+When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+bottle and drank--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+What was this place?--this 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. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
+own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
+shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "When
+the Sleeper wakes--_When_!"
+
+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.
+
+Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
+"Where am I?"
+
+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.
+
+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's ears.
+"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
+It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."
+
+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.
+
+"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's 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.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"You 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"
+
+They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
+_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
+the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.
+
+"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
+pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall
+be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be difficult
+to--_wire_ to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't trouble
+about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the
+important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the word was
+sir, but this man pronounced it "_Sire_.")
+
+"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.
+
+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't 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.
+
+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.
+
+They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+
+"That--that makes me feel better," 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.
+
+He pressed his throat and tried a third time. "How long?" he asked in a
+level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly
+at the others.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"A very long time."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some
+years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.
+But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"
+
+He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+and sat waiting for an answer.
+
+They spoke in undertones.
+
+"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"
+
+"Very much more than that."
+
+"More!"
+
+"More."
+
+He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+of his face. He looked his question.
+
+"Many years," said the man with the red beard.
+
+Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from
+his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes
+tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing
+to another.
+
+"How many years?" he asked.
+
+"You must be prepared to be surprised."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"More than a gross of years."
+
+He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"
+
+Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+"decimal" he did not catch.
+
+"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
+that. Tell me."
+
+Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
+couple of centuries."
+
+"_What_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
+says--? What was that? A couple of _centuries_!"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
+
+Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+
+"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
+opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
+
+They said nothing.
+
+"You--did you say--?"
+
+"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the
+red beard.
+
+There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+heard was indeed true.
+
+"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances--trances
+don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me!
+Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
+Cornwall--?"
+
+His voice failed him.
+
+The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history,
+sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+
+"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
+Cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There
+is a house there still. I have been there."
+
+"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
+it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
+exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."
+
+He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than _two hundred years_!"
+
+He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was
+cold within him. "But if it _is_ 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."
+
+They did not answer him.
+
+"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High
+and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?"
+
+"That's a comfort! Is there London?"
+
+"This _is_ London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!"
+
+He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
+talk. Be quiet. Let me--"
+
+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.
+
+Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced
+hysterically and covered his face again.
+
+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. "What 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?"
+
+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. "These others," he said in a voice of extreme
+irritation. "You had better go."
+
+"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
+
+"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
+
+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.
+
+For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---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.
+
+"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again
+and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
+
+His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+with an ambiguous expression.
+
+"Feel queer?" he asked.
+
+"Very."
+
+"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"
+
+"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
+
+"I suppose so, now."
+
+"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"
+
+"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
+met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
+the thickset man.
+
+"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked Graham.
+
+"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+matter of fact."
+
+Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a
+mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
+changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
+understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
+spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
+trying to decide in an emergency. "We 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."
+
+Graham rubbed his chin.
+
+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.
+
+Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
+time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
+Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
+
+The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+
+"Wild!" he cried. "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
+
+There was perhaps an answer.
+
+"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But shout
+from the balcony."
+
+There was an inaudible reply.
+
+"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."
+
+He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
+said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
+
+He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+moment he was back.
+
+"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a
+moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then I can
+take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough."
+
+"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
+
+"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I
+don't know what it is. I know nothing."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture.
+"It 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?" he
+said to the tailor.
+
+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. "You will
+find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his
+brows at the thickset man.
+
+He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
+essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere
+in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a little appliance
+the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and
+behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the
+dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white
+satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
+
+The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+
+"We have very little time," he said.
+
+"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you
+think of this?"
+
+"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+
+"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
+this is our modern development. See here." The little figure repeated its
+evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the
+busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Is
+that--some sort of force--laid on?"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.
+
+"Who is _that_?" He indicated the archway behind him.
+
+The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in
+an undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire--it's
+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--if you don't mind, I will
+leave him to explain."
+
+"Odd!" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the
+new comer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man _glaring_ at me? Is
+he a mesmerist?"
+
+"Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."
+
+"Capillotomist!"
+
+"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."
+
+It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
+our monetary units."
+
+"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"
+
+"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have
+altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
+system--tens, 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?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"
+
+The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"Here are your clothes!" 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. "You don't mean to say--!"
+
+"Just made," 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.
+
+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.
+
+"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.
+
+"In a moment," said Howard.
+
+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.
+
+"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man
+had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.
+
+Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+glint of steel.
+
+"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried
+politeness. "He is going to cut your hair."
+
+"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--"
+
+"A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+the world."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+capillotomist came forward, examined Graham's ears and surveyed him, felt
+the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for
+Howard's audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a
+succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham's 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.
+
+Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in the
+corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Work is
+being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MOVING WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+façade 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's 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's 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's 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.
+
+"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must
+come away at once."
+
+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's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has
+happened to the Sleeper?" 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.
+
+"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
+never the Sleeper," 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.
+
+He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
+And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
+
+He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" 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: "The
+Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and
+cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to
+Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick
+with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves
+opposite to him.
+
+"Stop the Ways," 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: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the
+Sleeper," they testified.
+
+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.
+
+He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They will
+stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."
+
+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.
+
+"Get him away," cried Howard.
+
+"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"
+
+"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face
+and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face, and
+he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,
+compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+
+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.
+"I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a
+whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?"
+
+"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.
+"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking
+just now, has a sort of connexion--"
+
+He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He
+stopped abruptly.
+
+"I don't understand," said Graham.
+
+"It will be clearer later," said Howard.
+
+He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the
+lift slow.
+
+"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a
+little," said Graham puzzled. "It will be--it 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."
+
+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.
+
+"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What
+place is it?"
+
+"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+so forth."
+
+"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are you
+governed? Have you still a police?"
+
+"Several," said Howard.
+
+"Several?"
+
+"About fourteen."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+to you. To tell you the truth, I don't understand it myself very
+clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps--bye and bye. We have to go to
+the Council."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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's guardian.
+That was odd.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Go
+on," cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+
+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.
+
+"I want to see more of that," cried Graham, resisting.
+
+"No, no," cried Howard, still gripping his arm. "This way. You must go
+this way." And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce
+his orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "The Sleeper,"
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"You must remain here," murmured Howard, "for a few moments," and,
+without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.
+
+"But, _why_--?" began Graham.
+
+He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+the men in red. "You have to wait here, Sire," said the man in red.
+
+"_Why_?"
+
+"Orders, Sire."
+
+"Whose orders?"
+
+"Our orders, Sire."
+
+Graham looked his exasperation.
+
+"What place is this?" he said presently. "Who are those men?"
+
+"They are the lords of the Council, Sire."
+
+"What Council?"
+
+"_The_ Council."
+
+"Oh!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's 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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+chambers furnished in white and green. "What Council was that?" began
+Graham. "What were they discussing? What have they to do with me?" 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. "Ugh!" he grunted, a man relieved.
+
+Graham stood regarding him.
+
+"You must understand," began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham's eyes,
+"that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare
+unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of
+fact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, and
+the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you--and certain
+other beginnings--have become very considerable. And in other ways that
+will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the
+world's affairs."
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Graham.
+
+"We have grave social troubles."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+seclude you here."
+
+"Keep me prisoner!" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Well--to ask you to keep in seclusion."
+
+Graham turned on him. "This is strange!" he said.
+
+"No harm will be done you."
+
+"No harm!"
+
+"But you must be kept here--"
+
+"While I learn my position, I presume."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Very well then. Begin. Why _harm_?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It is too long a story, Sire."
+
+"All 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?"
+
+"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely.
+This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
+awakening--no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."
+
+"What council?"
+
+"The Council you saw."
+
+Graham made a petulant movement. "This is not right," he said. "I should
+be told what is happening."
+
+"You must wait. Really you must wait."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to
+resume life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."
+
+"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must
+leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the
+Council.... I am sorry."
+
+He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+
+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's mysterious behaviour. There was an
+inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance
+perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+What had he to do? And this room's secluded silence was eloquent of
+imprisonment!
+
+It came into Graham's 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.
+
+Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
+of the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+
+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.
+
+A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming
+like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"
+
+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.
+
+The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge façade 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--_strange_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King."
+
+"Phonetic spelling," 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. "The Heart of Darkness"
+he had never heard of before nor "The Madonna of the Future"--no doubt if
+they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+
+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.
+
+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. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have you been doing?"
+
+"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.
+Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard "when the Sleeper
+wakes," 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.
+
+At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+apparatus was blank again.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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--black almost, with a dust of
+little stars....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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. "We were making
+the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future
+we were making. And here it is!"
+
+"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst
+of it all?" 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!
+
+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 "un-English." His mind glanced at
+the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+
+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.
+
+He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to
+himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred
+and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't
+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. 'Tis a great age! Ha
+ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed
+again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving
+foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
+
+His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't
+understand it. _Why_? ... But it is all _why_!"
+
+"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+remember just how it began."
+
+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....
+
+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. "I must sleep," 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....
+
+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.
+
+And in those three days Graham's 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--even 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....
+
+Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's 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. "To explain
+it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,"
+protested Howard.
+
+"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shall
+do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
+
+"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the 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."
+
+"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
+
+"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+feature of our State."
+
+"Am I a fool?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
+
+"You 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--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too complex. We dare
+not suddenly---while you are still half awake."
+
+"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why 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?"
+
+Howard pulled his lip.
+
+"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a 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?"
+
+"That note of suspicion--" said Howard.
+
+"Ugh!" said Graham. "Now, 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_--"
+
+"_Live_!"
+
+Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an
+easy confidential tone.
+
+"The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+Naturally--an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious
+that everything you may desire--every desire--every sort of desire ...
+There may be something. Is there any sort of company?"
+
+He paused meaningly.
+
+"Yes," said Graham thoughtfully. "There is."
+
+"Ah! _Now_! We have treated you neglectfully."
+
+"The crowds in yonder streets of yours."
+
+"That," said Howard, "I am afraid--But--"
+
+Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him.
+The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of
+_company_? 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.
+
+"What do you mean by company?"
+
+Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he
+said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he
+said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with
+your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this--by 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--discreet--"
+
+Graham stopped dead.
+
+"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should perhaps
+have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening--"
+
+He indicated the exterior world.
+
+Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+
+"_No_!" he shouted.
+
+He began striding rapidly up and down the room. "Everything you say,
+everything you do, convinces me--of 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--and 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--. And meanwhile I am here like
+a rabbit in a bag."
+
+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.
+
+"I 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--"
+
+He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+
+"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
+
+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's movement was quick.
+In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the
+nineteenth century was alone.
+
+For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" 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--because he was afraid of fear.
+
+Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment
+was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of
+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--humane. Yet
+they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as
+well as chastity?
+
+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. "Why should
+anything be done to me?"
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
+can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they ask
+me for it instead of cooping me up?"
+
+He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
+intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's 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?
+
+"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"
+
+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:
+
+"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ROOF SPACES
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked
+up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.
+
+He remained motionless--his 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.
+
+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. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.
+
+Graham stood under the vane. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+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.
+
+For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+
+"You were the Sleeper?" said the stranger at last.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "What do you want with me?"
+
+"I come from Ostrog, Sire."
+
+"Ostrog?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" he said.
+
+"We want to speak to you, Sire," said the intruder. "We want--I
+can't hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you--these
+three days."
+
+"Is it rescue?" whispered Graham. "Escape?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. If you will."
+
+"You are my party--the party of the Sleeper?"
+
+"Yes, Sire."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Graham.
+
+There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was
+bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Stand
+away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and
+one shoulder at Graham's 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.
+
+"You are indeed the Sleeper," he said. "I saw you asleep. When it was the
+law that anyone might see you."
+
+"I am the man who was in the trance," said Graham. "They have imprisoned
+me here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days."
+
+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. "Mind!"
+cried a voice. "Oh!" The voice came from above.
+
+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.
+
+"I did not see you, Sire," panted the man. He rose and assisted
+Graham to rise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy
+blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face,
+and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat
+upon the floor.
+
+"What is this?" cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator.
+"Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing."
+
+"Stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator
+as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+
+"We want you to come, Sire," 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.
+"Your people call for you."
+
+"Come where? My people?"
+
+"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very
+day--either 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--shouting. The whole city shouts
+against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.
+"Your life here is not worth--"
+
+"But why arms?"
+
+"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.
+
+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--a ladder--was being lowered through the
+opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+
+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!
+
+"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."
+
+The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
+he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
+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.
+
+"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them
+and not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."
+
+"Where are the people?" said Graham. "The people you said awaited me?"
+
+The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew
+narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" 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.
+
+"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill
+spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided
+an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This way!"
+and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow,
+between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will go
+first," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Come on!" cried his
+guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"
+
+Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+
+Over the ridge, following his guide's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of
+terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.
+
+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.
+
+"Get on this," cried Graham's 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's benumbed feet, and a
+faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+
+"Come on!" 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....
+
+In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
+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.
+
+They cowered panting and stared out.
+
+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.
+
+"They will be chasing us," cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfway
+there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until it
+snows more thickly again."
+
+His teeth chattered in his head.
+
+"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all
+the people?"
+
+The other made no answer.
+
+"_Look_!" whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.
+
+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.
+
+"_Now_!" cried his companion. "Come!"
+
+He pulled Graham's 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.
+
+"Do as I do," 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. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In
+the dark all the way along. Do as I did."
+
+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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+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's. "_Still_!" whispered the latter very softly.
+
+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.
+
+"Keep still; they were just turning."
+
+For awhile both were motionless, then Graham's companion stood up, and
+reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+indistinct tackle.
+
+"What is that?" asked Graham.
+
+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.
+
+The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+Graham's 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. "Put the cross between your
+legs," whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. Grip
+tightly, grip!"
+
+Graham did as he was told.
+
+"Jump," said the voice. "In heaven's name, jump!"
+
+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.
+
+"Jump! Jump--in God's name! Or they will have us," cried Graham's guide,
+and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards him with
+rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then--
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+countless multitude. "It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!"
+
+"The Sleeper is with us! The Master--the Owner! The Master is with us.
+He is safe."
+
+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.
+
+He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+by one arm. "Let me go into a little room," he said, weeping; "a little
+room," 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+
+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.
+
+He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+
+"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"
+
+The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched
+their faces.
+
+"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.
+
+"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.
+
+"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world."
+
+He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I
+have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is some
+struggle between a number of people in this city--it is London?"
+
+"Yes," said the younger man.
+
+"And 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 don't 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?"
+
+"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "To prevent your
+interference."
+
+"But _why_?"
+
+"Because _you_ are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world
+is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."
+
+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.
+
+Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a
+name that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said.
+
+"He is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader--in
+your name."
+
+"In my name?--And you? Why is he not here?"
+
+"He--has deputed us. I am his brother--his 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."
+
+"In your name," shouted the younger man. "They have ruled, crushed,
+tyrannised. At last even--"
+
+"In my name! My name! Master?"
+
+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. "No 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."
+
+Again the hall dominated everything.
+
+"Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready--. Even now there is a rumour
+of fighting beginning."
+
+The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. "Ostrog has it
+planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the
+flying stages--. Even now he may be doing that. Then--"
+
+"This public theatre," bawled the man in yellow, "is only a contingent.
+We have five myriads of drilled men--"
+
+"We have arms," cried Lincoln. "We have plans. A leader. Their police
+have gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "It is
+now or never. The Council is rocking--They cannot trust even their
+drilled men--"
+
+"Hear the people calling to you!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+The door opened, Lincoln's 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. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the
+burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for "Order! Silence!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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--tramp, tramp.
+
+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.
+
+"Wave your arm to them," said Lincoln. "Wave your arm to them."
+
+"This," said a voice on the other side, "he must have this." 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's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the
+stage facing the people.
+
+The hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, 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 "Ostrog." All
+his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+song. The multitude were beating time with their feet--marking 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 "To
+the Council!" Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the
+roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout "March!" His mouth
+shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the
+archway, shouting "Onward!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's 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--three 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind that these also should
+have swarmed with people.
+
+He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--to 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 "The lights!"
+Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!" cried these voices.
+"The lights!" 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.
+
+He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something
+rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, "It is all
+right--all right."
+
+Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+forehead against Lincoln's and bawled, "What is this darkness?"
+
+"The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must
+wait--stop. The people will go on. They will--"
+
+His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take care
+of the Sleeper." 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.
+
+A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and receded forthwith beyond
+his questions.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+
+He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+gallery. Someone was shouting--it 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.
+
+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. "The
+Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden,
+everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.
+
+Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+"Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham's
+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 façade 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.
+
+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 façade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was
+crowded and bawling and firing at him.
+
+Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+the writhing body.
+
+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 "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. His
+foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under
+foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" 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's, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!"
+he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching
+Sleeper's face.
+
+He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+shouting, "To hell with the Council!" was about to fire again. Then it
+seemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A drop of
+moisture fell on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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, "They 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!" There were women and children
+in the crowd as well as men.
+
+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.
+
+Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+were a series of platforms of the "ways," 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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 "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was
+convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not
+understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the 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--so 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--his pace slackened.
+
+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?
+
+And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring
+and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the
+smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a 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.
+
+A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. "What have
+they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and
+before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+
+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 "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--Little
+Side"? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+"It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face upon
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+
+He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+
+He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+
+"Have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old
+man.
+
+Graham hesitated. "None," he said.
+
+"I stay here till the lights come again," said the old man. "These blue
+scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly. "Dark and damnable.
+Turned out of my room among all these dangers."
+
+"That's hard," ventured Graham. "That's hard on you."
+
+"Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad.
+War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don't they
+bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+fell over a dead man."
+
+"You're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of
+the right sort," and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came
+towards Graham.
+
+Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+relieved to be no longer alone. "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible
+time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dying
+in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night."
+
+The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they are
+to-night."
+
+Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+Again the old man's voice ended the pause.
+
+"This Ostrog will win," he said. "He 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're not common people. Though they've 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!"
+
+His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+
+"Ostrog!" said Graham.
+
+"The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice.
+
+Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the
+people," he hazarded.
+
+"Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! They
+should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And
+Ostrog--. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can
+stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his
+rages at the time--he 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."
+
+He was silent for a little while. "This Sleeper," he said, and stopped.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "Well?"
+
+The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+close. "The real Sleeper--"
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"Died years ago."
+
+"What?" said Graham, sharply.
+
+"Years ago. Died. Years ago."
+
+"You don't say so!" said Graham.
+
+"I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's woke up--they changed in
+the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I
+know. I mustn't tell all I know."
+
+For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for
+him. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my
+time--but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again.
+It was ten to one--wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog's way."
+
+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's 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:
+
+"The first time they rejected him. I've followed it all."
+
+"Rejected whom?" said Graham. "The Sleeper?"
+
+"Sleeper? _No_. Ostrog. He was terrible--terrible! And he was promised
+then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be more
+afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust
+ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workers
+cut each other's 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't been this gross of years. Eh!--but 'tis ill
+on small folks when the great fall out! It's ill."
+
+"Did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?"
+
+"Eh?" said the old man.
+
+The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+this a third time. "Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools
+bawling freedom and the like," said the old man. "Not in all my life has
+there been that. These are like the old days--for sure--when the Paris
+people broke out--three gross of years ago. That's what I mean hasn't
+been. But it's the world's 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."
+
+"You are rather well-informed on these things," said Graham.
+
+"I know what I hear. It isn't all Babble Machine with me."
+
+"No," said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. "And you are
+certain this Ostrog--you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and
+arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself--because
+he was not elected to the Council?"
+
+"Everyone knows that, I should think," said the old man. "Except--just
+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't 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's real and woke of his own
+accord--eh?"
+
+"I'm a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful," said Graham. "Lots of
+things that have happened--especially of late years--. If I was the
+Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn't know less about them."
+
+"Eh!" said the voice. "Old, are you? You don't sound so very old! But
+it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. But these
+notorious things! But you're not so old as me--not nearly so old as me.
+Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I'm young--for
+so old a man. Maybe you're old for so young."
+
+"That's it," said Graham. "And I've 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's interesting to hear you talk of
+these things."
+
+"I know a few things," said the old man. "I know a thing or two.
+But--. Hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "This Sleeper that
+all the fools put their trust in! I've the whole history of it--I was
+always a good one for histories. When I was a boy--I'm that old--I used
+to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seen
+none--they rot and dust so--and 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--they don't seem new-fangled to
+you, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all the
+Sleeper business from the first."
+
+"You will scarcely believe it," said Graham slowly, "I'm so
+ignorant--I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my
+circumstances have been so odd--I know nothing of this Sleeper's history.
+Who was he?"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "I know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set
+on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There's the
+old things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--still
+showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a half
+of years."
+
+"Set on a playful woman, poor soul," said Graham softly to himself, and
+then aloud, "Yes--well go on."
+
+"You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first
+Eadhamite roads. But surely you've 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--the old things--in two dozen
+years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn't 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't 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'-worth or more of property at
+the very beginning."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Graham."
+
+"No--I mean--that American's."
+
+"Isbister."
+
+"Isbister!" cried Graham. "Why, I don't even know the name."
+
+"Of course not," said the old man. "Of course not. People don't 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't 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."
+
+"And how did it grow?"
+
+"Eh!--but you're not up to things. Money attracts money--and 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--they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the
+growing of the Sleeper's 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--the Sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a
+whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's sons.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "The 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've slipped back. In my young days
+speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We
+didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all
+that! Or else I've got wiser.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "Here are you, young and
+ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before
+getting--explaining it all to you short and clear.
+
+"Sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than I
+see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of
+things. Sevendy!
+
+"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him
+long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control.
+I've seen many changes. Eh! I've worn the blue. And at last I've 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!"
+
+His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+
+Graham thought. "Let me see," he said, "if I have it right."
+
+He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "The Sleeper
+has been asleep--"
+
+"Changed," said the old man.
+
+"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands of
+Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of
+the world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have become
+masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--just as the old
+English Parliament used to be--"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison.
+You're not so--"
+
+"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the
+Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt
+would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the
+Council, after all these years."
+
+The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "It's strange," he
+said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time
+to-night."
+
+"Aye," said Graham, "it's strange."
+
+"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I've
+longed--" He laughed. "Even now," he said, "I could enjoy a little fun.
+Enjoy seeing things, anyhow." He mumbled a sentence Graham did not
+understand.
+
+"The Sleeper--when did he awake?" said Graham suddenly.
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Ostrog 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--where 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--everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even
+then! But you're joking! Surely you're pretending. It was to stop the
+shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that
+they turned off the electricity--and put this damned darkness upon us.
+Do you mean to say--?"
+
+"I had heard the Sleeper was rescued," said Graham. "But--to come back a
+minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?"
+
+"He won't let him go," said the old man.
+
+"And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard--"
+
+"So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn't a thousand
+things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell
+you? In a way I'm a sort of relation of Ostrog's. A sort of relation.
+Through my daughter-in-law."
+
+"I suppose--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose there's no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose
+he's certain to be a puppet--in Ostrog's hands or the Council's, as soon
+as the struggle is over."
+
+"In Ostrog's hands--certainly. Why shouldn't he be a puppet? Look at his
+position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he
+want to assert himself?"
+
+"What are these Pleasure Cities?" said Graham, abruptly.
+
+The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+Graham's words, he nudged him violently. "That's _too_ much," said he.
+"You're poking fun at an old man. I've been suspecting you know more than
+you pretend."
+
+"Perhaps I do," said Graham. "But no! why should I go on acting? No, I do
+not know what a Pleasure City is."
+
+The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+
+"What 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."
+
+"Come, come," said the old man, "if you had a glass of drink now, would
+you put it in your ear or your eye?"
+
+"I want you to tell me all these things."
+
+"He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun." A
+withered hand caressed Graham's arm for a moment. "Silk. Well, well! But,
+all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He'll
+have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He's a queer looking
+face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've got tickets and
+been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this
+substitute used to be. Yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's a queer world.
+Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll be sent to Capri.
+It's the best fun for a greener."
+
+His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my
+life I've been in London, hoping to get my chance."
+
+"But you don't know that the Sleeper died," said Graham, suddenly.
+
+The old man made him repeat his words.
+
+"Men don't live beyond ten dozen. It's not in the order of things," said
+the old man. "I'm not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me."
+
+Graham became angry with the old man's assurance. "Whether you are a fool
+or not," he said, "it happens you are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven't told you before, but I will
+tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything--not even about
+Pleasure Cities."
+
+Graham paused.
+
+"You don't know," said the old man. "How are you to know? It's very
+few men--"
+
+"I _am_ the Sleeper."
+
+He had to repeat it.
+
+There was a brief pause. "There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll
+excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this," said
+the old man.
+
+Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+
+"I 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--I who speak to you--who awakened again these four days since."
+
+"Four days since!--the Sleeper! But they've _got_ the Sleeper. They have
+him and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've 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't let him go about alone.
+Trust them. You're a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why
+you have been clipping your words so oddly, but--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+
+"As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you're telling
+that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What's
+your game? And besides, we've been talking of the Sleeper."
+
+Graham stood up. "Listen," he said. "I am the Sleeper."
+
+"You're an odd man," said the old man, "to sit here in the dark, talking
+clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But--"
+
+Graham's exasperation fell to laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried.
+"Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am
+I--in this damned twilight--I never knew a dream in twilight before--an
+anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that
+I am myself, and meanwhile--Ugh!"
+
+He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+was pursuing him. "Eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "I'm an old
+fool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness."
+
+Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+flashed into his mind.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you," said the old man coming
+near. "It's no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases
+you. 'Tis a foolish trick--"
+
+Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+
+For a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw
+him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OSTROG
+
+
+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.
+
+Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
+
+"No!" said Graham, starting.
+
+"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
+
+A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+shouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand of
+men." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, became
+indistinct.
+
+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 "nigger"
+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's 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.
+
+It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the
+"wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" 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--knowing no other means of transit--and 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's voice singing, "tralala tralala."
+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.
+
+The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+excitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not the
+Council!" "They are saying so in the Ways." 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. "Strike
+straight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and in
+a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of
+glass. Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 façade 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.
+
+"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
+
+Graham made a brief explanation.
+
+"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the wind-vane
+offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted--and
+things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them
+_there_--or he would have come to you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It is
+Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+everything was still again.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+and stood before it. Graham's 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.
+
+"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
+
+"I am Ostrog."
+
+"The Boss?"
+
+"So I am called."
+
+Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank you
+chiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
+
+"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog. "Or sent to sleep
+again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret--the
+secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?"
+
+Graham told him briefly.
+
+Ostrog listened in silence.
+
+He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tell
+me you had come?"
+
+"How can I guess?"
+
+"Preparing your double."
+
+"My double?"
+
+"A 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--something of your
+position?"
+
+"Very little," said Graham.
+
+"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned.
+"You are absolute owner," he said, "of 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--"
+
+"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
+
+"I wondered."
+
+"I came upon a garrulous old man."
+
+"I see.... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, of
+course, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just
+as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the
+ruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the
+rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+old quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the 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--when your waking came.
+Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more
+opportunely." He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for
+your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you
+and appealing to you, and--Flash!"
+
+He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+that he understood.
+
+"The Council muddled--quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide
+what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
+
+"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
+
+"We 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."
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"That 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--not half of them
+could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed or
+killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
+
+"Half 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--the 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--So!"
+
+"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearly
+understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where
+is the Council? Where is the fight?"
+
+Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for
+an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow. "Those
+fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of
+London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and
+public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have
+disappeared."
+
+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--it 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.
+
+"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge
+crept into view and gathered Graham's 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.
+
+"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And the
+fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the
+buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It
+shattered half the brittle glass in the city."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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'état_. Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
+
+"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
+
+"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"
+
+"You are Master of the World."
+
+"But that white flag--"
+
+"That is the flag of the Council--the 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."
+
+"But--help. Is this city the world?"
+
+"Practically 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."
+
+"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting
+with them?"
+
+"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with
+us. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would
+not stir against us. We _had_ 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--an 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--for some did--we
+kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council
+House. If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's 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's way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive
+prospect. There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "But these things I must explain more
+fully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by the
+moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the 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--thousands 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--"
+
+"But surely--I can't go ..."
+
+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. "There are
+kineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "As you bow to the people here--all
+over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened
+halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--not like this.
+And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.
+
+"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "used 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--so that even the furtherest man in the
+remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
+
+Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "What is
+the population of London?" he said.
+
+"Eight and twaindy myriads."
+
+"Eight and what?"
+
+"More than thirty-three millions."
+
+These figures went beyond Graham's imagination.
+
+"You will be expected to say something," said Ostrog. "Not what you used
+to call a Speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, six
+or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakened
+and my heart is with you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
+
+"What was that?" asked Graham.
+
+"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. But
+first we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do you mind?
+And then they will disperse to their homes."
+
+Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+Ostrog's 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's arm and pointed
+to the mirror.
+
+"Even as we turned away," he said.
+
+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.
+
+"Do you mean--?" he began.
+
+"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
+
+"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks
+up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+
+The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+
+"They are clamorous," he said.
+
+Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
+
+"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. For
+to-day at least their wishes must be law."
+
+Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+
+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 "Word" 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's rule.
+
+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's
+eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+of it in the oval mirror.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxious
+to see you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "To
+hell with the Council!" 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--and this as well?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest
+of the world hung in suspense.
+
+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' time a
+representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in
+the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's 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's-eye view of the city from the crow's 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.
+
+Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's 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--minute they looked
+from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the
+specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+below. St. Paul's 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.
+
+And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for
+the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines--the 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--an 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--as 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's estate, and the
+place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church--the 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--simply 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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture. And when he
+glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the
+Continent, it failed him altogether.
+
+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
+"Pidgin" 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--German, 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 "Pidgin" 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.
+
+And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+"black belt" 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....
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "amorist," wore his hair in two becoming plaits _à
+la_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he
+saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the
+attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich
+person's education. The Master's 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.
+
+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's, 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's vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily.
+
+"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.
+
+"No--the other, I mean."
+
+"Poet Laureate."
+
+"You still--?"
+
+"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one of the
+Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful
+club--and they keep up the tradition of these things."
+
+"Asano told me there was a King."
+
+"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood, I
+suppose; but really--"
+
+"Too much?"
+
+"Far too much."
+
+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.
+
+His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with
+the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of
+loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's 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 "aerial dog"--he
+used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't 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.
+
+"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham.
+
+"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He
+has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It
+was oddly reminiscent.
+
+"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly he
+was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him."
+
+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_ of a Victorian pattern,
+and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.
+Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and
+asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+seemed quietly amused at the Master's 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. "We have conquered Cram," he said,
+"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the
+world. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.
+
+"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does not
+attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."
+
+He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. "There
+is a certain type of girl, for example," said the Surveyor-General,
+dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for
+severe studies--when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for
+them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch,
+"nearly 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."
+
+"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you
+control them?"
+
+The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." 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's words. "We try and make the elementary
+schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so
+soon. Just a few simple principles--obedience--industry."
+
+"You teach them very little?"
+
+"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.
+Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers get
+the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic
+dreams--anarchy even! Agitators _will_ get to work among them. I take
+it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against
+popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
+
+"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things
+I want to know."
+
+Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the
+conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.
+
+The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
+said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
+of these ladies?"
+
+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 "dear old days," 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.
+
+"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
+days. And to you--they 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!"
+
+"Into this," said Graham.
+
+"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."
+
+"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."
+
+She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+encouragingly. "No?"
+
+"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--We
+thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I
+see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on my
+own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this
+new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to
+understand how little I know."
+
+"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark about
+them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"
+
+"Men in hats and feathers?"
+
+"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"
+
+"That? He's 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!"
+
+"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What a
+wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"
+
+"He 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_
+something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.
+
+"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"
+
+"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about
+themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of
+them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn't it? But I think
+Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."
+
+"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"
+
+"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are in
+his hands." She smiled.
+
+Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was
+expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he
+said. "Who are your great painters?"
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I
+thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You 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't
+any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."
+
+"But what did you think I meant?"
+
+She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And here," and
+she indicated her eyelid.
+
+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. "I see," 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. "Who is that
+talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+
+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;--the 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--hitherto there had
+been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither 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?"
+
+"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the
+verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"
+apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+
+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.
+
+Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+
+Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the 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.
+
+Ah! Now he remembered!
+
+He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_
+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.
+
+Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of
+this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once
+it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+
+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.
+
+The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care to know that girl,
+Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a niece of Ostrog's. She
+knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons
+alive. I am sure you will like her."
+
+In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed
+lady had fluttered away.
+
+"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that little room.
+When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before
+I walked across the Hall."
+
+Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face
+was steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with a
+sudden effort. "All those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless
+people did die for you that night."
+
+Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard
+her words.
+
+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. "Sire," she said
+quickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very
+unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget the
+people, who faced death--death that you might live."
+
+"I know nothing--" began Graham.
+
+"I cannot tell you now."
+
+Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.
+
+"You find the new world amusing, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smiling
+deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one
+comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatly
+changed."
+
+"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; even
+now an aeroplane awaits you."
+
+The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MONOPLANE
+
+
+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's 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--the starting
+carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly
+inclined rails to the end of the fabric.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which 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--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into
+the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,
+throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and
+saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a
+little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he
+recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He
+stared over the aeronaut's 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--beat; suppose some
+trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! 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.
+
+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's crow's 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 façade.
+
+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.
+
+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--innumerable minute oblongs
+of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--sunlit and
+pleasant--the 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.
+
+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 "trouble in the
+under-ways," 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. "What?" said
+Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled
+the aeronaut, pointing.
+
+They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
+and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
+monoplane's 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.
+
+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.
+
+They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's
+enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+
+"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of
+the air over the wind-screen.
+
+"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more
+of this machine."
+
+"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
+
+"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
+
+"I'm coming to you," 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.
+
+"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do
+when you move that engine forward?"
+
+The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
+
+"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
+
+"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of
+this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
+
+The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's
+face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
+
+"Sire, there are rules--"
+
+"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
+
+The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.
+But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a
+chance. They come as passengers--"
+
+"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these
+points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
+
+Graham waved the penalties aside.
+
+"Then if you will watch me--"
+
+"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its
+nose again for an ascent. "That's 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--to 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--. In my past it was my dream to fly.
+Now--keep your balance."
+
+"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your
+hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we
+turn her nose down to the glide?"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will protect me?"
+
+"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
+
+And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial
+navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with
+a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and
+well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
+
+"Back, Sire! Back!"
+
+"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this
+is living!"
+
+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.
+
+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. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
+
+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, "That," and he indicated the white thing still
+fluttering down, "was a swan."
+
+"I never saw it," said Graham.
+
+The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+forehead.
+
+They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THREE DAYS
+
+
+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. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I 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."
+
+"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
+Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
+may seem novel."
+
+"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
+that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
+one's learning."
+
+"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to
+occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
+
+Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for
+a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things
+going on?"
+
+Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,"
+he said. "Everything 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's hands."
+
+"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it,
+forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it
+the very first thing to-morrow again...."
+
+"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
+Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I 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't think that after you have dined you might
+prefer--?" He paused.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
+Capri theatre."
+
+"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's
+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--"
+
+"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
+
+"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know.
+I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your
+machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
+
+"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want
+is yours."
+
+Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+through the city streets to Graham's 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's answers to the endless questions Graham's 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.
+
+Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+Graham's 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 bayadère. "We were
+savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone
+age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
+
+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 "calculating boys," 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--a 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
+say, "I 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."
+
+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; "a little
+trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" 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's nest slumbered in his mind.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+
+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.
+
+He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you," he
+said. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tell
+me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?"
+
+She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"You said the people were unhappy?"
+
+For a moment she was silent still.
+
+"It must have seemed strange to you," she said abruptly.
+
+"It did. And yet--"
+
+"It was an impulse."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+"You forget," she said, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people--"
+
+"Do you mean--?"
+
+"You forget the people."
+
+He looked interrogative.
+
+"Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are.
+You do not know the things that are happening."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"Not clearly, perhaps. But--tell me."
+
+She turned to him with sudden resolution. "It is so hard to explain. I
+have meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready with
+words. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--your
+awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and 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."
+
+"Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine how
+little I know of it."
+
+"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"
+
+"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I have
+heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog,
+the Boss--"
+
+He paused.
+
+She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny.
+"Well?"
+
+He smiled. "To take the responsibility."
+
+"That is what we have begun to fear." For a moment she said no more.
+"No," she said slowly. "_You_ will take the responsibility. You will take
+the responsibility. The people look to you."
+
+She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--in
+every generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake--_prayed_."
+
+Graham moved to speak and did not.
+
+She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you know
+that you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King who
+would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?"
+
+"I suppose the imagination of the people--"
+
+"Have you not heard our proverb, 'When the Sleeper wakes'? While you lay
+insensible and motionless there--thousands 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."
+
+She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted
+wall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to
+look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the
+patience of God."
+
+"That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how you
+seemed to us."
+
+She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In the
+city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what
+you will do, full of strange incredible expectations."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Ostrog--no one--can take that responsibility."
+
+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.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that 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--do 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?"
+
+"I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know
+how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is it
+real, or is it only a great delusion?"
+
+"It is real," she said; "if you dare."
+
+"After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion
+in the minds of men."
+
+"If you dare!" she said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--they
+will obey."
+
+"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+these others--the 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--"
+
+He stopped blankly.
+
+"I am still hardly more than a girl," she said. "But 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--and robbed
+life of--everything worth having."
+
+She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the
+days of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for my
+life--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no better
+than the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is 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--for 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--they know they suffer. These
+countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You owe
+your life to them."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, slowly. "Yes. I owe my life to them."
+
+"You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the cities
+was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a 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--there was nobility! Common men led lives of
+love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you come
+from that time."
+
+"It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"
+
+"Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,
+slavery."
+
+"Slavery!" he said.
+
+"Slavery."
+
+"You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."
+
+"Worse. 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?"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+"They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour
+Department you own."
+
+"The Labour Department! In some way--that 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--?"
+
+"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you.
+Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. This
+Labour Department has grown imperceptibly."
+
+"What _is_ this Labour Department?" asked Graham.
+
+"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"
+
+"There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."
+
+"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
+now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
+something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
+organisation called the Salvation Army--that 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."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Nowadays 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--or seek
+some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for 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--that is the first
+condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
+shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
+visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved
+in your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people in
+blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Department
+trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
+supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they 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--enough 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--brought 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's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--the
+children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
+two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the
+blue canvas. And so it is the Department works."
+
+"And none are destitute in the city?"
+
+"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished
+destitution. It is engraved upon the Department's checks."
+
+"If they will not work?"
+
+"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+There are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a
+man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+system in the Department's 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--dark and miserable--out of sight
+below. There are prisons now for many things."
+
+"And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"
+
+"More 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's 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."
+
+For a space Graham sat downcast.
+
+"But there has been a revolution," he said. "All these things will be
+changed. Ostrog--"
+
+"That 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--you who come from a happier age--it is to
+you the people look. To you."
+
+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.
+
+"But what am I to do?" he said with his eyes upon her.
+
+"Rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone.
+"Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of
+men. For you might rule it--you could rule it.
+
+"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It
+wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Even
+the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.
+
+"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will
+not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has
+awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."
+
+His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+considerations.
+
+"They only want their leader," she said.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"You could do what you would;--the world is yours."
+
+He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. "The old dreams, and
+the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one
+man--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.
+
+"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of
+their hearts."
+
+He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "I have not your faith," he
+said, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let
+me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but
+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--.... One thing I
+promise you. This Labour slavery shall end."
+
+"And you will rule?"
+
+"Yes. Provided--. There is one thing."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That you will help me."
+
+"_I_--a girl!"
+
+"Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?"
+
+She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "Need you ask whether I
+will help you?" she said.
+
+There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+hour. Graham rose.
+
+"Even now," he said, "Ostrog will be waiting." He hesitated, facing her.
+"When I have asked him certain questions--. 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--?"
+
+"I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again."
+
+They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+
+Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day's
+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. "After all these years," said Ostrog, when
+Graham pressed enquiries; "the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." 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. "A
+little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division
+of our African agricultural police--the Consolidated African Companies
+have a very well drilled police--was 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."
+
+"Why should you expect trouble?" asked Graham abruptly.
+
+"There is a lot of discontent--social discontent."
+
+"The Labour Department?"
+
+"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is
+chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent
+supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. "We had to stir up their discontent,
+we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men
+equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that
+have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council.
+And now--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+people whom we have stirred up--remain 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--we have had to call in a little external help."
+
+"And here?"
+
+"There 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."
+
+Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke
+with restraint.
+
+"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said.
+
+"They are useful," said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash
+of ideas in their heads--such 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--only 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--that may happen. But it
+won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make
+revolutions are past."
+
+"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose they are." He mused. "This
+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."
+
+Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he
+said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crécy, 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--it 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--a multiplex, silly one--the
+man in the Crowd."
+
+Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre
+preoccupations.
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "The 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--tempered. 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."
+
+"Yet," said Graham, "there is something resists, something you are
+holding down--something that stirs and presses."
+
+"You will see," said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these
+difficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroy
+myself--trust me."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham.
+
+Ostrog stared.
+
+"_Must_ the world go this way?" said Graham with his emotions at the
+speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes
+been vain?"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
+
+"I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
+
+"Well,--but you are the chief tyrant."
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that
+change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the
+suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
+
+"But aristocracy! those people I met--"
+
+"Oh! not _those_!" said Ostrog. "But 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!"
+
+"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
+"There is that other thing--the 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--"
+
+Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+than before.
+
+"Don't trouble about these things," he said. "Everything 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_ 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--they are already murmuring against those
+who have overthrown the Council."
+
+"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary,
+without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped."
+
+"And 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--what 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--it's a fine duty too!--is 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."
+
+Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I can imagine
+how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You
+regret all the old forms of representative government--their 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,--had I not been busy. But you will
+learn better. The people are mad with envy--they 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." He
+smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You 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--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is
+impossible--that 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' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured.
+The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let
+them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will
+arise--other masters. The end will be the same."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham doggedly.
+
+For a moment he stood downcast.
+
+"But I must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a
+tone of confident mastery. "Only 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--and 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--the labour people
+more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"
+
+"You get that from our realistic novelists," suggested Ostrog, suddenly
+preoccupied.
+
+"I want reality," said Graham.
+
+"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought. "On the whole--"
+
+"I did not expect--"
+
+"I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the
+ways of the city and see the common people."
+
+Suddenly he came to some conclusion. "You would need to go disguised," he
+said. "The 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--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think the thing over, it
+seems to me not altogether--. 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."
+
+"You will not want to consult me in any matter?" asked Graham suddenly,
+struck by an odd suspicion.
+
+"Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any
+rate," said Ostrog, smiling. "Even if we differ--"
+
+Graham glanced at him sharply.
+
+"There is no fighting likely to happen soon?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't 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--"
+
+Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "I am not
+bringing negroes to London," he said slowly. "But if--"
+
+"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens," said
+Graham. "In that matter I am quite decided."
+
+Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_.
+They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "No
+disarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+letters and with variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No
+disarming." "No disarming." 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. "They all ought to be at work," said
+Asano. "They have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
+
+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's harvest of the first revolt.
+
+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.
+
+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--and his attention was vividly
+arrested by the façade of one of the Christian sects.
+
+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 "Salvation on
+the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker."
+"The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What
+Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a
+Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the
+Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk
+Blessings for Busy Business Men."
+
+"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream of
+mercantile piety towered above them.
+
+"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly
+for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+
+"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
+
+"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in the
+tone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I had
+forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people
+simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they
+used to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the
+countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
+
+"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white.
+"That is surely not the only--"
+
+"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn't
+_tell_ it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high
+class sects with quieter ways--costly 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--to you, I
+should say."
+
+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's signature, his first encounter with the curves and
+turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Home," 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"
+it vociferated. "He 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--all
+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."
+
+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 "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
+
+"Paris 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--don't 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!"
+
+The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+crowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this the
+Master's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
+
+"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
+
+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. "Yahaha, 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!" The nearer Babble Machine hooted
+stupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, and
+proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the
+horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the nearer
+Babble Machine.
+
+"But," began Graham.
+
+"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in an
+argument."
+
+"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
+
+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.
+
+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 "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt
+alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a
+man near him. "Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule?"
+
+Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he
+had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines
+pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is _this_
+the beginning of the Master's rule?
+
+Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely
+on the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was their
+trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure
+him that it was "all right."
+
+"But these outrages!"
+
+"You cannot have an omelette," said Asano, "without 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."
+
+"What! the Londoners?"
+
+"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order."
+
+"But burning women alive!"
+
+"A Commune!" said Asano. "They 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.
+
+"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--French
+speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
+
+"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--"
+
+"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
+
+Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+
+"I did not think," 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. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had
+them removed."
+
+Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
+
+"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after an interval.
+
+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's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of
+the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop,
+Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!--Hear a live paper yelp!" of
+its chief rival.
+
+Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _crèches_ 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's 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's manner that his identity was known, and
+proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place
+without reserve.
+
+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 _crèches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardous
+adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called
+Graham's 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.
+
+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
+_crèche_ company, the International Crèche Syndicate, lost not one-half
+per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But
+Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," he
+said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that
+they were not orphans.
+
+So soon as they had left the _crèche_ he began to speak of the horror the
+babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" he
+said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so
+unnatural--abominable almost."
+
+"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way of
+reply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it
+will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--except a
+few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women in London
+are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have
+one child--a 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."
+
+"Then do you mean that the population of the World--?"
+
+"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In
+spite of scientific discipline they are reckless--"
+
+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.
+
+"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile. "The 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."
+
+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.
+
+"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little
+ones you saw."
+
+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. "Look at them," said the little officer,
+"see how much they show of motherhood."
+
+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 "The Festival of the
+Awakening" was in progress.
+
+"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite
+apart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "These
+people are always ready for holidays."
+
+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.
+
+"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Workers--prosperous 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."
+
+"But--the women?"
+
+"The same. There's 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--there are a
+number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and
+enables them to enjoy themselves."
+
+"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl
+of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.
+"And these are--mothers."
+
+"Most of them."
+
+"The 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."
+
+In a little while he spoke again:
+
+"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way
+of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits
+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--all 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--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and
+serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a
+sort of worship--"
+
+He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
+
+"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
+
+Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.
+Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
+
+"Of 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's tribute to
+unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+police--and life is joyous."
+
+He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
+
+"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
+
+"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And
+in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
+
+"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the
+work cities."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Old people's 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."
+
+"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
+
+"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it
+well. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go
+off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary."
+
+"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause.
+"Yet 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--for
+well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+asleep two hundred years."
+
+For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+
+"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a wounded
+sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
+
+"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
+
+"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble. I
+am primitive--Paleolithic. _Their_ 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--men are dying in Paris to keep the
+world--that they may dance."
+
+Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," he
+said.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
+
+"Above and below--an intricate warren."
+
+"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
+
+"You 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."
+
+For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "I want
+to see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
+
+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.
+
+Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to
+it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "is
+something--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will not
+tell you. Come!"
+
+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--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which they
+went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost
+vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
+
+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's. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in the
+shadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.
+Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
+
+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. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,
+Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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 "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
+
+"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
+
+"You."
+
+"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
+
+"Didn't you have assurance?"
+
+Graham thought. "Insurance?"
+
+"Yes--Insurance. 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!"
+
+A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes
+on the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." 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.
+
+Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen 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."
+
+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 "X 5 pr. G."
+
+"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
+came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
+parasitic lunatics--"
+
+He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--even
+with a dialect of its own.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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_. 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.
+
+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 _cloisonné_ 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. "This is what I wanted to
+see," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid a
+start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+
+"She might have done better with herself than that," said Asano.
+
+Graham made some indignant comments.
+
+"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,"
+said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were
+nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."
+
+They continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonné_
+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.
+
+A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Stop that!" 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--the 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.
+
+And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What has happened now?" 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:
+"Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police."
+
+Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham's
+face, and told him the thing he already knew. "But how can they know?"
+asked Asano.
+
+Graham heard someone shouting. "Stop all work. Stop all work," and a
+swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down
+the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "This
+is Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." 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, "Ostrog the Knave!"
+
+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. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+heart began to beat fast and strong.
+
+"It has come," he said. "I might have known. The hour has come."
+
+He thought swiftly. "What am I to do?"
+
+"Go back to the Council House," said Asano.
+
+"Why should I not appeal--? The people are here."
+
+"You 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--with them."
+
+"Suppose this is only a rumour?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Asano.
+
+"Let us have the facts," said Graham.
+
+Asano shrugged his shoulders. "We had better get towards the Council
+House," he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may
+be impassable."
+
+Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+
+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.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Graham.
+
+"He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived
+here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices
+learnt. He said a girl."
+
+"A girl? Not--?"
+
+"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from the
+Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins."
+
+And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the
+street. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to
+his ward!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+
+As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "To your wards!
+To your wards!" 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.
+
+The cries of "To your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as
+they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+unintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse
+voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's 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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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. "Every man
+to his ward! Every man to his ward!" Here, by Asano's advice, Graham
+revealed his identity.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "To your wards! Every man to his ward!"
+
+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.
+
+"Where is Ostrog?" he demanded. "I must see Ostrog forthwith. He has
+disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands." 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.
+
+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.
+"Wards! Wards! Wards!" 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.
+
+"Ostrog," said Asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there." The
+little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham's face.
+
+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. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice
+the little party turned astonished.
+
+Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+
+Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What
+is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here--to keep the
+people down?"
+
+"It is none too soon," said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of hand
+more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated--"
+
+"Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?"
+
+"On the way. As it is, you have seen the people--outside?"
+
+"No wonder! But--after what was said. You have taken too much on
+yourself, Ostrog."
+
+Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+
+"These negroes must not come to London," said Graham. "I am Master and
+they shall not come."
+
+Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+attendants close behind him. "Why not?" asked Ostrog.
+
+"White men must be mastered by white men. Besides--"
+
+"The negroes are only an instrument."
+
+"But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master.
+And I tell you these negroes shall not come."
+
+"The people--"
+
+"I believe in the people."
+
+"Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past--an
+accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally--legally. But you
+are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master."
+
+He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think--I can guess
+something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn
+you. You dream of human equality--of some sort of socialistic order--you
+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."
+
+"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it--a sound like the sea. Not
+voices--but a voice. Do _you_ altogether understand?"
+
+"We taught them that," said Ostrog.
+
+"Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+negroes must not come."
+
+There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+
+"They will," he said.
+
+"I forbid it," said Graham.
+
+"They have started."
+
+"I will not have it."
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "Sorry as I am to follow the method of the
+Council--. For your own good--you must not side with--Disorder. And now
+that you are here--. It was kind of you to come here."
+
+Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's 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's cloak.
+
+He turned and struck at Lincoln's 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.
+
+He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg
+and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+
+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's 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's heaving throat.
+
+"You--are--a prisoner," panted Ostrog, exulting. "You--were rather a
+fool--to come back."
+
+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!
+
+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, "Save the Master!" "What are they doing to the Master?" "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was distracted, that
+Ostrog's 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's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the
+silk about his neck.
+
+But now men were coming towards them from the dais--men 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.
+
+He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not
+friends--that 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.
+
+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. "They can't
+come down," panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire. It's all right. We'll save
+him from them yet."
+
+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.
+
+The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+thousand throats were cheering.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Where has Ostrog gone?" he asked.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "The Master is with us! The Master! The Master!"
+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. "The Master
+is on our side!"
+
+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.
+
+"What has become of Ostrog?" 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 "Ostrog," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What are they doing? What are
+the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They
+will lift him--the monoplane will lift him! Ah!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tell
+the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"
+
+Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+enigmatical orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And then it rose.
+
+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.
+
+And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+upward into the wind-swept sky.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "For a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
+think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."
+
+While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+
+"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.
+
+"The people of the south-west wards are ready."
+
+"Ready!"
+
+He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+
+"I 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.
+
+"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
+the light grow brighter.
+
+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. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
+watching lights waned.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.
+
+She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+interrupt Graham's 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.
+
+"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
+very difficult."
+
+He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+
+"Men and women of the new age," he said; "you have arisen to do battle
+for the race!... There is no easy victory before us."
+
+He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of
+moving speech.
+
+"This night is a beginning," he said. "This 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I come out of the past to you," he said, "with the memory of an age
+that hoped. My age was an age of dreams--of 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?
+
+"Great 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--sorrow 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--. Is there a new faith?
+
+"Charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful
+things--effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself--as
+Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand.
+It does not matter if you seem to fail. You _know_--in the core of your
+hearts you _know_. There is no promise, there is no security--nothing to
+go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith--faith which is
+courage...."
+
+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....
+
+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. "Here and now," he cried, "I 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I knew," she whispered. "Oh! Father of the World--_Sire_! I knew you
+would say these things...."
+
+"I have said what I could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to
+her outstretched hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+
+The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+saying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it so
+soon," he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word to
+help them on their way."
+
+Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to
+his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That is good, that is good." He weighed a message. "Tell
+them;--well done South West."
+
+He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages," he
+explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we
+must prevent that."
+
+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.
+
+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. "Here I am doing nothing," he said.
+
+"It is impossible," protested the man in yellow. "It is a fight in a
+warren. Your place is here."
+
+He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+wait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where you
+are," he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence
+and decision."
+
+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--and 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's 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+
+Metallic voices were shouting "Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!"
+
+Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+dishevelled with excitement, "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people
+are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."
+
+She rose. "Victory?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! _What_?"
+
+"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is
+afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. _Ours_!--and we have
+taken the monoplane that lay thereon."
+
+A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+the Ward Leaders. "It is all over," he cried.
+
+"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been
+sighted at Boulogne!"
+
+"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+"Half an hour."
+
+"They still have three of the flying stages," said the old man.
+
+"Those guns?" cried Graham.
+
+"We cannot mount them--in half an hour."
+
+"Do you mean they are found?"
+
+"Too late," said the old man.
+
+"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "They have near a hundred
+aeroplanes in the first fleet."
+
+"Another hour?" asked Graham.
+
+"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found
+those guns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the
+roof spaces."
+
+"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
+
+"An hour--certainly."
+
+"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
+
+"_Is_ it too late?" said Graham. "Even now--. An hour!"
+
+He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but
+his face was white. "There is are chance. You said there was a
+monoplane--?"
+
+"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
+
+"Smashed?"
+
+"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."
+
+Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+pause. "_We_ have no aeronauts?"
+
+"None."
+
+He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Go to this flying stage--to this machine."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me
+were not altogether wasted."
+
+He turned to the old man in yellow. "Tell them to put it upon the
+guides."
+
+The man in yellow hesitated.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
+
+"This monoplane--it is a chance--."
+
+"You don't mean--?"
+
+"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. A big
+aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"
+
+"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send
+them my message--to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I
+see now why I am here!"
+
+The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and
+hurried out.
+
+Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But, Sire!--How
+can one fight? You will be killed."
+
+"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let some one else attempt it--."
+
+"You will be killed," she repeated.
+
+"I've said my word. Do you not see? It may save--London!"
+
+He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+
+They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+towering heroisms.
+
+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.
+
+"To wake," she cried, "for this!"
+
+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.
+
+He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said "Onward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+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. "He's down
+there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch. Yes. Between
+those bars."
+
+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.
+
+"I can't see him _now_," said the second man in a tone of provocation.
+
+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.
+
+"What's going on now?" 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.
+
+"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up and
+spoil shots. What are they after?"
+
+"Ssh!--they're shouting something."
+
+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. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's what
+they're after."
+
+He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his
+friend. "We've got no aeronauts."
+
+"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at the
+struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. "Mind these,
+mate," 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.
+
+"He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+that man is King," 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. "The Master is coming," shouted voices, "the Master is
+coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to
+thrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "The
+Sleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the voices.
+
+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....
+
+For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham's 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 "Clear for the start, you fools!" The bell that
+cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+
+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's 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--presently--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--throb, 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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face into
+an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath
+the nearer wing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+"Where was the other?" he thought. "They too--." 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....
+
+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--for Wimbledon Park was
+useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a
+furnace--were 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Massa Boss" 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.
+
+Suddenly Graham hit them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled
+by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the
+gust of its close passage.
+
+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.
+
+"_Two_!" 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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+He drew an immense breath. "They win," he shouted to the empty air; "the
+people win!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and
+went circling up. He saw Ostrog's 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--dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of
+Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing
+resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to 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.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The
+eastward stage, the one on Shooter's 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.
+
+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.
+
+He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the
+air was blowing past him and _upward_. 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.
+
+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's calculated treachery.
+
+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....
+
+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_ be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real.
+She was real. He would wake and meet her.
+
+Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth
+was very near.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12163 ***
diff --git a/12163-h/12163-h.htm b/12163-h/12163-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5b7d5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/12163-h/12163-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,10678 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells</title>
+
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
+                font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
+                text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
+                border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12163 ***</div>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      A Revised Edition of &ldquo;When the Sleeper Wakes&rdquo;
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By H.G. Wells
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      1899
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE SLEEPER AWAKES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; INSOMNIA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE AWAKENING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE SOUND OF A TUMULT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE MOVING WAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE HALL OF THE ATLAS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; IN THE SILENT ROOMS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE ROOF SPACES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; THE PEOPLE MARCH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW
+      EVERYTHING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; OSTROG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; FROM THE CROW&rsquo;S NEST
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; PROMINENT PEOPLE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; THE MONOPLANE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; THREE DAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; GRAHAM REMEMBERS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; OSTROG&rsquo;S POINT OF VIEW
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; IN THE CITY WAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; THE UNDER-SIDE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL
+      HOUSE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE
+      COMING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>When the Sleeper Wakes</i>, whose title I have now altered to <i>The
+      Sleeper Awakes</i>, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial
+      appearance in the <i>Graphic</i> and one or two American and colonial
+      periodicals. It is one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my
+      books, and I have taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to
+      make a number of excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work,
+      it was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not
+      only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of
+      the story. Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be
+      an almost unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in
+      the writing of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the
+      critic that instead of being put aside and thought over through a
+      leisurely interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end.
+      I was at that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition
+      to various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, <i>Love
+      and Mr. Lewisham</i>, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+      affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+      other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+      Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+      revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But fortune
+      was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall dangerously
+      ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my attempt to
+      put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my temperature
+      at a hundred and two. I couldn&rsquo;t endure the thought of leaving that
+      book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from the
+      consequences of that febrile spurt&mdash;<i>Love and Mr. Lewisham</i> is
+      indeed one of my most carefully balanced books&mdash;but the Sleeper
+      escaped me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+      of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+      reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+      editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+      passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+      sluggish <i>driven</i> pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at
+      the end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+      clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+      and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+      relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+      vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what the
+      newspaper syndicates call a &ldquo;love interest&rdquo; out of Helen.
+      There was even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the
+      flying-machine to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married
+      Helen. I have now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities.
+      Not the slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have
+      arisen between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl
+      and her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found
+      it possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+      objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+      on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+      the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that the
+      People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+      certainty of either victory or defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who will win&mdash;Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+      still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      H.G. WELLS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; INSOMNIA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He glanced round at Isbister&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and
+      added in a colourless tone, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister stopped abruptly. &ldquo;No?&rdquo; was all he said, but his
+      bearing conveyed his helpful impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may sound incredible,&rdquo; said the stranger, turning weary
+      eyes to Isbister&rsquo;s face and emphasizing his words with a languid
+      hand, &ldquo;but I have had no sleep&mdash;no sleep at all for six nights.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had advice?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system....
+      They are all very well for the run of people. It&rsquo;s hard to explain.
+      I dare not take ... sufficiently powerful drugs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes it difficult,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never
+      suffered from sleeplessness myself,&rdquo; he said in a tone of
+      commonplace gossip, &ldquo;but in those cases I have known, people have
+      usually found something&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare make no experiments.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men
+      were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exercise?&rdquo; suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from
+      his interlocutor&rsquo;s face of wretchedness to the touring costume he
+      wore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the
+      coast, day after day&mdash;from New Quay. It has only added muscular
+      fatigue to the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork&mdash;trouble.
+      There was something&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in
+      which I have no part. I am wifeless&mdash;childless&mdash;who is it speaks
+      of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless,
+      childless&mdash;I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart.
+      One thing at last I set myself to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said, I <i>will</i> do this, and to do it, to overcome the
+      inertia of this dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I&rsquo;ve had
+      enough of drugs! I don&rsquo;t know if <i>you</i> feel the heavy
+      inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind&mdash;time&mdash;life!
+      Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull
+      digestive complacencies&mdash;or 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&rsquo;s
+      day is his own&mdash;even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+      those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+      rest&mdash;black coffee, cocaine&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did my work,&rdquo; said the sleepless man with a querulous
+      intonation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the price?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel&mdash;a 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&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+      &ldquo;Towards the gulf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must sleep,&rdquo; said Isbister decisively, and with an air of
+      a remedy discovered. &ldquo;Certainly you must sleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+      drawing towards the vortex. Presently&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day,
+      out of this sweet world of sanity&mdash;down&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; expostulated Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+      voice suddenly high. &ldquo;I shall kill myself. If in no other way&mdash;at
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s unreasonable,&rdquo; said Isbister, startled at the
+      man&rsquo;s hysterical gust of emotion. &ldquo;Drugs are better than that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There at any rate is sleep,&rdquo; repeated the stranger, not
+      heeding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister looked at him. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a cert, you know,&rdquo; he
+      remarked. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove&mdash;as
+      high, anyhow&mdash;and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives
+      to-day&mdash;sound and well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those rocks there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken
+      bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met. &ldquo;Sorry to upset your ideals,&rdquo; said Isbister
+      with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance. &ldquo;But a suicide over
+      that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He laughed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so damned amateurish.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the other thing,&rdquo; said the sleepless man irritably,
+      &ldquo;the other thing. No man can keep sane if night after night&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been walking along this coast alone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly sort of thing to do. If you&rsquo;ll 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&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at these rocks!&rdquo; cried the seated man with a sudden
+      force of gesture. &ldquo;Look 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+      bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. &ldquo;It is the garment of
+      my misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. &ldquo;You get a
+      night&rsquo;s sleep,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you won&rsquo;t see much
+      misery out here. Take my word for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+      in answer to Isbister&rsquo;s direct questions&mdash;and not to all of
+      those. But he made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What can be happening?&rdquo;
+      he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. &ldquo;What can be happening?
+      Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for
+      evermore.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood with his hand circling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, old chap,&rdquo; said Isbister with the air
+      of an old friend. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry yourself. Trust to me,&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My head is not like what it was,&rdquo; he said, gesticulating for
+      want of expressive phrases. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like what it was. There
+      is a sort of oppression, a weight. No&mdash;not 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&rsquo;t express it. I can
+      hardly keep my mind on it&mdash;steadily enough to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble, old chap,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I think
+      I can understand. At any rate, it don&rsquo;t matter very much just at
+      present about telling me, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Come down to my room,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and try a
+      pipe. I can show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you&rsquo;d care?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+      movements were slow and hesitating. &ldquo;Come in with me,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister, &ldquo;and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+      If you take alcohol?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+      his actions. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t drink,&rdquo; he said slowly, coming up
+      the garden path, and after a moment&rsquo;s interval repeated absently,
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I don&rsquo;t drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes&mdash;spin&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+      who sees nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you&rsquo;d care to have supper with me,&rdquo;
+      he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand&mdash;his mind troubled
+      with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. &ldquo;Only cold
+      mutton, you know, but passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe.&rdquo;
+      He repeated this after momentary silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+      complacency. &ldquo;At any rate one must give him a chance.&rdquo; He
+      struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mind; he started, and leaning over the
+      table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction.
+      Astonishment seized him and became&mdash;dread!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor&rsquo;s face. He
+      started violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of
+      white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Are you asleep?&rdquo; he said, with his voice jumping, and
+      again, &ldquo;Are you asleep?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please bring a light at once,&rdquo; he said in the passage.
+      &ldquo;There is something wrong with my friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must fetch a doctor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is either
+      death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be
+      found?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;neither 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems only yesterday,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I remember it
+      all as though it happened yesterday&mdash;clearer, perhaps, than if it had
+      happened yesterday.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing gave me a shock,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you never seen him since that time?&rdquo; asked Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often wanted to come,&rdquo; said Isbister; &ldquo;but business
+      nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I&rsquo;ve been
+      in America most of the time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I remember rightly,&rdquo; said Warming, &ldquo;you were an
+      artist?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with
+      black and white, very soon&mdash;at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped
+      on to process. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good posters,&rdquo; admitted the solicitor, &ldquo;though I was
+      sorry to see them there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary,&rdquo; exclaimed Isbister
+      with satisfaction. &ldquo;The 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&rsquo;t expect that some day my
+      pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land&rsquo;s
+      End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he&rsquo;s
+      not looking.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. &ldquo;I just missed
+      seeing you, if I recollect aright.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway
+      station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria&rsquo;s Jubilee, because I
+      remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman
+      at Chelsea.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Diamond Jubilee, it was,&rdquo; said Warming; &ldquo;the second
+      one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee&mdash;the Fifty Year affair&mdash;I
+      was down at Wookey&mdash;a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had
+      with him! My landlady wouldn&rsquo;t take him in, wouldn&rsquo;t let him
+      stay&mdash;he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a
+      chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t the
+      present chap, but the G.P. before him&mdash;was at him until nearly two,
+      with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;he was stiff and hard?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stiff!&mdash;wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood
+      him on his head and he&rsquo;d have stopped. I never saw such stiffness.
+      Of course this&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated the prostrate figure by a
+      movement of his head&mdash;&ldquo;is quite different. And the little
+      doctor&mdash;what was his name?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smithers?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smithers it was&mdash;was 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&mdash;ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly
+      little things, not dynamos&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coils.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. 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 <i>him</i>&mdash;stark
+      and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a strange state,&rdquo; said Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a sort of complete absence,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It&rsquo;s
+      like a seat vacant and marked &lsquo;engaged.&rsquo; No feeling, no
+      digestion, no beating of the heart&mdash;not a flutter. <i>That</i> doesn&rsquo;t
+      make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it&rsquo;s 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Warming, with a flash of pain in his
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;but 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And while he has been lying here,&rdquo; said Isbister, with the
+      zest of a life freely spent, &ldquo;I have changed my plans in life;
+      married, raised a family, my eldest lad&mdash;I hadn&rsquo;t begun to
+      think of sons then&mdash;is an American citizen, and looking forward to
+      leaving Harvard. There&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      curious to think of.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming turned. &ldquo;And 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 <i>is</i> a young man nevertheless.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s been the War,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From beginning to end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these Martians.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve understood,&rdquo; said Isbister after a pause, &ldquo;that
+      he had some moderate property of his own?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so,&rdquo; said Warming. He coughed primly. &ldquo;As it
+      happens&mdash;I have charge of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: &ldquo;No doubt&mdash;his
+      keep here is not expensive&mdash;no doubt it will have improved&mdash;accumulated?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has. He will wake up very much better off&mdash;if he wakes&mdash;than
+      when he slept.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a business man,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;that 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if he would have premeditated as much,&rdquo; said Warming.
+      &ldquo;He was not a far-sighted man. In fact&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We 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&mdash;. 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There&rsquo;s been a lot of
+      change these twenty years. It&rsquo;s Rip Van Winkle come real.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been a lot of change certainly,&rdquo; said Warming.
+      &ldquo;And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t
+      have thought it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was forty-three when his bankers&mdash;you remember you wired to
+      his bankers&mdash;sent on to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the addition is not difficult,&rdquo; said Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+      curiosity. &ldquo;He may go on for years yet,&rdquo; he said, and had a
+      moment of hesitation. &ldquo;We have to consider that. His affairs, you
+      know, may fall some day into the hands of&mdash;someone else, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems
+      most constantly before my mind. We happen to be&mdash;as a matter of fact,
+      there are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+      unprecedented position.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me it&rsquo;s a case of some public body, some
+      practically undying guardian. If he really is going on living&mdash;as 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be a bad idea to hand him over to some public
+      body&mdash;the British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of
+      Physicians. Sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difficulty is to induce them to take him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Red tape, I suppose?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a curious business, certainly,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister. &ldquo;And compound interest has a way of mounting up.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has,&rdquo; said Warming. &ldquo;And now the gold supplies are
+      running short there is a tendency towards ... appreciation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve felt that,&rdquo; said Isbister with a grimace. &ldquo;But
+      it makes it better for <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>If</i> he wakes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he wakes,&rdquo; echoed Isbister. &ldquo;Do you notice the
+      pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming looked and thought for a space. &ldquo;I doubt if he will wake,&rdquo;
+      he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never properly understood,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;what it
+      was brought this on. He told me something about overstudy. I&rsquo;ve
+      often been curious.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He 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&mdash;a Socialist&mdash;or typical Liberal, as
+      they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic&mdash;flighty&mdash;undisciplined.
+      Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he
+      wrote&mdash;a 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d give anything to be there,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;just
+      to hear what he would say to it all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So would I,&rdquo; said Warming. &ldquo;Aye! so would I,&rdquo;
+      with an old man&rsquo;s sudden turn to self pity. &ldquo;But I shall never
+      see him wake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. &ldquo;He will never
+      awake,&rdquo; he said at last. He sighed. &ldquo;He will never awake
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE AWAKENING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity&mdash;the
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;he could not tell what name&mdash;that 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>
+    <p>
+      Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar
+      thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;but 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+      mind was quite clear&mdash;evidently 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&mdash;and he
+      saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow&mdash;was
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a
+      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&mdash;it rang but did not break&mdash;and sat down in
+      one of the armchairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+      bottle and drank&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      What was this place?&mdash;this 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. &ldquo;Beat, beat,&rdquo; that sweeping shadow had a
+      note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Wake!&rdquo; He heard some indistinct shrill cry,
+      and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha, ha!&rdquo; laughed one&mdash;a red-haired man in a short
+      purple robe. &ldquo;When the Sleeper wakes&mdash;<i>When</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Graham&rsquo;s knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+      collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham moved his head. &ldquo;What does this all mean?&rdquo; he said
+      slowly. &ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      ears. &ldquo;You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you
+      fell asleep. It is quite safe. You have been here some time&mdash;sleeping.
+      In a trance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better?&rdquo; asked the man in violet, as Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you wired my cousin?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;E. Warming, 27,
+      Chancery Lane?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. &ldquo;What an
+      odd <i>blurr</i> in his accent!&rdquo; whispered the red-haired man.
+      &ldquo;Wire, sir?&rdquo; said the young man with the flaxen beard,
+      evidently puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means send an electric telegram,&rdquo; volunteered the third, a
+      pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+      cry of comprehension. &ldquo;How stupid of me! You may be sure everything
+      shall be done, sir,&rdquo; he said to Graham. &ldquo;I am afraid it would
+      be difficult to&mdash;<i>wire</i> to your cousin. He is not in London now.
+      But don&rsquo;t trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a
+      very long time and the important thing is to get over that, sir.&rdquo;
+      (Graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it &ldquo;<i>Sire</i>.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Graham, and became quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;t 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+      taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;that makes me feel better,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      He pressed his throat and tried a third time. &ldquo;How long?&rdquo; he
+      asked in a level voice. &ldquo;How long have I been asleep?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some considerable time,&rdquo; said the flaxen-bearded man,
+      glancing quickly at the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very long time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes,&rdquo; said Graham, suddenly testy. &ldquo;But I
+      want&mdash;Is it&mdash;it is&mdash;some years? Many years? There was
+      something&mdash;I forget what. I feel&mdash;confused. But you&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He sobbed. &ldquo;You need not fence with me. How long&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+      and sat waiting for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They spoke in undertones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five or six?&rdquo; he asked faintly. &ldquo;More?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much more than that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+      of his face. He looked his question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many years,&rdquo; said the man with the red beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from his
+      face with a lean hand. &ldquo;Many years!&rdquo; he repeated. He shut his
+      eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar
+      thing to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many years?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be prepared to be surprised.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than a gross of years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was irritated at the strange word. &ldquo;More than a <i>what</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+      &ldquo;decimal&rdquo; he did not catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long did you say?&rdquo; asked Graham. &ldquo;How long? Don&rsquo;t
+      look like that. Tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: &ldquo;More
+      than a couple of centuries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>What</i>?&rdquo; he cried, turning on the youth who he thought
+      had spoken. &ldquo;Who says&mdash;? What was that? A couple of <i>centuries</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the man with the red beard. &ldquo;Two hundred
+      years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+      and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred years,&rdquo; he said again, with the figure of a great
+      gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;did you say&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred years. Two centuries of years,&rdquo; said the man with
+      the red beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+      heard was indeed true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it can&rsquo;t be,&rdquo; he said querulously. &ldquo;I am
+      dreaming. Trances&mdash;trances don&rsquo;t last. That is not right&mdash;this
+      is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me&mdash;some days ago, perhaps, I
+      was walking along the coast of Cornwall&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice failed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very strong
+      in history, sir,&rdquo; he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was it, sir,&rdquo; said the youngster. &ldquo;Boscastle, in
+      the old Duchy of Cornwall&mdash;it&rsquo;s in the south-west country
+      beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. I have been there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boscastle!&rdquo; Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. &ldquo;That
+      was it&mdash;Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep&mdash;somewhere
+      there. I don&rsquo;t exactly remember. I don&rsquo;t exactly remember.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed his brows and whispered, &ldquo;More than <i>two hundred years</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold
+      within him. &ldquo;But if it <i>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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not answer him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State.
+      High and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a comfort! Is there London?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This <i>is</i> London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+      assistant-custodian. And these&mdash;? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. &ldquo;But why am I here? No! Don&rsquo;t
+      talk. Be quiet. Let me&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+      little foolishly. &ldquo;But&mdash;two&mdash;hun&mdash;dred&mdash;years!&rdquo;
+      he said. He grimaced hysterically and covered his face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;These others,&rdquo; he said in a voice of extreme
+      irritation. &ldquo;You had better go.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go?&rdquo; said the red-bearded man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly&mdash;go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+      proceeded to interrogate the other&mdash;obviously his subordinate&mdash;-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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not confuse his mind by telling him things,&rdquo; he
+      repeated again and again. &ldquo;You must not confuse his mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+      with an ambiguous expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel queer?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so, now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, hadn&rsquo;t I better have some clothes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&mdash;&rdquo; said the thickset man and stopped, and the
+      flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. &ldquo;You will very
+      speedily have clothes,&rdquo; said the thickset man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred&mdash;?&rdquo;
+      asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+      matter of fact.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+      mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, &ldquo;Is
+      there a mill or dynamo near here?&rdquo; He did not wait for an answer.
+      &ldquo;Things have changed tremendously, I suppose?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that shouting?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said the thickset man impatiently. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      people. You&rsquo;ll understand better later&mdash;perhaps. As you say,
+      things have changed.&rdquo; He spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he
+      glanced about him like a man trying to decide in an emergency. &ldquo;We
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham rubbed his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a time
+      he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: &ldquo;Show us the
+      Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wild!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;How do they know? Do they know? Or is
+      it guessing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was perhaps an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t come,&rdquo; said the thickset man; &ldquo;I have <i>him</i>
+      to see to. But shout from the balcony.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an inaudible reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came hurrying back to Graham. &ldquo;You must have clothes at once,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;You cannot stop here&mdash;and it will be impossible to&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+      moment he was back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you what is happening. It is too complex to
+      explain. In a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes&mdash;in a
+      moment. And then I can take you away from here. You will find out our
+      troubles soon enough.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those voices. They were shouting&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something about the Sleeper&mdash;that&rsquo;s you. They have some
+      twisted idea. I don&rsquo;t know what it is. I know nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the tailor,&rdquo; said the thickset man with an
+      introductory gesture. &ldquo;It 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?&rdquo; he said to the tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;You
+      will find the fashions altered, Sire,&rdquo; he said. He glanced from
+      under his brows at the thickset man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+      fabrics poured out over his knees. &ldquo;You lived, Sire, in a period
+      essentially cylindrical&mdash;the Victorian. With a tendency to the
+      hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now&mdash;&rdquo; He flicked
+      out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled
+      the knob, and behold&mdash;a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope
+      fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern
+      of bluish white satin. &ldquo;That is my conception of your immediate
+      treatment,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have very little time,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust me,&rdquo; said the tailor. &ldquo;My machine follows. What
+      do you think of this?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your days they showed you a fashion-plate,&rdquo; said the
+      tailor, &ldquo;but this is our modern development. See here.&rdquo; The
+      little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. &ldquo;Or
+      this,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that doing?&rdquo; asked Graham, pointing with the empty
+      glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new
+      comer. &ldquo;Is that&mdash;some sort of force&mdash;laid on?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the man with the flaxen beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is <i>that</i>?&rdquo; He indicated the archway behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an
+      undertone, &ldquo;He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t mind, I will leave him to
+      explain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Odd!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Guardian? Council?&rdquo; Then
+      turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, &ldquo;Why is
+      this man <i>glaring</i> at me? Is he a mesmerist?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capillotomist!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+      unsteady mind. &ldquo;Sixdoz lions?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds?
+      They are our monetary units.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was that you said&mdash;sixdoz?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things,
+      have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system&mdash;tens,
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But about this cap&mdash;what
+      was it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here are your clothes!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t
+      mean to say&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just made,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must shave,&rdquo; he said regarding himself in the glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A seat,&rdquo; said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the
+      flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham. &ldquo;Sit down, please,&rdquo;
+      said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+      glint of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand, Sire?&rdquo; cried the flaxen-bearded
+      man with hurried politeness. &ldquo;He is going to cut your hair.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Graham enlightened. &ldquo;But you called him&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A capillotomist&mdash;precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+      the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+      capillotomist came forward, examined Graham&rsquo;s ears and surveyed him,
+      felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but
+      for Howard&rsquo;s audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and
+      a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a loud voice shouted&mdash;it seemed from a piece of machinery in
+      the corner&mdash;&ldquo;At once&mdash;at once. The people know all over
+      the city. Work is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing,
+      but come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE MOVING WAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not stop here,&rdquo; shouted Howard suddenly at his side.
+      &ldquo;You must come away at once.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      boy had worn. He became aware of cries of &ldquo;The Sleeper. What has
+      happened to the Sleeper?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper,&rdquo; shouted voices.
+      &ldquo;That is never the Sleeper,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He perceived that the cries of &ldquo;The Sleeper!&rdquo; 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:
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper! The Sleeper!&rdquo; and yells and cheers, a waving of
+      garments and cries of &ldquo;Stop the Ways!&rdquo; They were also crying
+      another name strange to Graham. It sounded like &ldquo;Ostrog.&rdquo; The
+      slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the
+      movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop the Ways,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;It is indeed the Sleeper.
+      It is indeed the Sleeper,&rdquo; they testified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He turned, and Howard&rsquo;s face was white. &ldquo;Come back,&rdquo; he
+      heard. &ldquo;They will stop the ways. The whole city will be in
+      confusion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him away,&rdquo; cried Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come away!&rdquo; said the man in red in a resolute voice.
+      His face and eyes were resolute, too. Graham&rsquo;s glances went from
+      face to face, and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour
+      in life, compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What was the
+      trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the
+      danger?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have our troubles,&rdquo; said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham&rsquo;s
+      enquiry. &ldquo;This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance,
+      your waking just now, has a sort of connexion&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be clearer later,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift
+      slow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about
+      a little,&rdquo; said Graham puzzled. &ldquo;It will be&mdash;it 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a huge place this is!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Is it all one
+      building? What place is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+      so forth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it a social trouble&mdash;that&mdash;in the great roadway
+      place? How are you governed? Have you still a police?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About fourteen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+      to you. To tell you the truth, I don&rsquo;t understand it myself very
+      clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps&mdash;bye and bye. We have to go
+      to the Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s guardian. That was odd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo;
+      cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see more of that,&rdquo; cried Graham, resisting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; cried Howard, still gripping his arm. &ldquo;This
+      way. You must go this way.&rdquo; And the men in red following them seemed
+      ready to enforce his orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, &ldquo;The
+      Sleeper,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remain here,&rdquo; murmured Howard, &ldquo;for a few
+      moments,&rdquo; and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the
+      gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, <i>why</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+      the men in red. &ldquo;You have to wait here, Sire,&rdquo; said the man in
+      red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Why</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Orders, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose orders?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our orders, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham looked his exasperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What place is this?&rdquo; he said presently. &ldquo;Who are those
+      men?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are the lords of the Council, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>The</i> Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+      chambers furnished in white and green. &ldquo;What Council was that?&rdquo;
+      began Graham. &ldquo;What were they discussing? What have they to do with
+      me?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; he grunted, a man
+      relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood regarding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must understand,&rdquo; began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham&rsquo;s
+      eyes, &ldquo;that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a
+      bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter
+      of fact&mdash;it is a case of compound interest partly&mdash;your small
+      fortune, and the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you&mdash;and
+      certain other beginnings&mdash;have become very considerable. And in other
+      ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+      significance&mdash;of very considerable significance&mdash;involved in the
+      world&rsquo;s affairs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have grave social troubles.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+      seclude you here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep me prisoner!&rdquo; exclaimed Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;to ask you to keep in seclusion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham turned on him. &ldquo;This is strange!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No harm will be done you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No harm!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must be kept here&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While I learn my position, I presume.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then. Begin. Why <i>harm</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too long a story, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good time, Sire,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;But not crudely,
+      not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled
+      mind. Your awakening&mdash;no one expected your awakening. The Council is
+      consulting.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council you saw.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made a petulant movement. &ldquo;This is not right,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I should be told what is happening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must wait. Really you must wait.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham sat down abruptly. &ldquo;I suppose since I have waited so long to
+      resume life,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I must wait a little longer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is better,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;Yes, that is much
+      better. And I must leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the
+      discussion in the Council.... I am sorry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling
+      of some vast inheritance already in his mind&mdash;a vast inheritance
+      perhaps misapplied&mdash;of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+      What had he to do? And this room&rsquo;s secluded silence was eloquent of
+      imprisonment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came into Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of
+      the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A flash of laughter came with the recognition. &ldquo;To call on old
+      Warming like this!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;and make him take me out to
+      lunch!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;<i>strange</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The
+      world has changed indeed,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thi Man huwdbi Kin&rdquo; forced itself on him as &ldquo;The Man
+      who would be King.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phonetic spelling,&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;The Heart of Darkness&rdquo; he had never heard of before nor
+      &ldquo;The Madonna of the Future&rdquo;&mdash;no doubt if they were indeed
+      stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;I have worked,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;but what have you been
+      doing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in
+      the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard &ldquo;when
+      the Sleeper wakes,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+      apparatus was blank again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;black almost, with a
+      dust of little stars....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;We were
+      making the future,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and hardly any of us troubled to
+      think what future we were making. And here it is!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the
+      midst of it all?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;un-English.&rdquo; His mind glanced at the rest of
+      the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He began to talk to himself. &ldquo;Two hundred and three years!&rdquo; he
+      said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. &ldquo;Then I am
+      two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they
+      haven&rsquo;t 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. &lsquo;Tis a great age!
+      Ha ha!&rdquo; He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then
+      laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was
+      behaving foolishly. &ldquo;Steady,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Steady!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His pacing became more regular. &ldquo;This new world,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand it. <i>Why</i>? ... But it is all <i>why</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+      remember just how it began.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must sleep,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And in those three days Graham&rsquo;s 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&mdash;even 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>
+    <p>
+      Howard&rsquo;s bearing went far to deepen Graham&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;To explain it
+      I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,&rdquo;
+      protested Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing is this,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You are afraid of
+      something I shall do. In some way I am arbitrator&mdash;I might be
+      arbitrator.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not that. But you have&mdash;I may tell you this much&mdash;the
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nineteenth century,&rdquo; corrected Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+      feature of our State.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I a fool?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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&mdash;a mere arrest of decay. And&mdash;but it is too complex.
+      We dare not suddenly&mdash;-while you are still half awake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Suppose it is as you
+      say&mdash;why 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard pulled his lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am beginning to feel&mdash;every hour I feel more clearly&mdash;a
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That note of suspicion&mdash;&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Now, 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 <i>live</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Live</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard&rsquo;s face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in
+      an easy confidential tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+      Naturally&mdash;an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are
+      anxious that everything you may desire&mdash;every desire&mdash;every sort
+      of desire ... There may be something. Is there any sort of company?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused meaningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham thoughtfully. &ldquo;There is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! <i>Now</i>! We have treated you neglectfully.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The crowds in yonder streets of yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said Howard, &ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him. The
+      implication of Howard&rsquo;s suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+      Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of <i>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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by company?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Human beings,&rdquo;
+      he said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. &ldquo;Our social ideas,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in
+      comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as
+      this&mdash;by 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&mdash;discreet&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stopped dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would pass the time,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;It is a thing I
+      should perhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much
+      is happening&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He indicated the exterior world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+      his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>No</i>!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began striding rapidly up and down the room. &ldquo;Everything you say,
+      everything you do, convinces me&mdash;of 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&mdash;and 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&mdash;. And meanwhile I am here
+      like a rabbit in a bag.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+      stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it this is a message to the Council,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s movement was
+      quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from
+      the nineteenth century was alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+      flung them down. &ldquo;What a fool I have been!&rdquo; 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&mdash;because he was afraid of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment was
+      unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms&mdash;new legal forms&mdash;of
+      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&mdash;humane. Yet they
+      had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as
+      chastity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Why should
+      anything be done to me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the worst comes to the worst,&rdquo; he found himself saying at
+      last, &ldquo;I can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why
+      don&rsquo;t they ask me for it instead of cooping me up?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council&rsquo;s possible
+      intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE ROOF SPACES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He remained motionless&mdash;his 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,&rdquo; said a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood under the vane. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were the Sleeper?&rdquo; said the stranger at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What do you want with me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from Ostrog, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you? What do you want?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want to speak to you, Sire,&rdquo; said the intruder. &ldquo;We
+      want&mdash;I can&rsquo;t hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way
+      to you&mdash;these three days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it rescue?&rdquo; whispered Graham. &ldquo;Escape?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sire. If you will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are my party&mdash;the party of the Sleeper?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to do?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a struggle. The stranger&rsquo;s arm appeared, and his hand was
+      bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. &ldquo;Stand
+      away from me,&rdquo; he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands
+      and one shoulder at Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are indeed the Sleeper,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I saw you
+      asleep. When it was the law that anyone might see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the man who was in the trance,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;They
+      have imprisoned me here. I have been here since I awoke&mdash;at least
+      three days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Mind!&rdquo;
+      cried a voice. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; The voice came from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not see you, Sire,&rdquo; panted the man. He rose and
+      assisted Graham to rise. &ldquo;Are you hurt, Sire?&rdquo; he panted. A
+      succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to
+      Graham&rsquo;s face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell
+      over, and lay fiat upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried Graham, confused and looking at the
+      ventilator. &ldquo;Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I
+      understand nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand back,&rdquo; said the stranger, and drew him from under the
+      ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want you to come, Sire,&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;Your people call for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come where? My people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+      spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided&mdash;this
+      very day&mdash;either 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&mdash;shouting. The
+      whole city shouts against the Council. We have arms.&rdquo; He wiped the
+      blood with his hand. &ldquo;Your life here is not worth&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why arms?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your poison!&rdquo; said a voice in Graham&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a ladder&mdash;was being lowered through the
+      opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I trust. Tell me what
+      to do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the cut brow gripped Graham&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Clamber up
+      the ladder,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Quick. They will have heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. &ldquo;This
+      way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind!&rdquo; said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable.
+      &ldquo;Between them and not across them,&rdquo; said the voice. And,
+      &ldquo;We must hurry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the people?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The people you
+      said awaited me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger did not answer. He left Graham&rsquo;s arm as the path grew
+      narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+      a minute he found himself running. &ldquo;Are the others coming?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; said his guide. Running now, they drew near a
+      little windmill spinning high in the air. &ldquo;Stoop,&rdquo; said Graham&rsquo;s
+      guide, and they avoided an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of
+      the vane. &ldquo;This way!&rdquo; and they were ankle deep in a gutter
+      full of drifted thawing snow, between two low walls of metal that
+      presently rose waist high. &ldquo;I will go first,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Come
+      on!&rdquo; cried his guide, with terror in his voice. &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the ridge, following his guide&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have missed us already!&rdquo; cried Graham&rsquo;s guide in
+      an accent of terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get on this,&rdquo; cried Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+      shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They cowered panting and stared out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will be chasing us,&rdquo; cried the leader. &ldquo;We are
+      scarcely halfway there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space&mdash;at
+      least until it snows more thickly again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His teeth chattered in his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the markets?&rdquo; asked Graham staring out. &ldquo;Where
+      are all the people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Look</i>!&rdquo; whispered Graham, crouched close, and became
+      very still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Now</i>!&rdquo; cried his companion. &ldquo;Come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as I do,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;It is a ledge,&rdquo; he
+      whispered. &ldquo;In the dark all the way along. Do as I did.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s. &ldquo;<i>Still</i>!&rdquo; whispered the latter very
+      softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep still; they were just turning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For awhile both were motionless, then Graham&rsquo;s companion stood up,
+      and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+      indistinct tackle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The man&rsquo;s movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;Put the cross between
+      your legs,&rdquo; whispered the guide hysterically, &ldquo;and grip the
+      holdfasts. Grip tightly, grip!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham did as he was told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jump,&rdquo; said the voice. &ldquo;In heaven&rsquo;s name, jump!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jump! Jump&mdash;in God&rsquo;s name! Or they will have us,&rdquo;
+      cried Graham&rsquo;s guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Saved! The Master. He is safe!&rdquo; The stage rushed up
+      towards him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+      countless multitude. &ldquo;It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper is with us! The Master&mdash;the Owner! The Master is
+      with us. He is safe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+      by one arm. &ldquo;Let me go into a little room,&rdquo; he said, weeping;
+      &ldquo;a little room,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; THE PEOPLE MARCH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+      abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who am I? Who am I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others came nearer to hear his words. &ldquo;Who am I?&rdquo; His eyes
+      searched their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have told him nothing!&rdquo; cried the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, tell me!&rdquo; cried Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+      pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again.
+      &ldquo;I have been awake three days&mdash;a prisoner three days. I judge
+      there is some struggle between a number of people in this city&mdash;it is
+      London?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the younger man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 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. <i>Why</i>, I don&rsquo;t
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To keep you insensible,&rdquo; said the man in yellow. &ldquo;To
+      prevent your interference.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>why</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because <i>you</i> are the Atlas, Sire,&rdquo; said the man in
+      yellow. &ldquo;The world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+      just heard. &ldquo;The Council,&rdquo; he repeated blankly, and then
+      snatched at a name that had struck him. &ldquo;But who is Ostrog?&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the organiser&mdash;the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader&mdash;in
+      your name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my name?&mdash;And you? Why is he not here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&mdash;has deputed us. I am his brother&mdash;his 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your name,&rdquo; shouted the younger man. &ldquo;They have
+      ruled, crushed, tyrannised. At last even&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my name! My name! Master?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;No 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the hall dominated everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready&mdash;. Even now there is
+      a rumour of fighting beginning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. &ldquo;Ostrog
+      has it planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize
+      the flying stages&mdash;. Even now he may be doing that. Then&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This public theatre,&rdquo; bawled the man in yellow, &ldquo;is
+      only a contingent. We have five myriads of drilled men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have arms,&rdquo; cried Lincoln. &ldquo;We have plans. A leader.
+      Their police have gone from the streets and are massed in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+      (inaudible). &ldquo;It is now or never. The Council is rocking&mdash;They
+      cannot trust even their drilled men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear the people calling to you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, Lincoln&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+      was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for &ldquo;Order! Silence!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;tramp, tramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wave your arm to them,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Wave your arm to
+      them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said a voice on the other side, &ldquo;he must have
+      this.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall was a vast and intricate space&mdash;galleries, 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 &ldquo;Ostrog.&rdquo;
+      All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+      song. The multitude were beating time with their feet&mdash;marking 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
+      &ldquo;To the Council!&rdquo; Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his
+      arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout &ldquo;March!&rdquo;
+      His mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and
+      pointed to the archway, shouting &ldquo;Onward!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln&rsquo;s 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&mdash;three 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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mind that these also
+      should have swarmed with people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt a curious emotion&mdash;throbbing&mdash;very 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to 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 &ldquo;The
+      lights!&rdquo; Voices were crying together one thing. &ldquo;The lights!&rdquo;
+      cried these voices. &ldquo;The lights!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something rapped
+      sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, &ldquo;It is all
+      right&mdash;all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+      forehead against Lincoln&rsquo;s and bawled, &ldquo;What is this darkness?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must wait&mdash;stop.
+      The people will go on. They will&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, &ldquo;Save the Sleeper. Take
+      care of the Sleeper.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      A voice bawled in his ear, &ldquo;The red police,&rdquo; and receded
+      forthwith beyond his questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+      once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+      gallery. Someone was shouting&mdash;it 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+      shouted a multitude of throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+      &ldquo;Before the next light!&rdquo; he cried. His haste was contagious.
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+      the writhing body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;They are coming!&rdquo; and a muffled cry close to
+      him. His foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream
+      under foot. He heard shouts of &ldquo;The Sleeper!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s, 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo;
+      he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching Sleeper&rsquo;s
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+      shouting, &ldquo;To hell with the Council!&rdquo; was about to fire again.
+      Then it seemed to Graham that the half of this man&rsquo;s neck had
+      vanished. A drop of moisture fell on Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;They 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!&rdquo; There were women
+      and children in the crowd as well as men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+      were a series of platforms of the &ldquo;ways,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Ostrog&rdquo;
+      as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their
+      struggle. Frantic development of his world! &ldquo;I do not understand,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;I do not understand!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+      accosted by no one&mdash;a dark figure among dark figures&mdash;the
+      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&mdash;so 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&mdash;his pace slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake&mdash;a
+      roaring and thundering&mdash;a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the
+      city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry&mdash;a
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. &ldquo;What
+      have they blown up?&rdquo; asked the man breathlessly. &ldquo;That was an
+      explosion,&rdquo; and before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Here is Eadhamite,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Labour
+      Bureau&mdash;Little Side&rdquo;? Grotesque thought, that all these
+      cliff-like houses were his!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no dream,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;no dream.&rdquo; And he
+      bowed his face upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+      couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have ye any news?&rdquo; asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a
+      very old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. &ldquo;None,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stay here till the lights come again,&rdquo; said the old man.
+      &ldquo;These blue scoundrels are everywhere&mdash;everywhere.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dark and damnable,&rdquo; said the old man suddenly. &ldquo;Dark
+      and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s hard,&rdquo; ventured Graham. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s hard
+      on you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone
+      mad. War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don&rsquo;t
+      they bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+      fell over a dead man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re safer with company,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;if
+      it&rsquo;s company of the right sort,&rdquo; and peered frankly. He rose
+      suddenly and came towards Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+      relieved to be no longer alone. &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but this
+      is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there&mdash;men,
+      strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where
+      they are to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: &ldquo;God knows where they are
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+      Again the old man&rsquo;s voice ended the pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Ostrog will win,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He 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&rsquo;re not common people. Though they&rsquo;ve
+      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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog!&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greatest Boss the world has ever seen,&rdquo; said the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham ransacked his mind. &ldquo;The Council has few friends among the
+      people,&rdquo; he hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Few friends. And poor ones at that. They&rsquo;ve had their time.
+      Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held
+      election. And Ostrog&mdash;. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay
+      it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog&mdash;Ostrog the Boss.
+      I heard of his rages at the time&mdash;he 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a little while. &ldquo;This Sleeper,&rdquo; he said, and
+      stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+      close. &ldquo;The real Sleeper&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Died years ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Graham, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago. Died. Years ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say so!&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who&rsquo;s woke up&mdash;they
+      changed in the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn&rsquo;t
+      tell all I know. I mustn&rsquo;t tell all I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know the ones that put him to sleep&mdash;that was
+      before my time&mdash;but I know the man who injected the stimulants and
+      woke him again. It was ten to one&mdash;wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time they rejected him. I&rsquo;ve followed it all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rejected whom?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The Sleeper?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeper? <i>No</i>. Ostrog. He was terrible&mdash;terrible! And he
+      was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were&mdash;not
+      to be more afraid of him. Now all the city&rsquo;s his millstone, and such
+      as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work&mdash;the
+      workers cut each other&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;t been this gross of years. Eh!&mdash;but
+      &lsquo;tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! It&rsquo;s ill.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say&mdash;there had not been&mdash;what?&mdash;for a gross
+      of years?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+      this a third time. &ldquo;Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and
+      fools bawling freedom and the like,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Not in
+      all my life has there been that. These are like the old days&mdash;for
+      sure&mdash;when the Paris people broke out&mdash;three gross of years ago.
+      That&rsquo;s what I mean hasn&rsquo;t been. But it&rsquo;s the world&rsquo;s
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are rather well-informed on these things,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what I hear. It isn&rsquo;t all Babble Machine with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be.
+      &ldquo;And you are certain this Ostrog&mdash;you are certain Ostrog
+      organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just
+      to assert himself&mdash;because he was not elected to the Council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone knows that, I should think,&rdquo; said the old man.
+      &ldquo;Except&mdash;just 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&rsquo;t
+      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&rsquo;s
+      real and woke of his own accord&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful,&rdquo; said
+      Graham. &ldquo;Lots of things that have happened&mdash;especially of late
+      years&mdash;. If I was the Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn&rsquo;t
+      know less about them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the voice. &ldquo;Old, are you? You don&rsquo;t
+      sound so very old! But it&rsquo;s not everyone keeps his memory to my time
+      of life&mdash;truly. But these notorious things! But you&rsquo;re not so
+      old as me&mdash;not nearly so old as me. Well! I ought not to judge other
+      men by myself, perhaps. I&rsquo;m young&mdash;for so old a man. Maybe you&rsquo;re
+      old for so young.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve 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&rsquo;s
+      interesting to hear you talk of these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know a few things,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I know a thing
+      or two. But&mdash;. Hark!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! but how things work together!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;This
+      Sleeper that all the fools put their trust in! I&rsquo;ve the whole
+      history of it&mdash;I was always a good one for histories. When I was a
+      boy&mdash;I&rsquo;m that old&mdash;I used to read printed books. You&rsquo;d
+      hardly think it. Likely you&rsquo;ve seen none&mdash;they rot and dust so&mdash;and
+      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&mdash;they don&rsquo;t seem new-fangled to you, eh?&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+      easy to hear, easy to forget. But I&rsquo;ve traced all the Sleeper
+      business from the first.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will scarcely believe it,&rdquo; said Graham slowly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      so ignorant&mdash;I&rsquo;ve been so preoccupied in my own little affairs,
+      my circumstances have been so odd&mdash;I know nothing of this Sleeper&rsquo;s
+      history. Who was he?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I know, I know. He was a poor
+      nobody, and set on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance.
+      There&rsquo;s the old things they had, those brown things&mdash;silver
+      photographs&mdash;still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years
+      ago&mdash;a gross and a half of years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set on a playful woman, poor soul,&rdquo; said Graham softly to
+      himself, and then aloud, &ldquo;Yes&mdash;well go on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+      children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads&mdash;the first
+      Eadhamite roads. But surely you&rsquo;ve 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&mdash;the old things&mdash;in two dozen
+      years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn&rsquo;t
+      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&rsquo;t 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&rsquo;-worth or more of property at the very
+      beginning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was his name?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Graham.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I mean&mdash;that American&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isbister.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isbister!&rdquo; cried Graham. &ldquo;Why, I don&rsquo;t even know
+      the name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Of course not.
+      People don&rsquo;t 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&rsquo;t 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did it grow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&mdash;but you&rsquo;re not up to things. Money attracts money&mdash;and
+      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&mdash;they grew. And for years the twelve trustees
+      hid the growing of the Sleeper&rsquo;s 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&mdash;the Sleeper&rsquo;s estate. And all
+      growing out of a whim&mdash;out of this Warming&rsquo;s will, and an
+      accident to Isbister&rsquo;s sons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men are strange,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;The 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&rsquo;ve slipped back. In
+      my young days speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of
+      God. We didn&rsquo;t think they could do wrong. We didn&rsquo;t know of
+      their women and all that! Or else I&rsquo;ve got wiser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men are strange,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Here are you,
+      young and ignorant, and me&mdash;sevendy years old, and I might reasonably
+      before getting&mdash;explaining it all to you short and clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sevendy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;sevendy, and I hear and see&mdash;hear
+      better than I see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the
+      happenings of things. Sevendy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember
+      him long before he&rsquo;d pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes
+      Control. I&rsquo;ve seen many changes. Eh! I&rsquo;ve worn the blue. And
+      at last I&rsquo;ve 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if I have it
+      right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. &ldquo;The
+      Sleeper has been asleep&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper&rsquo;s property grew in the
+      hands of Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great
+      ownership of the world. The Twelve Trustees&mdash;by virtue of this
+      property have become masters of the world. Because they are the paying
+      power&mdash;just as the old English Parliament used to be&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s so&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      a good comparison. You&rsquo;re not so&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now this Ostrog&mdash;has suddenly revolutionised the world by
+      waking the Sleeper&mdash;whom no one but the superstitious, common people
+      had ever dreamt would wake again&mdash;raising the Sleeper to claim his
+      property from the Council, after all these years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      strange,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to meet a man who learns these things for
+      the first time to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s strange.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been in a Pleasure City?&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;All
+      my life I&rsquo;ve longed&mdash;&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;Even now,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;I could enjoy a little fun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow.&rdquo;
+      He mumbled a sentence Graham did not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper&mdash;when did he awake?&rdquo; said Graham suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three days ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog 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&mdash;where
+      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&mdash;everyone
+      was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even then! But you&rsquo;re
+      joking! Surely you&rsquo;re pretending. It was to stop the shouting of the
+      Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that they turned off the
+      electricity&mdash;and put this damned darkness upon us. Do you mean to say&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had heard the Sleeper was rescued,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But&mdash;to
+      come back a minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t let him go,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn&rsquo;t a
+      thousand things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that.
+      Did I tell you? In a way I&rsquo;m a sort of relation of Ostrog&rsquo;s. A
+      sort of relation. Through my daughter-in-law.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there&rsquo;s no chance of this Sleeper asserting
+      himself. I suppose he&rsquo;s certain to be a puppet&mdash;in Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      hands or the Council&rsquo;s, as soon as the struggle is over.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Ostrog&rsquo;s hands&mdash;certainly. Why shouldn&rsquo;t he be
+      a puppet? Look at his position. Everything done for him, every pleasure
+      possible. Why should he want to assert himself?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are these Pleasure Cities?&rdquo; said Graham, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+      Graham&rsquo;s words, he nudged him violently. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s <i>too</i>
+      much,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re poking fun at an old man. I&rsquo;ve
+      been suspecting you know more than you pretend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I do,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But no! why should I go on
+      acting? No, I do not know what a Pleasure City is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;if you had a glass of
+      drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me all these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun.&rdquo;
+      A withered hand caressed Graham&rsquo;s arm for a moment. &ldquo;Silk.
+      Well, well! But, all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the
+      Sleeper. He&rsquo;ll have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He&rsquo;s
+      a queer looking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I&rsquo;ve
+      got tickets and been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show
+      him, this substitute used to be. Yellow. But he&rsquo;ll get fed up. It&rsquo;s
+      a queer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he&rsquo;ll
+      be sent to Capri. It&rsquo;s the best fun for a greener.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+      pleasures and strange delights. &ldquo;The luck of it, the luck of it! All
+      my life I&rsquo;ve been in London, hoping to get my chance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know that the Sleeper died,&rdquo; said Graham,
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made him repeat his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men don&rsquo;t live beyond ten dozen. It&rsquo;s not in the order
+      of things,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a fool. Fools may
+      believe it, but not me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham became angry with the old man&rsquo;s assurance. &ldquo;Whether you
+      are a fool or not,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it happens you are wrong about
+      the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven&rsquo;t told you before,
+      but I will tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know? I thought you didn&rsquo;t know anything&mdash;not
+      even about Pleasure Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;How are you
+      to know? It&rsquo;s very few men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to repeat it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a brief pause. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a silly thing to say, sir,
+      if you&rsquo;ll excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like
+      this,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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&mdash;I who speak to you&mdash;who awakened again these four
+      days since.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four days since!&mdash;the Sleeper! But they&rsquo;ve <i>got</i>
+      the Sleeper. They have him and they won&rsquo;t let him go. Nonsense! You&rsquo;ve
+      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&rsquo;t
+      let him go about alone. Trust them. You&rsquo;re a queer fellow. One of
+      these fun pokers. I see now why you have been clipping your words so
+      oddly, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you&rsquo;re
+      telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What&rsquo;s
+      your game? And besides, we&rsquo;ve been talking of the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood up. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re an odd man,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;to sit
+      here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s exasperation fell to laughter. &ldquo;It is preposterous,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and
+      wilder. Here am I&mdash;in this damned twilight&mdash;I never knew a dream
+      in twilight before&mdash;an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to
+      persuade an old fool that I am myself, and meanwhile&mdash;Ugh!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+      was pursuing him. &ldquo;Eh! but don&rsquo;t go!&rdquo; cried the old man.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an old fool, I know. Don&rsquo;t go. Don&rsquo;t leave me
+      in all this darkness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+      flashed into his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to offend you&mdash;disbelieving you,&rdquo;
+      said the old man coming near. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no manner of harm. Call
+      yourself the Sleeper if it pleases you. &lsquo;Tis a foolish trick&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time he heard the old man&rsquo;s hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+      cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; OSTROG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Presently a man stopped before him. &ldquo;Have you heard?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Graham, starting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Near a dozand,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;a dozand men!&rdquo; and
+      hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+      shouting: &ldquo;Capitulated! Given up!&rdquo; &ldquo;A dozand of men.&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Two dozand of men.&rdquo; &ldquo;Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!&rdquo;
+      These cries receded, became indistinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;nigger&rdquo;
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the &ldquo;wind-vane
+      offices&rdquo; whatever the &ldquo;wind-vane offices&rdquo; 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&mdash;knowing no other means of transit&mdash;and 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&rsquo;s voice singing, &ldquo;tralala
+      tralala.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+      excitedly. &ldquo;They have surrendered!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Council! Surely
+      not the Council!&rdquo; &ldquo;They are saying so in the Ways.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Strike straight across,&rdquo; said a woman&rsquo;s voice.
+      He left his guiding wall, and in a moment had stumbled against a little
+      table on which were utensils of glass. Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It is you. And you are not dead!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made a brief explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother is waiting,&rdquo; explained Lincoln. &ldquo;He is alone
+      in the wind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He
+      doubted&mdash;and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are
+      telling them <i>there</i>&mdash;or he would have come to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. &ldquo;It
+      is Ostrog!&rdquo; he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+      everything was still again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+      and stood before it. Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Ostrog?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Ostrog.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Boss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I am called.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. &ldquo;I have to thank you
+      chiefly, I understand, for my safety,&rdquo; he said presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were afraid you were killed,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Or sent
+      to sleep again&mdash;for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our
+      secret&mdash;the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How
+      did you get here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham told him briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog listened in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled faintly. &ldquo;Do you know what I was doing when they came to
+      tell me you had come?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I guess?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Preparing your double.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My double?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A 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&mdash;something of your
+      position?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very little,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is like this.&rdquo; Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room
+      and turned. &ldquo;You are absolute owner,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard the vague outline of these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wondered.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came upon a garrulous old man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.... Our masses&mdash;the word comes from your days&mdash;you
+      know, of course, that we still have masses&mdash;regard you as our actual
+      ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as
+      the ruler. They are discontented&mdash;the masses all over the earth&mdash;with
+      the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+      old quarrel of the common man with his commonness&mdash;the 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&mdash;when your waking came.
+      Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunely.&rdquo;
+      He smiled. &ldquo;The public mind, making no allowance for your years of
+      quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing to
+      you, and&mdash;Flash!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+      that he understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council muddled&mdash;quarrelled. They always do. They could
+      not decide what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. I see. And now&mdash;we win?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That 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&mdash;not half
+      of them could be massed at the Council House&mdash;have been broken up,
+      disarmed or killed. All London is ours&mdash;now. Only the Council House
+      remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half 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&mdash;the 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&mdash;So!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very ignorant,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I suppose&mdash;I do
+      not clearly understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could
+      explain. Where is the Council? Where is the fight?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment you will see the fighting,&rdquo; said Ostrog at his
+      elbow. &ldquo;Those fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the
+      roof space of London&mdash;all the houses are practically continuous now.
+      The streets and public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your
+      time have disappeared.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Ostrog, &ldquo;comes the Council House,&rdquo; and
+      slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the Council House,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Their last
+      stronghold. And the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month
+      in blowing up the buildings all about them&mdash;to stop our attack. You
+      heard the smash? It shattered half the brittle glass in the city.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>coup
+      d'itat</i>. Ostrog&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Council is really overthrown?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Overthrown,&rdquo; said Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I&mdash;. Is it indeed true that I&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Master of the World.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that white flag&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the flag of the Council&mdash;the 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;help. Is this city the world?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Practically 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But haven&rsquo;t the Council flying machines? Why is there no
+      fighting with them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt
+      with us. They wouldn&rsquo;t take the risk of fighting on our side, but
+      they would not stir against us. We <i>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&mdash;an 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&mdash;for
+      some did&mdash;we kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get
+      near the Council House. If they dropped they couldn&rsquo;t rise again,
+      because there&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s way. Upsetting in a flying
+      machine isn&rsquo;t a very attractive prospect. There&rsquo;s no chance
+      for the Council that way. Its days are done.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;But these things I must explain more fully later. At
+      present there are&mdash;duties. The people are coming by the moving ways
+      towards this ward from every part of the city&mdash;the 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&mdash;thousands 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely&mdash;I can&rsquo;t go ...&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;There
+      are kineto-telephoto-graphs,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As you bow to the
+      people here&mdash;all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed
+      and still in darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of
+      course&mdash;not like this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the
+      shouting in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is an optical contrivance we shall use,&rdquo; said
+      Ostrog, &ldquo;used 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&mdash;so that even the
+      furtherest man in the remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your
+      eyelashes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. &ldquo;What
+      is the population of London?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight and twaindy myriads.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight and what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than thirty-three millions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These figures went beyond Graham&rsquo;s imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be expected to say something,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Not
+      what you used to call a Speech, but what our people call a word&mdash;just
+      one sentence, six or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest&mdash;&lsquo;I
+      have awakened and my heart is with you.&rsquo; That is the sort of thing
+      they want.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was that?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am awakened and my heart is with you.&rsquo; And bow&mdash;bow
+      royally. But first we must get you black robes&mdash;for black is your
+      colour. Do you mind? And then they will disperse to their homes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. &ldquo;I am in your hands,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+      Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s arm
+      and pointed to the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even as we turned away,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;?&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in
+      little jerks up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are clamorous,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog kept his grip of Graham&rsquo;s arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have raised the people,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have given
+      them arms. For to-day at least their wishes must be law.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;Word&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+      of it in the oval mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let them see you, Sire?&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They
+      are very anxious to see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Master, the Master! God and the Master,&rdquo; shouted the
+      people. &ldquo;To hell with the Council!&rdquo; 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&mdash;and this as well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; FROM THE CROW&rsquo;S NEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The
+      rest of the world hung in suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; time a
+      representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in the
+      state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s-eye view of the city from the crow&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;minute they looked
+      from above&mdash;rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were
+      the specula, <i>en rapport</i> with the wind-vane keeper&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+      below. St. Paul&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for the
+      sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines&mdash;the 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&mdash;an 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;as 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&rsquo;s
+      estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer&rsquo;s shop and
+      church&mdash;the 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&mdash;simply
+      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&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+      contemporary men, strained Graham&rsquo;s imagination to picture. And when
+      he glanced &ldquo;over beyond there&rdquo; at the strange things that
+      existed on the Continent, it failed him altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Pidgin&rdquo;
+      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&mdash;German, 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 &ldquo;Pidgin&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+      &ldquo;black belt&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; PROMINENT PEOPLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;amorist,&rdquo; wore his hair in two becoming plaits <i>` 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Everyone&rsquo;s movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln
+      that he saw men as Raphael&rsquo;s cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him
+      that the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every
+      rich person&rsquo;s education. The Master&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, 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&rsquo;s vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+      exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; he asked almost involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bishop of London,&rdquo; said Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;the other, I mean.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poet Laureate.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You still&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t make poetry, of course. He&rsquo;s a cousin of
+      Wotton&mdash;one of the Councillors. But he&rsquo;s one of the Red Rose
+      Royalists&mdash;a delightful club&mdash;and they keep up the tradition of
+      these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asano told me there was a King.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King doesn&rsquo;t belong. They had to expel him. It&rsquo;s
+      the Stuart blood, I suppose; but really&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far too much.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham&rsquo;s ideas,
+      with the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances
+      of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master&rsquo;s 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 &ldquo;aerial dog&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      used that phrase&mdash;that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+      thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn&rsquo;t
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to see that type endures,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phonographs and kinematographs,&rdquo; said Lincoln, a little
+      spitefully. &ldquo;He has studied from the life.&rdquo; Graham glanced at
+      the burly form again. It was oddly reminiscent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a matter of fact we bought him,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Partly.
+      And partly he was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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&rsquo;s functions, and
+      asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+      seemed quietly amused at the Master&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;We have conquered Cram,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;completely conquered Cram&mdash;there is not an examination left in
+      the world. Aren&rsquo;t you glad?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you get the work done?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We make it attractive&mdash;as attractive as possible. And if it
+      does not attract then&mdash;we let it go. We cover an immense field.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+      learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. &ldquo;There
+      is a certain type of girl, for example,&rdquo; said the Surveyor-General,
+      dilating with a sense of his usefulness, &ldquo;with a perfect passion for
+      severe studies&mdash;when they are not too difficult you know. We cater
+      for them by the thousand. At this moment,&rdquo; he said with a Napoleonic
+      touch, &ldquo;nearly 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the public elementary schools,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Do
+      you control them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Surveyor-General did, &ldquo;entirely.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s words. &ldquo;We
+      try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children.
+      They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple principles&mdash;obedience&mdash;industry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You teach them very little?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse
+      them. Even as it is&mdash;there are troubles&mdash;agitations. Where the
+      labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are
+      socialistic dreams&mdash;anarchy even! Agitators <i>will</i> get to work
+      among them. I take it&mdash;I have always taken it&mdash;that my foremost
+      duty is to fight against popular discontent. Why should people be made
+      unhappy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham thoughtfully. &ldquo;But there are a
+      great many things I want to know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham&rsquo;s face throughout the
+      conversation, intervened. &ldquo;There are others,&rdquo; he said in an
+      undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo;
+      said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, &ldquo;you would like to know
+      some of these ladies?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dear old days,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;countless times&mdash;to
+      imagine those old romantic days. And to you&mdash;they 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into this,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out of your life&mdash;out of all that was familiar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old life was not a happy one,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I do
+      not regret that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+      encouragingly. &ldquo;No?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;It was a little life&mdash;and
+      unmeaning. But this&mdash;We thought the world complex and crowded and
+      civilised enough. Yet I see&mdash;although in this world I am barely four
+      days old&mdash;looking back on my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric
+      time&mdash;the mere beginning of this new order. The mere beginning of
+      this new order. You will find it hard to understand how little I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may ask me what you like,&rdquo; she said, smiling at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me who these people are. I&rsquo;m still very much in the
+      dark about them. It&rsquo;s puzzling. Are there any Generals?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men in hats and feathers?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+      public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That? He&rsquo;s 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud,&rdquo; said Graham.
+      &ldquo;Pills! What a wonderful time it is! That man in purple?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He 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 <i>doing</i>
+      something&mdash;&rdquo; She smiled away the social pretensions of all such
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are any of your great artists or authors here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No authors. They are mostly such queer people&mdash;and so
+      preoccupied about themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will
+      fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn&rsquo;t
+      it? But I think Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From
+      Capri.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capillotomist,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Ah! I remember. An
+      artist! Why not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have to cultivate him,&rdquo; she said apologetically. &ldquo;Our
+      heads are in his hands.&rdquo; She smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was expressive.
+      &ldquo;Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Who are your great painters?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. &ldquo;For a moment,&rdquo;
+      she said, &ldquo;I thought you meant&mdash;&rdquo; She laughed again.
+      &ldquo;You 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&rsquo;t any. People grew tired of
+      that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what did you think I meant?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+      and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. &ldquo;And here,&rdquo;
+      and she indicated her eyelid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Who is
+      that talking with the lady in saffron?&rdquo; he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;the 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&mdash;hitherto there had been a
+      rule of clerical monogamy&mdash;&ldquo;neither 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, bye the bye,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;are you an Anglican?&rdquo;
+      Graham was on the verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a
+      &ldquo;subsidiary wife,&rdquo; apparently an euphemistic phrase, when
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+      himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+      bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      Ah! Now he remembered!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an <i>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>
+    <p>
+      Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this
+      gathering reasserted itself, the <i>motif</i> of the marching song, once
+      it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+      and grasped her opportunity to escape. &ldquo;Would you care to know that
+      girl, Sire?&rdquo; she asked boldly. &ldquo;She is Helen Wotton&mdash;a
+      niece of Ostrog&rsquo;s. She knows a great many serious things. She is one
+      of the most serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed lady
+      had fluttered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember you quite well,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You were in
+      that little room. When all the people were singing and beating time with
+      their feet. Before I walked across the Hall.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face was
+      steady. &ldquo;It was wonderful,&rdquo; she said, hesitated, and spoke
+      with a sudden effort. &ldquo;All those people would have died for you,
+      Sire. Countless people did die for you that night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard her
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; she
+      said quickly, &ldquo;I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people
+      are very unhappy; they are oppressed&mdash;they are misgoverned. Do not
+      forget the people, who faced death&mdash;death that you might live.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing&mdash;&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the
+      girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You find the new world amusing, Sire?&rdquo; asked Lincoln, with
+      smiling deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering
+      by one comprehensive gesture. &ldquo;At any rate, you find it changed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;changed. And yet, after all, not so
+      greatly changed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till you are in the air,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;The wind
+      has fallen; even now an aeroplane awaits you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s attitude awaited dismissal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; THE MONOPLANE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;the starting carriers&mdash;that
+      could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails
+      to the end of the fabric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;one,
+      two, three, pause; one, two, three&mdash;which 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&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the
+      sky. Throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat.
+      He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon
+      his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return&mdash;perhaps a little
+      artificially. &ldquo;A little strange at first,&rdquo; he shouted before
+      he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time.
+      He stared over the aeronaut&rsquo;s 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&mdash;beat;
+      suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose&mdash;!
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s crow&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;innumerable minute oblongs of
+      ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;sunlit and pleasant&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;trouble in the
+      under-ways,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said
+      Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. &ldquo;London aeroplane, Sire,&rdquo;
+      bawled the aeronaut, pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came and
+      nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat, of the
+      monoplane&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham&rsquo;s
+      enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land,&rdquo; called the aeronaut, his voice small against the
+      whistling of the air over the wind-screen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; bawled Graham, laughing. &ldquo;Not land yet. I
+      want to learn more of this machine.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant&mdash;&rdquo; said the aeronaut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to learn more of this machine,&rdquo; repeated Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming to you,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to have these things explained,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What
+      do you do when you move that engine forward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, &ldquo;They are complex, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind,&rdquo; shouted Graham. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s pause. &ldquo;Aeronautics is the secret&mdash;the
+      privilege&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But I&rsquo;m the Master, and I mean to know.&rdquo; He
+      laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from
+      the upper air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham&rsquo;s
+      face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+      west. The two men looked into each other&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire, there are rules&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not where I am concerned,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;You seem to
+      forget.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut scrutinised his face &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I do
+      not forget, Sire. But in all the earth&mdash;no man who is not a sworn
+      aeronaut&mdash;has ever a chance. They come as passengers&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard something of the sort. But I&rsquo;m not going to
+      argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To
+      fly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; said the aeronaut, &ldquo;the rules&mdash;if I break
+      the rules&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham waved the penalties aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you will watch me&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine
+      lifted its nose again for an ascent. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s 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&mdash;to 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&mdash;. In my past it was my
+      dream to fly. Now&mdash;keep your balance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I Master of the earth?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Or is your
+      Society? Now. Take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes&mdash;so.
+      And now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; said the aeronaut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will protect me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s clearly to your advantage, this journey,&rdquo; he said
+      with a loud laugh&mdash;for the air was like strong wine&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      teach me quickly and well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back, Sire! Back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back&mdash;right. One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;good God! Ah! Up
+      she goes! But this is living!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What was that?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I
+      did not see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;That,&rdquo; and he indicated the white thing
+      still fluttering down, &ldquo;was a swan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw it,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+      forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; THREE DAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must learn to fly,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences,&rdquo;
+      said Lincoln. &ldquo;I do not know what you will care to do now. We have
+      music that may seem novel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the present,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;flying holds me. Let me
+      learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union
+      objection to one&rsquo;s learning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, I believe,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;But for you&mdash;!
+      If you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn
+      aeronaut to-morrow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a
+      while. &ldquo;And as for affairs,&rdquo; he asked abruptly. &ldquo;How are
+      things going on?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln waved affairs aside. &ldquo;Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;Everything 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&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you
+      call it, forthwith&mdash;before I sleep?&rdquo; said Graham, pacing.
+      &ldquo;Then I could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be possible,&rdquo; said Lincoln thoughtfully. &ldquo;Quite
+      possible. Indeed, it shall be done.&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;I 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&rsquo;t think that after you have
+      dined you might prefer&mdash;?&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had prepared a show of dancers&mdash;they have been brought from
+      the Capri theatre.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate ballets,&rdquo; said Graham, shortly. &ldquo;Always did.
+      That other&mdash;. That&rsquo;s 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Though our dancers&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can afford to wait,&rdquo; said Graham; &ldquo;they can afford
+      to wait. I know. I&rsquo;m not a Latin. There&rsquo;s questions I want to
+      ask some expert&mdash;about your machinery. I&rsquo;m keen. I want no
+      distractions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have the world to choose from,&rdquo; said Lincoln; &ldquo;whatever
+      you want is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+      through the city streets to Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s answers to the endless questions Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+      kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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.
+      &ldquo;We were savages,&rdquo; was his refrain, &ldquo;we were savages. We
+      were in the stone age&mdash;compared with this.... And what else have you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;calculating boys,&rdquo; 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&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Here&mdash;or a hundred feet below here,&rdquo; he
+      could say, &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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; &ldquo;a
+      little trouble&rdquo; soon to be settled in this city, &ldquo;a slight
+      disturbance&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s nest slumbered in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He felt a regal impulse to assist her. &ldquo;I have wanted to see you,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;A few days ago you wanted to tell me something&mdash;you
+      wanted to tell me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said the people were unhappy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she was silent still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have seemed strange to you,&rdquo; she said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did. And yet&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was an impulse.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+      &ldquo;You forget,&rdquo; she said, drawing a deep breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked interrogative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you
+      are. You do not know the things that are happening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not clearly, perhaps. But&mdash;tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to him with sudden resolution. &ldquo;It is so hard to explain.
+      I have meant to, I have wanted to. And now&mdash;I cannot. I am not ready
+      with words. But about you&mdash;there is something. It is wonder. Your
+      sleep&mdash;your awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least&mdash;and
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Master of the earth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So they tell me. But
+      try and imagine how little I know of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cities&mdash;Trusts&mdash;the Labour Department&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Principalities, powers, dominions&mdash;the power and the glory.
+      Yes, I have heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With
+      Ostrog, the Boss&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;To take the responsibility.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what we have begun to fear.&rdquo; For a moment she said no
+      more. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said slowly. &ldquo;<i>You</i> will take the
+      responsibility. You will take the responsibility. The people look to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke softly. &ldquo;Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep&mdash;in
+      every generation&mdash;multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+      multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake&mdash;<i>prayed</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham moved to speak and did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. &ldquo;Do you
+      know that you have been to myriads&mdash;King Arthur, Barbarossa&mdash;the
+      King who would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose the imagination of the people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not heard our proverb, &lsquo;When the Sleeper wakes&rsquo;?
+      While you lay insensible and motionless there&mdash;thousands 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted wall
+      before her. Her voice fell. &ldquo;When I was a little girl I used to look
+      at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience of
+      God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what we thought of you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That is how
+      you seemed to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. &ldquo;In
+      the city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see
+      what you will do, full of strange incredible expectations.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog&mdash;no one&mdash;can take that responsibility.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that 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&mdash;do 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know how great this kingship of mine is,&rdquo; he said
+      haltingly. &ldquo;I know how great it seems. But is it real? It is
+      incredible&mdash;dreamlike. Is it real, or is it only a great delusion?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is real,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;if you dare.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an
+      illusion in the minds of men.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you dare!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Countless men,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and while it is in their
+      minds&mdash;they will obey.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+      these others&mdash;the 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped blankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am still hardly more than a girl,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But 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&mdash;and
+      robbed life of&mdash;everything worth having.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. &ldquo;Your days were
+      the days of freedom. Yes&mdash;I have thought. I have been made to think,
+      for my life&mdash;has not been happy. Men are no longer free&mdash;no
+      greater, no better than the men of your time. That is not all. This city&mdash;is
+      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&mdash;for 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&mdash;they know
+      they suffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights
+      since&mdash;! You owe your life to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham, slowly. &ldquo;Yes. I owe my life to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;from the days when this new
+      tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny&mdash;a
+      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&mdash;there was nobility! Common
+      men led lives of love and faithfulness then&mdash;they did a thousand
+      things. And you&mdash;you come from that time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not&mdash;. But never mind. How is it now&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery&mdash;unthanked,
+      unhonoured, slavery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slavery!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slavery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that human beings are chattels.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse. 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everywhere.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are the slaves&mdash;your slaves. They are the slaves of the
+      Labour Department you own.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Labour Department! In some way&mdash;that 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&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck
+      you. Nearly a third of our people wear it&mdash;more assume it now every
+      day. This Labour Department has grown imperceptibly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>is</i> this Labour Department?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was the workhouse&mdash;which the parishes maintained.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Workhouse! Yes&mdash;there was something. In our history lessons. I
+      remember now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew&mdash;partly&mdash;out
+      of something&mdash;you, perhaps, may remember it&mdash;an emotional
+      religious organisation called the Salvation Army&mdash;that 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowadays 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&mdash;or
+      seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means&mdash;for 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&mdash;that is the first
+      condition of the Department&rsquo;s incorporation&mdash;and in return for
+      a day&rsquo;s shelter the Department extracts a day&rsquo;s work, and then
+      returns the visitor&rsquo;s proper clothing and sends him or her out
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men
+      starved in your streets. That was bad. But they died&mdash;<i>men</i>.
+      These people in blue&mdash;. The proverb runs: &lsquo;Blue canvas once and
+      ever.&rsquo; The Department trades in their labour, and it has taken care
+      to assure itself of the supply. People come to it starving and helpless&mdash;they
+      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&mdash;enough 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&mdash;brought 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&rsquo;s care. The mother owes them
+      a month thereafter&mdash;the children they cherish and educate until they
+      are fourteen, and they pay two years&rsquo; service. You may be sure these
+      children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Department
+      works.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And none are destitute in the city?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have
+      abolished destitution. It is engraved upon the Department&rsquo;s checks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they will not work?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+      There are stages of unpleasantness in the work&mdash;stoppage of food&mdash;and
+      a man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+      system in the Department&rsquo;s 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&mdash;dark and miserable&mdash;out
+      of sight below. There are prisons now for many things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More 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&rsquo;s 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a space Graham sat downcast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there has been a revolution,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;All these
+      things will be changed. Ostrog&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That 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&mdash;you who come from a happier age&mdash;it is to
+      you the people look. To you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what am I to do?&rdquo; he said with his eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rule,&rdquo; she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a
+      low tone. &ldquo;Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good
+      and happiness of men. For you might rule it&mdash;you could rule it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are stirring. All over the world the people are
+      stirring. It wants but a word&mdash;but a word from you&mdash;to bring
+      them all together. Even the middle sort of people are restless&mdash;unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people
+      will not go back to their drudgery&mdash;they refuse to be disarmed.
+      Ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of&mdash;he has
+      awakened hopes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+      considerations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They only want their leader,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could do what you would;&mdash;the world is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. &ldquo;The old
+      dreams, and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams?
+      Could one man&mdash;<i>one man</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; His voice sank and
+      ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one man, but all men&mdash;give them only a leader to speak the
+      desire of their hearts.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. &ldquo;I have not your faith,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me.
+      No&mdash;let me speak. I want to do&mdash;not right&mdash;I have not the
+      strength for that&mdash;but 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&mdash;.... One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery
+      shall end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will rule?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Provided&mdash;. There is one thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you will help me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i>&mdash;a girl!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. &ldquo;Need you ask
+      whether I will help you?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+      hour. Graham rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Ostrog will be waiting.&rdquo; He
+      hesitated, facing her. &ldquo;When I have asked him certain questions&mdash;.
+      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&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+      from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; OSTROG&rsquo;S POINT OF VIEW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day&rsquo;s
+      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. &ldquo;After all these years,&rdquo; said Ostrog, when Graham
+      pressed enquiries; &ldquo;the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+      the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;A
+      little,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;In one quarter only. But the Senegalese
+      division of our African agricultural police&mdash;the Consolidated African
+      Companies have a very well drilled police&mdash;was 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you expect trouble?&rdquo; asked Graham abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a lot of discontent&mdash;social discontent.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Labour Department?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are learning,&rdquo; said Ostrog with a touch of surprise.
+      &ldquo;Yes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It
+      was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow&mdash;that
+      and your awakening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. &ldquo;We had to stir up their
+      discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness&mdash;all
+      men equal&mdash;all men happy&mdash;no luxury that everyone may not share&mdash;ideas
+      that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+      these ideals, impossible as they are&mdash;in order to overthrow the
+      Council. And now&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+      people whom we have stirred up&mdash;remain 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&mdash;we have had to call in a little external help.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke with
+      restraint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are useful,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They are fine loyal
+      brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads&mdash;such 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&mdash;only 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&mdash;that
+      may happen. But it won&rsquo;t interrupt your aeronautics. The days when
+      the People could make revolutions are past.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they are,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I suppose they are.&rdquo;
+      He mused. &ldquo;This 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. &ldquo;The day of democracy is past,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crécy, 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&mdash;it 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&mdash;a multiplex, silly one&mdash;the man
+      in the Crowd.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre preoccupations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;The 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&mdash;tempered. 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;there is something resists,
+      something you are holding down&mdash;something that stirs and presses.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see,&rdquo; said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would
+      brush these difficult questions aside. &ldquo;I have not roused the force
+      to destroy myself&mdash;trust me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog stared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Must</i> the world go this way?&rdquo; said Graham with his
+      emotions at the speaking point. &ldquo;Must it indeed go in this way? Have
+      all our hopes been vain?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Hopes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&mdash;but you are the chief tyrant.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Ostrog, &ldquo;take the general question. It is
+      the way that change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of
+      the best&mdash;the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better
+      things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But aristocracy! those people I met&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! not <i>those</i>!&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;But 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pleasant extinction,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Yet&mdash;.&rdquo;
+      He thought for an instant. &ldquo;There is that other thing&mdash;the
+      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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+      than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble about these things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everything
+      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 <i>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&mdash;they are already murmuring against those who have
+      overthrown the Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;They shouted because their lives
+      were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me&mdash;in me&mdash;they
+      hoped.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 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&mdash;what 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&mdash;it&rsquo;s a fine duty too!&mdash;is
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. &ldquo;I can
+      imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian
+      Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government&mdash;their
+      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,&mdash;had I not been busy.
+      But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy&mdash;they 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.&rdquo;
+      He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. &ldquo;You 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&mdash;not without. It is each man&rsquo;s own affair. Suppose&mdash;which
+      is impossible&mdash;that 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&rsquo; delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal
+      and assured. The end will be the Over-man&mdash;for all the mad protests
+      of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others
+      will arise&mdash;other masters. The end will be the same.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stood downcast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must see these things for myself,&rdquo; he said, suddenly
+      assuming a tone of confident mastery. &ldquo;Only 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&mdash;and 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&mdash;the
+      labour people more especially&mdash;how they work, marry, bear children,
+      die&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get that from our realistic novelists,&rdquo; suggested Ostrog,
+      suddenly preoccupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want reality,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are difficulties,&rdquo; said Ostrog, and thought. &ldquo;On
+      the whole&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not expect&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought&mdash;. And yet perhaps&mdash;. You say you want to
+      go through the ways of the city and see the common people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he came to some conclusion. &ldquo;You would need to go
+      disguised,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The 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&mdash;this idea of yours&mdash;.
+      Yes, now I think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether&mdash;. 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not want to consult me in any matter?&rdquo; asked Graham
+      suddenly, struck by an odd suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at
+      any rate,&rdquo; said Ostrog, smiling. &ldquo;Even if we differ&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham glanced at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no fighting likely to happen soon?&rdquo; he asked
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking about these negroes. I don&rsquo;t 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. &ldquo;I am not
+      bringing negroes to London,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;But if&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens,&rdquo;
+      said Graham. &ldquo;In that matter I am quite decided.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; IN THE CITY WAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it was odd to see a procession parading the city <i>seated</i>.
+      They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. &ldquo;No
+      disarmament,&rdquo; said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+      letters and with variant spelling, and &ldquo;Why should we disarm?&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;No disarming.&rdquo; &ldquo;No disarming.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;They
+      all ought to be at work,&rdquo; said Asano. &ldquo;They have had no food
+      these two days, or they have stolen it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s harvest of the first revolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and his attention was vividly arrested
+      by the fagade of one of the Christian sects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Salvation on
+      the First Floor and turn to the Right.&rdquo; &ldquo;Put your Money on
+      your Maker.&rdquo; &ldquo;The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert
+      Operators! Look Slippy!&rdquo; &ldquo;What Christ would say to the
+      Sleeper;&mdash;Join the Up-to-date Saints!&rdquo; &ldquo;Be a Christian&mdash;without
+      hindrance to your present Occupation.&rdquo; &ldquo;All the Brightest
+      Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual.&rdquo; &ldquo;Brisk
+      Blessings for Busy Business Men.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is appalling!&rdquo; said Graham, as that deafening scream
+      of mercantile piety towered above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is appalling?&rdquo; asked his little officer, apparently
+      seeking vainly for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>This</i>! Surely the essence of religion is reverence.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh <i>that</i>!&rdquo; Asano looked at Graham. &ldquo;Does it shock
+      you?&rdquo; he said in the tone of one who makes a discovery. &ldquo;I
+      suppose it would, of course. I had forgotten. Nowadays the competition for
+      attention is so keen, and people simply haven&rsquo;t the leisure to
+      attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do.&rdquo; He smiled.
+      &ldquo;In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the countryside. Though
+      somewhere I&rsquo;ve read of Sunday afternoons that&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>that</i>,&rdquo; said Graham, glancing back at the receding
+      blue and white. &ldquo;That is surely not the only&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect
+      doesn&rsquo;t <i>tell</i> it doesn&rsquo;t pay. Worship has moved with the
+      times. There are high class sects with quieter ways&mdash;costly 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&mdash;to you, I should say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      signature, his first encounter with the curves and turns of that familiar
+      autograph for two hundred and three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Home,&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+      followed by a vast leathery voice. &ldquo;The Master is sleeping
+      peacefully,&rdquo; it vociferated. &ldquo;He 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&mdash;all
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Galloop,
+      Galloop,&rdquo; and broke out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paris 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&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+      crowd. &ldquo;Damned niggers.&rdquo; A man began to harangue near them.
+      &ldquo;Is this the Master&rsquo;s doing, brothers? Is this the Master&rsquo;s
+      doing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Black police!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What is that? You don&rsquo;t
+      mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Yahaha, 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!&rdquo; The nearer Babble Machine
+      hooted stupendously, &ldquo;Galloop, Galloop,&rdquo; drowned the end of
+      the sentence, and proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with
+      novel comments on the horrors of disorder. &ldquo;Law and order must be
+      maintained,&rdquo; said the nearer Babble Machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask questions here,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;or you
+      will be involved in an argument.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go on,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;for I want to know
+      more of this.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Lynched policemen,&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Women burnt alive,&rdquo; &ldquo;Fuzzy Wuzzy.&rdquo; &ldquo;But
+      does the Master allow such things?&rdquo; asked a man near him. &ldquo;Is
+      <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s rule?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s rule? For a long time
+      after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the
+      machines pursued him; &ldquo;Galloop, Galloop,&rdquo; &ldquo;Yahahah,
+      Yaha, Yap! Yaha!&rdquo; Is <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s
+      rule?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely on
+      the nature of the Parisian struggle. &ldquo;This disarmament! What was
+      their trouble? What does it all mean?&rdquo; Asano seemed chiefly anxious
+      to reassure him that it was &ldquo;all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these outrages!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot have an omelette,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;without
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! the Londoners?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But burning women alive!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Commune!&rdquo; said Asano. &ldquo;They 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes&mdash;French
+      speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Regiments?&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;I thought there was only one&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Asano, and glanced at him. &ldquo;There is more
+      than one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not think,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I never thought,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Ostrog
+      must have had them removed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stared. &ldquo;How was I to know?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he thought they would annoy you,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be replaced directly I return,&rdquo; said Graham after
+      an interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the
+      ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, &ldquo;Galloop,
+      Galloop!&rdquo; or the shrill &ldquo;Yahaha, Yaha Yap!&mdash;Hear a live
+      paper yelp!&rdquo; of its chief rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Repeated, too, everywhere, were such <i>crèches</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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s manner that his identity
+      was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of
+      the place without reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>crèches</i> had almost entirely replaced the hazardous adventures of
+      the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>crèche</i>
+      company, the International Crèche Syndicate, lost not one-half per cent,
+      of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But Graham&rsquo;s
+      prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham was still not clear upon many points. &ldquo;But so many orphans,&rdquo;
+      he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again
+      that they were not orphans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So soon as they had left the <i>crèche</i> he began to speak of the horror
+      the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. &ldquo;Is motherhood
+      gone?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct.
+      This seems so unnatural&mdash;abominable almost.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Along here we shall come to the dancing place,&rdquo; said Asano by
+      way of reply. &ldquo;It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the
+      political unrest it will be crowded. The women take no great interest in
+      politics&mdash;except a few here and there. You will see the mothers&mdash;most
+      young women in London are mothers. In that class it is considered a
+      creditable thing to have one child&mdash;a 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you mean that the population of the World&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour
+      Department. In spite of scientific discipline they are reckless&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see,&rdquo; said Asano with a faint smile. &ldquo;The
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;are the fathers and mothers of the
+      little ones you saw.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Look at them,&rdquo; said the little officer,
+      &ldquo;see how much they show of motherhood.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;The Festival of the Awakening&rdquo; was
+      in progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that,
+      quite apart from the labourers who refuse to go back,&rdquo; said Asano.
+      &ldquo;These people are always ready for holidays.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of people are these?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Workers&mdash;prosperous 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;the women?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same. There&rsquo;s 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&mdash;there
+      are a number of methods of contract&mdash;and that gives them more money,
+      and enables them to enjoy themselves.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash
+      and swirl of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink
+      helpless limbs. &ldquo;And these are&mdash;mothers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while he spoke again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the
+      modern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me&mdash;habits
+      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&mdash;all 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&mdash;that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely
+      mistress of a home, mother and maker of men&mdash;to love her was a sort
+      of worship&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and repeated, &ldquo;A sort of worship.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ideals change,&rdquo; said the little man, &ldquo;as needs change.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words. Graham&rsquo;s
+      mind returned to the thing at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of 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&rsquo;s tribute
+      to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+      purposes&mdash;his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+      police&mdash;and life is joyous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at the dancers again. &ldquo;Joyous,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are weary moments,&rdquo; said the little officer,
+      reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man.
+      And in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are young. There are few old people in this class in the work
+      cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old people&rsquo;s 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that Euthanasy!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The easy death?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does
+      it well. People will pay the sum&mdash;it is a costly thing&mdash;long
+      beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and
+      weary, very weary.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a lot left for me to understand,&rdquo; said Graham after
+      a pause. &ldquo;Yet 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&mdash;for
+      well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+      asleep two hundred years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+      evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before God,&rdquo; said Graham, suddenly, &ldquo;I would rather be
+      a wounded sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the snow,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;one might think differently.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am uncivilised,&rdquo; said Graham, not heeding him. &ldquo;That
+      is the trouble. I am primitive&mdash;Paleolithic. <i>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&mdash;men
+      are dying in Paris to keep the world&mdash;that they may dance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano smiled faintly. &ldquo;For that matter, men are dying in London,&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do these sleep?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above and below&mdash;an intricate warren.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where do they work? This is&mdash;the domestic life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. &ldquo;I
+      want to see the workers. I have seen enough of these,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to it,
+      and turned to Graham with a smile. &ldquo;Here, Sire,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;is something&mdash;will be familiar to you at least&mdash;and yet&mdash;.
+      But I will not tell you. Come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      first ladder he had seen since his awakening&mdash;up 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s. 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a long time he was silent. &ldquo;This,&rdquo; he said at last,
+      smiling in the shadow, &ldquo;seems the strangest thing of all. To stand
+      in the dome of St. Paul&rsquo;s and look once more upon these familiar,
+      silent stars!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Skin your eyes and slide,&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Gewhoop, Bonanza,&rdquo; &ldquo;Gollipers come and hark!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET&rsquo;R. WE ASSURE THE
+      PROPRAIET&rsquo;R.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the proprietor?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do they assure me?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What do they
+      assure me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you have assurance?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. &ldquo;Insurance?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;Insurance. 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+      suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. &ldquo;Anuetes
+      on the Propraiet&rsquo;r&mdash;x 5 pr. G.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. &ldquo;Seventeen 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;X 5 pr. G.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to get out of this,&rdquo; said Graham to Asano. &ldquo;This
+      is not what I came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people
+      in blue. These parasitic lunatics&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; THE UNDER-SIDE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;even with a dialect of its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>cloisonné</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. &ldquo;This is what
+      I wanted to see,&rdquo; said Graham; &ldquo;this is what I wanted to see,&rdquo;
+      trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She might have done better with herself than that,&rdquo; said
+      Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made some indignant comments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,&rdquo;
+      said Asano. &ldquo;In your days people could stand such crudities, they
+      were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued along one of the lower galleries of this <i>cloisonné</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>
+    <p>
+      A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop that!&rdquo; 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&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+      painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened now?&rdquo; 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:
+      &ldquo;Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+      coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano&rsquo;s face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at
+      Graham&rsquo;s face, and told him the thing he already knew. &ldquo;But
+      how can they know?&rdquo; asked Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham heard someone shouting. &ldquo;Stop all work. Stop all work,&rdquo;
+      and a swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping
+      down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English,
+      &ldquo;This is Ostrog&rsquo;s doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is
+      betrayed.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Ostrog the Knave!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo; they cried.
+      &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+      heart began to beat fast and strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I might have known. The hour
+      has come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought swiftly. &ldquo;What am I to do?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back to the Council House,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I not appeal&mdash;? The people are here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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&mdash;with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose this is only a rumour?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds true,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have the facts,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;We had better get towards the Council
+      House,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That is where they will swarm. Even now the
+      ruins may be impassable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have
+      arrived here before the people knew&mdash;had not someone in the Wind-Vane
+      Offices learnt. He said a girl.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl? Not&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said a girl&mdash;he did not know who she was. Who came out from
+      the Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+      tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street.
+      &ldquo;To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to his
+      ward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+      they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. &ldquo;To your
+      wards! To your wards!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      The cries of &ldquo;To your wards!&rdquo; became at last a continuous
+      shouting as they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+      unintelligible. &ldquo;Ostrog has betrayed us,&rdquo; one man bawled in a
+      hoarse voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Every
+      man to his ward! Every man to his ward!&rdquo; Here, by Asano&rsquo;s
+      advice, Graham revealed his identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;To your wards! Every man to his ward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Ostrog?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;I must see Ostrog
+      forthwith. He has disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his
+      hands.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Wards! Wards!
+      Wards!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;will be in the small offices
+      beyond there.&rdquo; The little man looked livid now and his eyes searched
+      Graham&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; shouted Graham, and at the sound of
+      his voice the little party turned astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. &ldquo;What
+      is this I hear?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Are you bringing negroes here&mdash;to
+      keep the people down?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is none too soon,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They have been
+      getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the way. As it is, you have seen the people&mdash;outside?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No wonder! But&mdash;after what was said. You have taken too much
+      on yourself, Ostrog.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These negroes must not come to London,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I
+      am Master and they shall not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+      attendants close behind him. &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White men must be mastered by white men. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The negroes are only an instrument.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the
+      Master. And I tell you these negroes shall not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe in the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past&mdash;an
+      accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally&mdash;legally. But
+      you are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at Lincoln again. &ldquo;I know now what you think&mdash;I can
+      guess something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to
+      warn you. You dream of human equality&mdash;of some sort of socialistic
+      order&mdash;you 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You can hear it&mdash;a sound
+      like the sea. Not voices&mdash;but a voice. Do <i>you</i> altogether
+      understand?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We taught them that,&rdquo; said Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+      negroes must not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forbid it,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have started.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not have it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Sorry as I am to follow the method
+      of the Council&mdash;. For your own good&mdash;you must not side with&mdash;Disorder.
+      And now that you are here&mdash;. It was kind of you to come here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln laid his hand on Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and struck at Lincoln&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant&rsquo;s
+      leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s heaving
+      throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;are&mdash;a prisoner,&rdquo; panted Ostrog, exulting.
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;were rather a fool&mdash;to come back.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Save
+      the Master!&rdquo; &ldquo;What are they doing to the Master?&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he realised that Ostrog&rsquo;s attention was distracted, that
+      Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s throat, and Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      hands clutching the silk about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now men were coming towards them from the dais&mdash;men 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>
+    <p>
+      He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not friends&mdash;that
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t
+      come down,&rdquo; panted Ostrog. &ldquo;They daren&rsquo;t fire. It&rsquo;s
+      all right. We&rsquo;ll save him from them yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+      thousand throats were cheering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Where has Ostrog gone?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Master is with us! The Master! The
+      Master!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The Master is on our side!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Ostrog?&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: &ldquo;What are they doing? What
+      are the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured?
+      They will lift him&mdash;the monoplane will lift him! Ah!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are grounding!&rdquo; cried the man in yellow. &ldquo;They are
+      grounding. Tell the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+      enigmatical orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And then it rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+      upward into the wind-swept sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;For a moment,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I must wait. I did
+      not think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+      that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What news of the flying stages?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people of the south-west wards are ready.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ready!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?&rdquo; he said,
+      and felt the light grow brighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; cried someone, and a door
+      opened. Graham turned, and the watching lights waned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+      interrupt Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have helped me,&rdquo; he said lamely&mdash;&ldquo;helped me
+      very much.... This is very difficult.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+      him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men and women of the new age,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you have
+      arisen to do battle for the race!... There is no easy victory before us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of moving
+      speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This night is a beginning,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come out of the past to you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with the
+      memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams&mdash;of
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great 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&mdash;sorrow 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&mdash;. Is
+      there a new faith?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charity and mercy,&rdquo; he floundered; &ldquo;beauty and the love
+      of beautiful things&mdash;effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would
+      give myself&mdash;as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not
+      matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You <i>know</i>&mdash;in
+      the core of your hearts you <i>know</i>. There is no promise, there is no
+      security&mdash;nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith&mdash;faith
+      which is courage....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Here and now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Oh! Father of the World&mdash;<i>Sire</i>!
+      I knew you would say these things....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have said what I could,&rdquo; he answered lamely and grasped and
+      clung to her outstretched hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+      saying that the south-west wards were marching. &ldquo;I never expected it
+      so soon,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;They have done wonders. You must send
+      them a word to help them on their way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to his
+      previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is good, that is good.&rdquo; He
+      weighed a message. &ldquo;Tell them;&mdash;well done South West.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+      between conflicting ideas. &ldquo;We must capture the flying stages,&rdquo;
+      he explained. &ldquo;Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all
+      costs we must prevent that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Here I am doing nothing,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible,&rdquo; protested the man in yellow. &ldquo;It is
+      a fight in a warren. Your place is here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+      wait, he insisted no other course was possible. &ldquo;We must know where
+      you are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At any moment a crisis may arise needing
+      your presence and decision.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+      girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Metallic voices were shouting &ldquo;Victory!&rdquo; Yes it was &ldquo;Victory!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+      dishevelled with excitement, &ldquo;Victory,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;victory!
+      The people are winning. Ostrog&rsquo;s people have collapsed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose. &ldquo;Victory?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Graham. &ldquo;Tell me! <i>What</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood,
+      Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. <i>Ours</i>!&mdash;and
+      we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+      the Ward Leaders. &ldquo;It is all over,&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have
+      been sighted at Boulogne!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Channel!&rdquo; said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+      &ldquo;Half an hour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They still have three of the flying stages,&rdquo; said the old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those guns?&rdquo; cried Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot mount them&mdash;in half an hour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean they are found?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we could stop them another hour!&rdquo; cried the man in yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can stop them now,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;They
+      have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another hour?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be so near!&rdquo; said the Ward Leader. &ldquo;Now that we have
+      found those guns. To be so near&mdash;. If once we could get them out upon
+      the roof spaces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long would that take?&rdquo; asked Graham suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour&mdash;certainly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; cried the Ward Leader, &ldquo;too late.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Is</i> it too late?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Even now&mdash;.
+      An hour!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his
+      face was white. &ldquo;There is are chance. You said there was a monoplane&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the Roehampton stage, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smashed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+      guides&mdash;easily. But there is no aeronaut&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+      pause. &ldquo;<i>We</i> have no aeronauts?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. &ldquo;I must do it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to this flying stage&mdash;to this machine.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an aeronaut. After all&mdash;. Those days for which you
+      reproached me were not altogether wasted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the old man in yellow. &ldquo;Tell them to put it upon the
+      guides.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in yellow hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean to do?&rdquo; cried Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This monoplane&mdash;it is a chance&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To fight&mdash;yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before&mdash;.
+      A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;never since flying began&mdash;&rdquo; cried the man in
+      yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now&mdash;send
+      them my message&mdash;to put it upon the guides. I see now something to
+      do. I see now why I am here!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. &ldquo;But, Sire!&mdash;How
+      can one fight? You will be killed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. Yet, not to do it&mdash;or to let some one else attempt it&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be killed,&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said my word. Do you not see? It may save&mdash;London!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+      gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+      towering heroisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To wake,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;for this!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said &ldquo;Onward.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s down there still,&rdquo;
+      said the marksman. &ldquo;See that little patch. Yes. Between those bars.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see him <i>now</i>,&rdquo; said the second man in a
+      tone of provocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s going on now?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want all these fools,&rdquo; said his friend.
+      &ldquo;They only crowd up and spoil shots. What are they after?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ssh!&mdash;they&rsquo;re shouting something.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re putting it on the carrier&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      what they&rsquo;re after.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good?&rdquo;
+      said his friend. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got no aeronauts.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re doing anyhow.&rdquo; He looked at
+      his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the
+      wounded man. &ldquo;Mind these, mate,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+      that man is King,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The Master is coming,&rdquo; shouted
+      voices, &ldquo;the Master is coming,&rdquo; and the crowd about him grew
+      denser and denser. He began to thrust himself towards the central groove.
+      &ldquo;The Master is coming!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Sleeper, the Master!&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;God and the Master!&rdquo; roared the voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham&rsquo;s
+      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 &ldquo;Clear for the start, you fools!&rdquo; The bell
+      that cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;presently&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Throb, throb, throb&mdash;throb, 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>
+    <p>
+      Throb, throb, throb&mdash;pause&mdash;throb, throb&mdash;he set his teeth,
+      his face into an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck
+      upward beneath the nearer wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Where was the other?&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;They too&mdash;.&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for Wimbledon Park was useless
+      because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a furnace&mdash;were
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Massa Boss&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Graham hit them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;if it was a charge&mdash;of 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Two</i>!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      He drew an immense breath. &ldquo;They win,&rdquo; he shouted to the empty
+      air; &ldquo;the people win!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and went
+      circling up. He saw Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&mdash;dropped
+      and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog&rsquo;s attitude a wincing
+      resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him&mdash;to 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>
+    <p>
+      He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The eastward
+      stage, the one on Shooter&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the air
+      was blowing past him and <i>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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s calculated treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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>
+    <p>
+      Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth was
+      very near.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+  <div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12163 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5966b36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12163 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12163)
diff --git a/old/12163-0.txt b/old/12163-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c755c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12163-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9157 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sleeper Awakes
+       A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
+
+Author: H.G. Wells
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2004 [EBook #12163]
+Last Updated: May 19, 2021
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+              A Revised Edition of "When the Sleeper Wakes"
+
+                               H.G. WELLS
+
+                                  1899
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+
+_When the Sleeper Wakes_, whose title I have now altered to _The Sleeper
+Awakes_, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial appearance
+in the _Graphic_ and one or two American and colonial periodicals. It is
+one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I have
+taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of
+excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work, it was written
+under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the
+writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story.
+Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an almost
+unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the writing
+of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic that
+instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely
+interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. I was at
+that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
+various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, _Love
+and Mr. Lewisham_, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But
+fortune was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall
+dangerously ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my
+attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my
+temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't endure the thought of
+leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from
+the consequences of that febrile spurt--_Love and Mr. Lewisham_ is indeed
+one of my most carefully balanced books--but the Sleeper escaped me.
+
+It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+sluggish _driven_ pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at the
+end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what
+the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of Helen. There was
+even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the flying-machine
+to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married Helen. I have
+now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities. Not the
+slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have arisen
+between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl and
+her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found it
+possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that
+the People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+certainty of either victory or defeat.
+
+Who will win--Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+
+H.G. WELLS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       I. INSOMNIA
+
+      II. THE TRANCE
+
+     III. THE AWAKENING
+
+      IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+       V. THE MOVING WAYS
+
+      VI. THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+     VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+    VIII. THE ROOF SPACES
+
+      IX. THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+       X. THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+      XI. THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+     XII. OSTROG
+
+    XIII. THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+     XIV. FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+      XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+     XVI. THE MONOPLANE
+
+    XVII. THREE DAYS
+
+   XVIII. GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+     XIX. OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+      XX. IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+     XXI. THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+    XXII. THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+   XXIII. GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+    XXIV. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+     XXV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INSOMNIA
+
+
+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.
+
+He glanced round at Isbister's 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.
+
+"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a
+colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
+
+Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
+conveyed his helpful impulse.
+
+"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
+Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
+have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."
+
+"Had advice?"
+
+"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They are
+all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare not
+take ... sufficiently powerful drugs."
+
+"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
+
+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. "I've never suffered from
+sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
+those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"
+
+"I dare make no experiments."
+
+He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
+men were silent.
+
+"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
+interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.
+
+"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
+day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
+mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
+something--"
+
+He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
+hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
+
+"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
+have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
+as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
+find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
+myself to do.
+
+"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
+dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
+don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
+exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
+in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
+complacencies--or 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's
+day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+rest--black coffee, cocaine--"
+
+"I see," said Isbister.
+
+"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
+
+"And this is the price?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+
+"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a 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--" He paused. "Towards
+the gulf."
+
+"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
+discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."
+
+"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
+of this sweet world of sanity--down--"
+
+"But," expostulated Isbister.
+
+The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at 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."
+
+"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
+gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."
+
+"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
+
+Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
+"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
+little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."
+
+"But those rocks there?"
+
+"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones
+grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"
+
+Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
+of devil-may-careish brilliance. "But a suicide over that cliff (or any
+cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's
+so damned amateurish."
+
+"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
+thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"
+
+"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll 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--eh?"
+
+Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+
+"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of
+gesture. "Look 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--"
+
+He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
+misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery."
+
+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.
+
+He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a
+night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take
+my word for it."
+
+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.
+
+His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. But he
+made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.
+
+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. "What can be happening?" he
+asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be happening? Spin, spin,
+spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore."
+
+He stood with his hand circling.
+
+"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
+"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me,"
+
+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.
+
+"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of
+expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
+oppression, a weight. No--not 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't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on
+it--steadily enough to tell you."
+
+He stopped feebly.
+
+"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
+any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me,
+you know."
+
+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. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
+show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
+
+The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+
+Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said
+Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+If you take alcohol?"
+
+The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden path,
+and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--I don't drink. It
+goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"
+
+He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+who sees nothing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
+unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with ideas of a
+furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
+passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
+momentary silence.
+
+The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
+regarding him.
+
+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. "Perhaps," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I wonder," ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+complacency. "At any rate one must give him a chance." He struck a match
+in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind; he started, and leaning over the
+table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became
+conviction. Astonishment seized him and became--dread!
+
+No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+
+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.
+
+Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He started
+violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.
+
+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. "Are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping, and again, "Are
+you asleep?"
+
+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.
+
+"Please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "There is
+something wrong with my friend."
+
+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. "I must fetch a doctor," he said. "It is either death or a fit. Is
+there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TRANCE
+
+
+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.
+
+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--neither 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?
+
+"It seems only yesterday," said Isbister. "I remember it all as though it
+happened yesterday--clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I 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."
+
+"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.
+
+"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too
+serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of
+the time."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
+
+"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and
+white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
+Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
+
+"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see
+them there."
+
+"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
+satisfaction. "The 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't expect that some day my pigments would
+glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again
+to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."
+
+Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "I just missed seeing
+you, if I recollect aright."
+
+"You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It
+was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the
+seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea."
+
+"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."
+
+"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at
+Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My
+landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer
+when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And
+the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before
+him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights
+and so forth."
+
+"Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?"
+
+"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
+head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
+this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
+quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"
+
+"Smithers?"
+
+"Smithers it was--was 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--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little
+things, not dynamos--"
+
+"Coils."
+
+"Yes. 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_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made
+me dream."
+
+Pause.
+
+"It's a strange state," said Warming.
+
+"It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body,
+empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and
+marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not
+a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In
+a sense it's 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--"
+
+"I know," said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.
+
+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--but 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.
+
+"And while he has been lying here," said Isbister, with the zest of a
+life freely spent, "I have changed my plans in life; married, raised a
+family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an
+American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's 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's curious to think of."
+
+Warming turned. "And 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_ a young man nevertheless."
+
+"And there's been the War," said Isbister.
+
+"From beginning to end."
+
+"And these Martians."
+
+"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some
+moderate property of his own?"
+
+"That is so," said Warming. He coughed primly. "As it happens--I have
+charge of it."
+
+"Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here is
+not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"
+
+"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when
+he slept."
+
+"As a business man," said Isbister, "that 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--"
+
+"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said Warming. "He was
+not a far-sighted man. In fact--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"We 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--. 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?"
+
+"It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change
+these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."
+
+"There has been a lot of change certainly," said Warming. "And, among
+other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."
+
+Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn't
+have thought it."
+
+"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his
+bankers--sent on to me."
+
+"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.
+
+"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.
+
+There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of
+hesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall
+some day into the hands of--someone else, you know."
+
+"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most
+constantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, there
+are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+unprecedented position."
+
+"Rather," said Isbister.
+
+"It seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically
+undying guardian. If he really is going on living--as 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."
+
+"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the
+British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit
+odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd."
+
+"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
+
+"Red tape, I suppose?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Pause. "It's a curious business, certainly," said Isbister. "And compound
+interest has a way of mounting up."
+
+"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies are running short
+there is a tendency towards ... appreciation."
+
+"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it better
+for _him_."
+
+"_If_ he wakes."
+
+"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-in look of his
+nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?"
+
+Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt if he will wake," he
+said at last.
+
+"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what it was brought this
+on. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious."
+
+"He 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--a Socialist--or typical
+Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school.
+Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this
+for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote--a 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."
+
+"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just to hear what he
+would say to it all."
+
+"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would I," with an old man's sudden
+turn to self pity. "But I shall never see him wake."
+
+He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "He will never awake,"
+he said at last. He sighed. "He will never awake again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+
+What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity--the 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's 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.
+
+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--he could not tell what name--that 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....
+
+Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some
+unfamiliar thing.
+
+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.
+
+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--but 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....
+
+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--and amazed.
+
+He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+mind was quite clear--evidently 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--and he saw
+with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--a
+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--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of
+the armchairs.
+
+When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+bottle and drank--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+What was this place?--this 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. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
+own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
+shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "When
+the Sleeper wakes--_When_!"
+
+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.
+
+Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
+"Where am I?"
+
+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.
+
+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's ears.
+"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
+It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."
+
+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.
+
+"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's 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.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"You 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"
+
+They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
+_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
+the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.
+
+"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
+pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall
+be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be difficult
+to--_wire_ to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't trouble
+about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the
+important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the word was
+sir, but this man pronounced it "_Sire_.")
+
+"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.
+
+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't 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.
+
+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.
+
+They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+
+"That--that makes me feel better," 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.
+
+He pressed his throat and tried a third time. "How long?" he asked in a
+level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly
+at the others.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"A very long time."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some
+years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.
+But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"
+
+He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+and sat waiting for an answer.
+
+They spoke in undertones.
+
+"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"
+
+"Very much more than that."
+
+"More!"
+
+"More."
+
+He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+of his face. He looked his question.
+
+"Many years," said the man with the red beard.
+
+Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from
+his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes
+tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing
+to another.
+
+"How many years?" he asked.
+
+"You must be prepared to be surprised."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"More than a gross of years."
+
+He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"
+
+Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+"decimal" he did not catch.
+
+"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
+that. Tell me."
+
+Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
+couple of centuries."
+
+"_What_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
+says--? What was that? A couple of _centuries_!"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
+
+Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+
+"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
+opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
+
+They said nothing.
+
+"You--did you say--?"
+
+"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the
+red beard.
+
+There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+heard was indeed true.
+
+"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances--trances
+don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me!
+Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
+Cornwall--?"
+
+His voice failed him.
+
+The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history,
+sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+
+"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
+Cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There
+is a house there still. I have been there."
+
+"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
+it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
+exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."
+
+He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than _two hundred years_!"
+
+He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was
+cold within him. "But if it _is_ 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."
+
+They did not answer him.
+
+"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High
+and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?"
+
+"That's a comfort! Is there London?"
+
+"This _is_ London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!"
+
+He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
+talk. Be quiet. Let me--"
+
+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.
+
+Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced
+hysterically and covered his face again.
+
+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. "What 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?"
+
+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. "These others," he said in a voice of extreme
+irritation. "You had better go."
+
+"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
+
+"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
+
+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.
+
+For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---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.
+
+"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again
+and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
+
+His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+with an ambiguous expression.
+
+"Feel queer?" he asked.
+
+"Very."
+
+"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"
+
+"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
+
+"I suppose so, now."
+
+"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"
+
+"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
+met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
+the thickset man.
+
+"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked Graham.
+
+"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+matter of fact."
+
+Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a
+mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
+changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
+understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
+spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
+trying to decide in an emergency. "We 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."
+
+Graham rubbed his chin.
+
+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.
+
+Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
+time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
+Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
+
+The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+
+"Wild!" he cried. "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
+
+There was perhaps an answer.
+
+"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But shout
+from the balcony."
+
+There was an inaudible reply.
+
+"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."
+
+He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
+said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
+
+He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+moment he was back.
+
+"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a
+moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then I can
+take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough."
+
+"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
+
+"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I
+don't know what it is. I know nothing."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture.
+"It 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?" he
+said to the tailor.
+
+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. "You will
+find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his
+brows at the thickset man.
+
+He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
+essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere
+in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a little appliance
+the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and
+behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the
+dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white
+satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
+
+The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+
+"We have very little time," he said.
+
+"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you
+think of this?"
+
+"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+
+"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
+this is our modern development. See here." The little figure repeated its
+evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the
+busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Is
+that--some sort of force--laid on?"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.
+
+"Who is _that_?" He indicated the archway behind him.
+
+The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in
+an undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire--it's
+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--if you don't mind, I will
+leave him to explain."
+
+"Odd!" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the
+new comer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man _glaring_ at me? Is
+he a mesmerist?"
+
+"Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."
+
+"Capillotomist!"
+
+"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."
+
+It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
+our monetary units."
+
+"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"
+
+"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have
+altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
+system--tens, 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?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"
+
+The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"Here are your clothes!" 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. "You don't mean to say--!"
+
+"Just made," 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.
+
+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.
+
+"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.
+
+"In a moment," said Howard.
+
+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.
+
+"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man
+had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.
+
+Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+glint of steel.
+
+"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried
+politeness. "He is going to cut your hair."
+
+"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--"
+
+"A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+the world."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+capillotomist came forward, examined Graham's ears and surveyed him, felt
+the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for
+Howard's audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a
+succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham's 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.
+
+Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in the
+corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Work is
+being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MOVING WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+façade 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's 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's 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's 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.
+
+"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must
+come away at once."
+
+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's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has
+happened to the Sleeper?" 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.
+
+"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
+never the Sleeper," 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.
+
+He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
+And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
+
+He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" 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: "The
+Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and
+cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to
+Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick
+with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves
+opposite to him.
+
+"Stop the Ways," 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: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the
+Sleeper," they testified.
+
+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.
+
+He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They will
+stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."
+
+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.
+
+"Get him away," cried Howard.
+
+"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"
+
+"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face
+and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face, and
+he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,
+compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+
+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.
+"I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a
+whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?"
+
+"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.
+"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking
+just now, has a sort of connexion--"
+
+He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He
+stopped abruptly.
+
+"I don't understand," said Graham.
+
+"It will be clearer later," said Howard.
+
+He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the
+lift slow.
+
+"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a
+little," said Graham puzzled. "It will be--it 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."
+
+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.
+
+"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What
+place is it?"
+
+"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+so forth."
+
+"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are you
+governed? Have you still a police?"
+
+"Several," said Howard.
+
+"Several?"
+
+"About fourteen."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+to you. To tell you the truth, I don't understand it myself very
+clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps--bye and bye. We have to go to
+the Council."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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's guardian.
+That was odd.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Go
+on," cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+
+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.
+
+"I want to see more of that," cried Graham, resisting.
+
+"No, no," cried Howard, still gripping his arm. "This way. You must go
+this way." And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce
+his orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "The Sleeper,"
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"You must remain here," murmured Howard, "for a few moments," and,
+without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.
+
+"But, _why_--?" began Graham.
+
+He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+the men in red. "You have to wait here, Sire," said the man in red.
+
+"_Why_?"
+
+"Orders, Sire."
+
+"Whose orders?"
+
+"Our orders, Sire."
+
+Graham looked his exasperation.
+
+"What place is this?" he said presently. "Who are those men?"
+
+"They are the lords of the Council, Sire."
+
+"What Council?"
+
+"_The_ Council."
+
+"Oh!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's 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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+chambers furnished in white and green. "What Council was that?" began
+Graham. "What were they discussing? What have they to do with me?" 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. "Ugh!" he grunted, a man relieved.
+
+Graham stood regarding him.
+
+"You must understand," began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham's eyes,
+"that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare
+unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of
+fact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, and
+the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you--and certain
+other beginnings--have become very considerable. And in other ways that
+will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the
+world's affairs."
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Graham.
+
+"We have grave social troubles."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+seclude you here."
+
+"Keep me prisoner!" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Well--to ask you to keep in seclusion."
+
+Graham turned on him. "This is strange!" he said.
+
+"No harm will be done you."
+
+"No harm!"
+
+"But you must be kept here--"
+
+"While I learn my position, I presume."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Very well then. Begin. Why _harm_?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It is too long a story, Sire."
+
+"All 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?"
+
+"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely.
+This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
+awakening--no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."
+
+"What council?"
+
+"The Council you saw."
+
+Graham made a petulant movement. "This is not right," he said. "I should
+be told what is happening."
+
+"You must wait. Really you must wait."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to
+resume life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."
+
+"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must
+leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the
+Council.... I am sorry."
+
+He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+
+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's mysterious behaviour. There was an
+inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance
+perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+What had he to do? And this room's secluded silence was eloquent of
+imprisonment!
+
+It came into Graham's 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.
+
+Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
+of the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+
+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.
+
+A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming
+like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"
+
+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.
+
+The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge façade 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--_strange_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King."
+
+"Phonetic spelling," 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. "The Heart of Darkness"
+he had never heard of before nor "The Madonna of the Future"--no doubt if
+they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+
+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.
+
+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. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have you been doing?"
+
+"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.
+Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard "when the Sleeper
+wakes," 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.
+
+At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+apparatus was blank again.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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--black almost, with a dust of
+little stars....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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. "We were making
+the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future
+we were making. And here it is!"
+
+"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst
+of it all?" 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!
+
+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 "un-English." His mind glanced at
+the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+
+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.
+
+He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to
+himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred
+and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't
+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. 'Tis a great age! Ha
+ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed
+again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving
+foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
+
+His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't
+understand it. _Why_? ... But it is all _why_!"
+
+"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+remember just how it began."
+
+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....
+
+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. "I must sleep," 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....
+
+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.
+
+And in those three days Graham's 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--even 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....
+
+Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's 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. "To explain
+it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,"
+protested Howard.
+
+"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shall
+do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
+
+"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the 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."
+
+"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
+
+"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+feature of our State."
+
+"Am I a fool?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
+
+"You 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--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too complex. We dare
+not suddenly---while you are still half awake."
+
+"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why 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?"
+
+Howard pulled his lip.
+
+"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a 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?"
+
+"That note of suspicion--" said Howard.
+
+"Ugh!" said Graham. "Now, 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_--"
+
+"_Live_!"
+
+Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an
+easy confidential tone.
+
+"The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+Naturally--an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious
+that everything you may desire--every desire--every sort of desire ...
+There may be something. Is there any sort of company?"
+
+He paused meaningly.
+
+"Yes," said Graham thoughtfully. "There is."
+
+"Ah! _Now_! We have treated you neglectfully."
+
+"The crowds in yonder streets of yours."
+
+"That," said Howard, "I am afraid--But--"
+
+Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him.
+The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of
+_company_? 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.
+
+"What do you mean by company?"
+
+Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he
+said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he
+said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with
+your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this--by 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--discreet--"
+
+Graham stopped dead.
+
+"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should perhaps
+have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening--"
+
+He indicated the exterior world.
+
+Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+
+"_No_!" he shouted.
+
+He began striding rapidly up and down the room. "Everything you say,
+everything you do, convinces me--of 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--and 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--. And meanwhile I am here like
+a rabbit in a bag."
+
+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.
+
+"I 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--"
+
+He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+
+"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
+
+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's movement was quick.
+In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the
+nineteenth century was alone.
+
+For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" 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--because he was afraid of fear.
+
+Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment
+was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of
+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--humane. Yet
+they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as
+well as chastity?
+
+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. "Why should
+anything be done to me?"
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
+can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they ask
+me for it instead of cooping me up?"
+
+He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
+intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's 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?
+
+"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"
+
+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:
+
+"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ROOF SPACES
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked
+up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.
+
+He remained motionless--his 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.
+
+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. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.
+
+Graham stood under the vane. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+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.
+
+For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+
+"You were the Sleeper?" said the stranger at last.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "What do you want with me?"
+
+"I come from Ostrog, Sire."
+
+"Ostrog?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" he said.
+
+"We want to speak to you, Sire," said the intruder. "We want--I
+can't hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you--these
+three days."
+
+"Is it rescue?" whispered Graham. "Escape?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. If you will."
+
+"You are my party--the party of the Sleeper?"
+
+"Yes, Sire."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Graham.
+
+There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was
+bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Stand
+away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and
+one shoulder at Graham's 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.
+
+"You are indeed the Sleeper," he said. "I saw you asleep. When it was the
+law that anyone might see you."
+
+"I am the man who was in the trance," said Graham. "They have imprisoned
+me here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days."
+
+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. "Mind!"
+cried a voice. "Oh!" The voice came from above.
+
+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.
+
+"I did not see you, Sire," panted the man. He rose and assisted
+Graham to rise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy
+blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face,
+and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat
+upon the floor.
+
+"What is this?" cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator.
+"Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing."
+
+"Stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator
+as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+
+"We want you to come, Sire," 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.
+"Your people call for you."
+
+"Come where? My people?"
+
+"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very
+day--either 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--shouting. The whole city shouts
+against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.
+"Your life here is not worth--"
+
+"But why arms?"
+
+"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.
+
+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--a ladder--was being lowered through the
+opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+
+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!
+
+"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."
+
+The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
+he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
+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.
+
+"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them
+and not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."
+
+"Where are the people?" said Graham. "The people you said awaited me?"
+
+The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew
+narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" 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.
+
+"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill
+spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided
+an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This way!"
+and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow,
+between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will go
+first," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Come on!" cried his
+guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"
+
+Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+
+Over the ridge, following his guide's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of
+terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.
+
+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.
+
+"Get on this," cried Graham's 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's benumbed feet, and a
+faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+
+"Come on!" 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....
+
+In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
+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.
+
+They cowered panting and stared out.
+
+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.
+
+"They will be chasing us," cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfway
+there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until it
+snows more thickly again."
+
+His teeth chattered in his head.
+
+"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all
+the people?"
+
+The other made no answer.
+
+"_Look_!" whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.
+
+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.
+
+"_Now_!" cried his companion. "Come!"
+
+He pulled Graham's 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.
+
+"Do as I do," 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. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In
+the dark all the way along. Do as I did."
+
+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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+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's. "_Still_!" whispered the latter very softly.
+
+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.
+
+"Keep still; they were just turning."
+
+For awhile both were motionless, then Graham's companion stood up, and
+reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+indistinct tackle.
+
+"What is that?" asked Graham.
+
+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.
+
+The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+Graham's 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. "Put the cross between your
+legs," whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. Grip
+tightly, grip!"
+
+Graham did as he was told.
+
+"Jump," said the voice. "In heaven's name, jump!"
+
+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.
+
+"Jump! Jump--in God's name! Or they will have us," cried Graham's guide,
+and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards him with
+rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then--
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+countless multitude. "It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!"
+
+"The Sleeper is with us! The Master--the Owner! The Master is with us.
+He is safe."
+
+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.
+
+He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+by one arm. "Let me go into a little room," he said, weeping; "a little
+room," 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+
+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.
+
+He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+
+"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"
+
+The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched
+their faces.
+
+"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.
+
+"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.
+
+"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world."
+
+He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I
+have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is some
+struggle between a number of people in this city--it is London?"
+
+"Yes," said the younger man.
+
+"And 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 don't 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?"
+
+"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "To prevent your
+interference."
+
+"But _why_?"
+
+"Because _you_ are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world
+is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."
+
+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.
+
+Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a
+name that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said.
+
+"He is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader--in
+your name."
+
+"In my name?--And you? Why is he not here?"
+
+"He--has deputed us. I am his brother--his 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."
+
+"In your name," shouted the younger man. "They have ruled, crushed,
+tyrannised. At last even--"
+
+"In my name! My name! Master?"
+
+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. "No 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."
+
+Again the hall dominated everything.
+
+"Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready--. Even now there is a rumour
+of fighting beginning."
+
+The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. "Ostrog has it
+planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the
+flying stages--. Even now he may be doing that. Then--"
+
+"This public theatre," bawled the man in yellow, "is only a contingent.
+We have five myriads of drilled men--"
+
+"We have arms," cried Lincoln. "We have plans. A leader. Their police
+have gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "It is
+now or never. The Council is rocking--They cannot trust even their
+drilled men--"
+
+"Hear the people calling to you!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+The door opened, Lincoln's 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. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the
+burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for "Order! Silence!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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--tramp, tramp.
+
+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.
+
+"Wave your arm to them," said Lincoln. "Wave your arm to them."
+
+"This," said a voice on the other side, "he must have this." 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's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the
+stage facing the people.
+
+The hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, 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 "Ostrog." All
+his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+song. The multitude were beating time with their feet--marking 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 "To
+the Council!" Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the
+roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout "March!" His mouth
+shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the
+archway, shouting "Onward!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's 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--three 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind that these also should
+have swarmed with people.
+
+He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--to 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 "The lights!"
+Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!" cried these voices.
+"The lights!" 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.
+
+He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something
+rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, "It is all
+right--all right."
+
+Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+forehead against Lincoln's and bawled, "What is this darkness?"
+
+"The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must
+wait--stop. The people will go on. They will--"
+
+His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take care
+of the Sleeper." 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.
+
+A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and receded forthwith beyond
+his questions.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+
+He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+gallery. Someone was shouting--it 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.
+
+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. "The
+Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden,
+everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.
+
+Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+"Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham's
+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 façade 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.
+
+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 façade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was
+crowded and bawling and firing at him.
+
+Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+the writhing body.
+
+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 "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. His
+foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under
+foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" 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's, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!"
+he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching
+Sleeper's face.
+
+He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+shouting, "To hell with the Council!" was about to fire again. Then it
+seemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A drop of
+moisture fell on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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, "They 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!" There were women and children
+in the crowd as well as men.
+
+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.
+
+Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+were a series of platforms of the "ways," 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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 "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was
+convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not
+understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the 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--so 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--his pace slackened.
+
+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?
+
+And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring
+and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the
+smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a 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.
+
+A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. "What have
+they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and
+before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+
+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 "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--Little
+Side"? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+"It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face upon
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+
+He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+
+He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+
+"Have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old
+man.
+
+Graham hesitated. "None," he said.
+
+"I stay here till the lights come again," said the old man. "These blue
+scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly. "Dark and damnable.
+Turned out of my room among all these dangers."
+
+"That's hard," ventured Graham. "That's hard on you."
+
+"Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad.
+War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don't they
+bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+fell over a dead man."
+
+"You're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of
+the right sort," and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came
+towards Graham.
+
+Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+relieved to be no longer alone. "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible
+time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dying
+in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night."
+
+The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they are
+to-night."
+
+Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+Again the old man's voice ended the pause.
+
+"This Ostrog will win," he said. "He 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're not common people. Though they've 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!"
+
+His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+
+"Ostrog!" said Graham.
+
+"The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice.
+
+Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the
+people," he hazarded.
+
+"Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! They
+should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And
+Ostrog--. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can
+stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his
+rages at the time--he 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."
+
+He was silent for a little while. "This Sleeper," he said, and stopped.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "Well?"
+
+The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+close. "The real Sleeper--"
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"Died years ago."
+
+"What?" said Graham, sharply.
+
+"Years ago. Died. Years ago."
+
+"You don't say so!" said Graham.
+
+"I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's woke up--they changed in
+the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I
+know. I mustn't tell all I know."
+
+For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for
+him. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my
+time--but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again.
+It was ten to one--wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog's way."
+
+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's 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:
+
+"The first time they rejected him. I've followed it all."
+
+"Rejected whom?" said Graham. "The Sleeper?"
+
+"Sleeper? _No_. Ostrog. He was terrible--terrible! And he was promised
+then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be more
+afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust
+ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workers
+cut each other's 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't been this gross of years. Eh!--but 'tis ill
+on small folks when the great fall out! It's ill."
+
+"Did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?"
+
+"Eh?" said the old man.
+
+The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+this a third time. "Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools
+bawling freedom and the like," said the old man. "Not in all my life has
+there been that. These are like the old days--for sure--when the Paris
+people broke out--three gross of years ago. That's what I mean hasn't
+been. But it's the world's 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."
+
+"You are rather well-informed on these things," said Graham.
+
+"I know what I hear. It isn't all Babble Machine with me."
+
+"No," said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. "And you are
+certain this Ostrog--you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and
+arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself--because
+he was not elected to the Council?"
+
+"Everyone knows that, I should think," said the old man. "Except--just
+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't 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's real and woke of his own
+accord--eh?"
+
+"I'm a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful," said Graham. "Lots of
+things that have happened--especially of late years--. If I was the
+Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn't know less about them."
+
+"Eh!" said the voice. "Old, are you? You don't sound so very old! But
+it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. But these
+notorious things! But you're not so old as me--not nearly so old as me.
+Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I'm young--for
+so old a man. Maybe you're old for so young."
+
+"That's it," said Graham. "And I've 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's interesting to hear you talk of
+these things."
+
+"I know a few things," said the old man. "I know a thing or two.
+But--. Hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "This Sleeper that
+all the fools put their trust in! I've the whole history of it--I was
+always a good one for histories. When I was a boy--I'm that old--I used
+to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seen
+none--they rot and dust so--and 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--they don't seem new-fangled to
+you, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all the
+Sleeper business from the first."
+
+"You will scarcely believe it," said Graham slowly, "I'm so
+ignorant--I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my
+circumstances have been so odd--I know nothing of this Sleeper's history.
+Who was he?"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "I know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set
+on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There's the
+old things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--still
+showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a half
+of years."
+
+"Set on a playful woman, poor soul," said Graham softly to himself, and
+then aloud, "Yes--well go on."
+
+"You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first
+Eadhamite roads. But surely you've 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--the old things--in two dozen
+years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn't 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't 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'-worth or more of property at
+the very beginning."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Graham."
+
+"No--I mean--that American's."
+
+"Isbister."
+
+"Isbister!" cried Graham. "Why, I don't even know the name."
+
+"Of course not," said the old man. "Of course not. People don't 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't 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."
+
+"And how did it grow?"
+
+"Eh!--but you're not up to things. Money attracts money--and 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--they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the
+growing of the Sleeper's 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--the Sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a
+whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's sons.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "The 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've slipped back. In my young days
+speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We
+didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all
+that! Or else I've got wiser.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "Here are you, young and
+ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before
+getting--explaining it all to you short and clear.
+
+"Sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than I
+see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of
+things. Sevendy!
+
+"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him
+long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control.
+I've seen many changes. Eh! I've worn the blue. And at last I've 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!"
+
+His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+
+Graham thought. "Let me see," he said, "if I have it right."
+
+He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "The Sleeper
+has been asleep--"
+
+"Changed," said the old man.
+
+"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands of
+Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of
+the world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have become
+masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--just as the old
+English Parliament used to be--"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison.
+You're not so--"
+
+"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the
+Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt
+would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the
+Council, after all these years."
+
+The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "It's strange," he
+said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time
+to-night."
+
+"Aye," said Graham, "it's strange."
+
+"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I've
+longed--" He laughed. "Even now," he said, "I could enjoy a little fun.
+Enjoy seeing things, anyhow." He mumbled a sentence Graham did not
+understand.
+
+"The Sleeper--when did he awake?" said Graham suddenly.
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Ostrog 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--where 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--everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even
+then! But you're joking! Surely you're pretending. It was to stop the
+shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that
+they turned off the electricity--and put this damned darkness upon us.
+Do you mean to say--?"
+
+"I had heard the Sleeper was rescued," said Graham. "But--to come back a
+minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?"
+
+"He won't let him go," said the old man.
+
+"And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard--"
+
+"So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn't a thousand
+things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell
+you? In a way I'm a sort of relation of Ostrog's. A sort of relation.
+Through my daughter-in-law."
+
+"I suppose--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose there's no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose
+he's certain to be a puppet--in Ostrog's hands or the Council's, as soon
+as the struggle is over."
+
+"In Ostrog's hands--certainly. Why shouldn't he be a puppet? Look at his
+position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he
+want to assert himself?"
+
+"What are these Pleasure Cities?" said Graham, abruptly.
+
+The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+Graham's words, he nudged him violently. "That's _too_ much," said he.
+"You're poking fun at an old man. I've been suspecting you know more than
+you pretend."
+
+"Perhaps I do," said Graham. "But no! why should I go on acting? No, I do
+not know what a Pleasure City is."
+
+The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+
+"What 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."
+
+"Come, come," said the old man, "if you had a glass of drink now, would
+you put it in your ear or your eye?"
+
+"I want you to tell me all these things."
+
+"He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun." A
+withered hand caressed Graham's arm for a moment. "Silk. Well, well! But,
+all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He'll
+have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He's a queer looking
+face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've got tickets and
+been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this
+substitute used to be. Yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's a queer world.
+Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll be sent to Capri.
+It's the best fun for a greener."
+
+His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my
+life I've been in London, hoping to get my chance."
+
+"But you don't know that the Sleeper died," said Graham, suddenly.
+
+The old man made him repeat his words.
+
+"Men don't live beyond ten dozen. It's not in the order of things," said
+the old man. "I'm not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me."
+
+Graham became angry with the old man's assurance. "Whether you are a fool
+or not," he said, "it happens you are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven't told you before, but I will
+tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything--not even about
+Pleasure Cities."
+
+Graham paused.
+
+"You don't know," said the old man. "How are you to know? It's very
+few men--"
+
+"I _am_ the Sleeper."
+
+He had to repeat it.
+
+There was a brief pause. "There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll
+excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this," said
+the old man.
+
+Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+
+"I 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--I who speak to you--who awakened again these four days since."
+
+"Four days since!--the Sleeper! But they've _got_ the Sleeper. They have
+him and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've 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't let him go about alone.
+Trust them. You're a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why
+you have been clipping your words so oddly, but--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+
+"As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you're telling
+that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What's
+your game? And besides, we've been talking of the Sleeper."
+
+Graham stood up. "Listen," he said. "I am the Sleeper."
+
+"You're an odd man," said the old man, "to sit here in the dark, talking
+clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But--"
+
+Graham's exasperation fell to laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried.
+"Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am
+I--in this damned twilight--I never knew a dream in twilight before--an
+anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that
+I am myself, and meanwhile--Ugh!"
+
+He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+was pursuing him. "Eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "I'm an old
+fool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness."
+
+Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+flashed into his mind.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you," said the old man coming
+near. "It's no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases
+you. 'Tis a foolish trick--"
+
+Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+
+For a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw
+him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OSTROG
+
+
+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.
+
+Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
+
+"No!" said Graham, starting.
+
+"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
+
+A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+shouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand of
+men." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, became
+indistinct.
+
+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 "nigger"
+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's 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.
+
+It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the
+"wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" 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--knowing no other means of transit--and 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's voice singing, "tralala tralala."
+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.
+
+The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+excitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not the
+Council!" "They are saying so in the Ways." 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. "Strike
+straight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and in
+a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of
+glass. Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 façade 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.
+
+"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
+
+Graham made a brief explanation.
+
+"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the wind-vane
+offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted--and
+things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them
+_there_--or he would have come to you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It is
+Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+everything was still again.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+and stood before it. Graham's 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.
+
+"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
+
+"I am Ostrog."
+
+"The Boss?"
+
+"So I am called."
+
+Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank you
+chiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
+
+"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog. "Or sent to sleep
+again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret--the
+secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?"
+
+Graham told him briefly.
+
+Ostrog listened in silence.
+
+He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tell
+me you had come?"
+
+"How can I guess?"
+
+"Preparing your double."
+
+"My double?"
+
+"A 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--something of your
+position?"
+
+"Very little," said Graham.
+
+"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned.
+"You are absolute owner," he said, "of 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--"
+
+"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
+
+"I wondered."
+
+"I came upon a garrulous old man."
+
+"I see.... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, of
+course, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just
+as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the
+ruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the
+rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+old quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the 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--when your waking came.
+Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more
+opportunely." He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for
+your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you
+and appealing to you, and--Flash!"
+
+He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+that he understood.
+
+"The Council muddled--quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide
+what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
+
+"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
+
+"We 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."
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"That 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--not half of them
+could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed or
+killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
+
+"Half 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--the 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--So!"
+
+"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearly
+understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where
+is the Council? Where is the fight?"
+
+Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for
+an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow. "Those
+fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of
+London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and
+public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have
+disappeared."
+
+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--it 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.
+
+"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge
+crept into view and gathered Graham's 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.
+
+"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And the
+fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the
+buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It
+shattered half the brittle glass in the city."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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'état_. Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
+
+"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
+
+"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"
+
+"You are Master of the World."
+
+"But that white flag--"
+
+"That is the flag of the Council--the 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."
+
+"But--help. Is this city the world?"
+
+"Practically 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."
+
+"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting
+with them?"
+
+"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with
+us. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would
+not stir against us. We _had_ 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--an 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--for some did--we
+kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council
+House. If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's 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's way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive
+prospect. There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "But these things I must explain more
+fully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by the
+moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the 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--thousands 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--"
+
+"But surely--I can't go ..."
+
+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. "There are
+kineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "As you bow to the people here--all
+over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened
+halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--not like this.
+And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.
+
+"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "used 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--so that even the furtherest man in the
+remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
+
+Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "What is
+the population of London?" he said.
+
+"Eight and twaindy myriads."
+
+"Eight and what?"
+
+"More than thirty-three millions."
+
+These figures went beyond Graham's imagination.
+
+"You will be expected to say something," said Ostrog. "Not what you used
+to call a Speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, six
+or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakened
+and my heart is with you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
+
+"What was that?" asked Graham.
+
+"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. But
+first we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do you mind?
+And then they will disperse to their homes."
+
+Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+Ostrog's 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's arm and pointed
+to the mirror.
+
+"Even as we turned away," he said.
+
+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.
+
+"Do you mean--?" he began.
+
+"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
+
+"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks
+up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+
+The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+
+"They are clamorous," he said.
+
+Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
+
+"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. For
+to-day at least their wishes must be law."
+
+Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+
+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 "Word" 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's rule.
+
+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's
+eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+of it in the oval mirror.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxious
+to see you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "To
+hell with the Council!" 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--and this as well?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest
+of the world hung in suspense.
+
+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' time a
+representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in
+the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's 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's-eye view of the city from the crow's 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.
+
+Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's 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--minute they looked
+from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the
+specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+below. St. Paul's 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.
+
+And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for
+the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines--the 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--an 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--as 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's estate, and the
+place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church--the 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--simply 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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture. And when he
+glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the
+Continent, it failed him altogether.
+
+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
+"Pidgin" 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--German, 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 "Pidgin" 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.
+
+And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+"black belt" 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....
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "amorist," wore his hair in two becoming plaits _à
+la_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he
+saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the
+attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich
+person's education. The Master's 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.
+
+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's, 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's vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily.
+
+"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.
+
+"No--the other, I mean."
+
+"Poet Laureate."
+
+"You still--?"
+
+"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one of the
+Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful
+club--and they keep up the tradition of these things."
+
+"Asano told me there was a King."
+
+"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood, I
+suppose; but really--"
+
+"Too much?"
+
+"Far too much."
+
+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.
+
+His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with
+the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of
+loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's 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 "aerial dog"--he
+used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't 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.
+
+"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham.
+
+"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He
+has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It
+was oddly reminiscent.
+
+"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly he
+was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him."
+
+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_ of a Victorian pattern,
+and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.
+Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and
+asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+seemed quietly amused at the Master's 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. "We have conquered Cram," he said,
+"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the
+world. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.
+
+"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does not
+attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."
+
+He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. "There
+is a certain type of girl, for example," said the Surveyor-General,
+dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for
+severe studies--when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for
+them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch,
+"nearly 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."
+
+"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you
+control them?"
+
+The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." 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's words. "We try and make the elementary
+schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so
+soon. Just a few simple principles--obedience--industry."
+
+"You teach them very little?"
+
+"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.
+Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers get
+the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic
+dreams--anarchy even! Agitators _will_ get to work among them. I take
+it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against
+popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
+
+"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things
+I want to know."
+
+Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the
+conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.
+
+The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
+said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
+of these ladies?"
+
+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 "dear old days," 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.
+
+"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
+days. And to you--they 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!"
+
+"Into this," said Graham.
+
+"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."
+
+"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."
+
+She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+encouragingly. "No?"
+
+"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--We
+thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I
+see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on my
+own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this
+new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to
+understand how little I know."
+
+"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark about
+them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"
+
+"Men in hats and feathers?"
+
+"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"
+
+"That? He's 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!"
+
+"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What a
+wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"
+
+"He 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_
+something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.
+
+"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"
+
+"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about
+themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of
+them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn't it? But I think
+Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."
+
+"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"
+
+"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are in
+his hands." She smiled.
+
+Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was
+expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he
+said. "Who are your great painters?"
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I
+thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You 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't
+any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."
+
+"But what did you think I meant?"
+
+She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And here," and
+she indicated her eyelid.
+
+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. "I see," 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. "Who is that
+talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+
+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;--the 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--hitherto there had
+been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither 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?"
+
+"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the
+verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"
+apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+
+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.
+
+Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+
+Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the 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.
+
+Ah! Now he remembered!
+
+He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_
+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.
+
+Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of
+this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once
+it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+
+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.
+
+The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care to know that girl,
+Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a niece of Ostrog's. She
+knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons
+alive. I am sure you will like her."
+
+In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed
+lady had fluttered away.
+
+"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that little room.
+When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before
+I walked across the Hall."
+
+Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face
+was steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with a
+sudden effort. "All those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless
+people did die for you that night."
+
+Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard
+her words.
+
+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. "Sire," she said
+quickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very
+unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget the
+people, who faced death--death that you might live."
+
+"I know nothing--" began Graham.
+
+"I cannot tell you now."
+
+Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.
+
+"You find the new world amusing, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smiling
+deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one
+comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatly
+changed."
+
+"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; even
+now an aeroplane awaits you."
+
+The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MONOPLANE
+
+
+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's 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--the starting
+carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly
+inclined rails to the end of the fabric.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which 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--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into
+the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,
+throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and
+saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a
+little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he
+recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He
+stared over the aeronaut's 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--beat; suppose some
+trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! 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.
+
+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's crow's 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 façade.
+
+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.
+
+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--innumerable minute oblongs
+of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--sunlit and
+pleasant--the 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.
+
+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 "trouble in the
+under-ways," 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. "What?" said
+Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled
+the aeronaut, pointing.
+
+They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
+and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
+monoplane's 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.
+
+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.
+
+They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's
+enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+
+"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of
+the air over the wind-screen.
+
+"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more
+of this machine."
+
+"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
+
+"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
+
+"I'm coming to you," 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.
+
+"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do
+when you move that engine forward?"
+
+The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
+
+"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
+
+"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of
+this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
+
+The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's
+face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
+
+"Sire, there are rules--"
+
+"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
+
+The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.
+But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a
+chance. They come as passengers--"
+
+"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these
+points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
+
+Graham waved the penalties aside.
+
+"Then if you will watch me--"
+
+"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its
+nose again for an ascent. "That's 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--to 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--. In my past it was my dream to fly.
+Now--keep your balance."
+
+"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your
+hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we
+turn her nose down to the glide?"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will protect me?"
+
+"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
+
+And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial
+navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with
+a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and
+well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
+
+"Back, Sire! Back!"
+
+"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this
+is living!"
+
+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.
+
+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. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
+
+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, "That," and he indicated the white thing still
+fluttering down, "was a swan."
+
+"I never saw it," said Graham.
+
+The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+forehead.
+
+They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THREE DAYS
+
+
+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. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I 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."
+
+"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
+Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
+may seem novel."
+
+"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
+that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
+one's learning."
+
+"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to
+occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
+
+Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for
+a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things
+going on?"
+
+Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,"
+he said. "Everything 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's hands."
+
+"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it,
+forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it
+the very first thing to-morrow again...."
+
+"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
+Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I 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't think that after you have dined you might
+prefer--?" He paused.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
+Capri theatre."
+
+"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's
+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--"
+
+"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
+
+"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know.
+I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your
+machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
+
+"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want
+is yours."
+
+Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+through the city streets to Graham's 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's answers to the endless questions Graham's 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.
+
+Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+Graham's 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 bayadère. "We were
+savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone
+age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
+
+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 "calculating boys," 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--a 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
+say, "I 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."
+
+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; "a little
+trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" 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's nest slumbered in his mind.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+
+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.
+
+He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you," he
+said. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tell
+me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?"
+
+She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"You said the people were unhappy?"
+
+For a moment she was silent still.
+
+"It must have seemed strange to you," she said abruptly.
+
+"It did. And yet--"
+
+"It was an impulse."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+"You forget," she said, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people--"
+
+"Do you mean--?"
+
+"You forget the people."
+
+He looked interrogative.
+
+"Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are.
+You do not know the things that are happening."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"Not clearly, perhaps. But--tell me."
+
+She turned to him with sudden resolution. "It is so hard to explain. I
+have meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready with
+words. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--your
+awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and 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."
+
+"Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine how
+little I know of it."
+
+"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"
+
+"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I have
+heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog,
+the Boss--"
+
+He paused.
+
+She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny.
+"Well?"
+
+He smiled. "To take the responsibility."
+
+"That is what we have begun to fear." For a moment she said no more.
+"No," she said slowly. "_You_ will take the responsibility. You will take
+the responsibility. The people look to you."
+
+She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--in
+every generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake--_prayed_."
+
+Graham moved to speak and did not.
+
+She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you know
+that you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King who
+would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?"
+
+"I suppose the imagination of the people--"
+
+"Have you not heard our proverb, 'When the Sleeper wakes'? While you lay
+insensible and motionless there--thousands 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."
+
+She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted
+wall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to
+look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the
+patience of God."
+
+"That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how you
+seemed to us."
+
+She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In the
+city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what
+you will do, full of strange incredible expectations."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Ostrog--no one--can take that responsibility."
+
+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.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that 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--do 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?"
+
+"I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know
+how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is it
+real, or is it only a great delusion?"
+
+"It is real," she said; "if you dare."
+
+"After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion
+in the minds of men."
+
+"If you dare!" she said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--they
+will obey."
+
+"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+these others--the 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--"
+
+He stopped blankly.
+
+"I am still hardly more than a girl," she said. "But 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--and robbed
+life of--everything worth having."
+
+She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the
+days of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for my
+life--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no better
+than the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is 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--for 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--they know they suffer. These
+countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You owe
+your life to them."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, slowly. "Yes. I owe my life to them."
+
+"You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the cities
+was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a 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--there was nobility! Common men led lives of
+love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you come
+from that time."
+
+"It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"
+
+"Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,
+slavery."
+
+"Slavery!" he said.
+
+"Slavery."
+
+"You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."
+
+"Worse. 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?"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+"They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour
+Department you own."
+
+"The Labour Department! In some way--that 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--?"
+
+"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you.
+Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. This
+Labour Department has grown imperceptibly."
+
+"What _is_ this Labour Department?" asked Graham.
+
+"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"
+
+"There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."
+
+"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
+now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
+something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
+organisation called the Salvation Army--that 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."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Nowadays 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--or seek
+some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for 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--that is the first
+condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
+shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
+visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved
+in your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people in
+blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Department
+trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
+supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they 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--enough 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--brought 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's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--the
+children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
+two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the
+blue canvas. And so it is the Department works."
+
+"And none are destitute in the city?"
+
+"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished
+destitution. It is engraved upon the Department's checks."
+
+"If they will not work?"
+
+"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+There are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a
+man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+system in the Department's 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--dark and miserable--out of sight
+below. There are prisons now for many things."
+
+"And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"
+
+"More 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's 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."
+
+For a space Graham sat downcast.
+
+"But there has been a revolution," he said. "All these things will be
+changed. Ostrog--"
+
+"That 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--you who come from a happier age--it is to
+you the people look. To you."
+
+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.
+
+"But what am I to do?" he said with his eyes upon her.
+
+"Rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone.
+"Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of
+men. For you might rule it--you could rule it.
+
+"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It
+wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Even
+the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.
+
+"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will
+not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has
+awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."
+
+His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+considerations.
+
+"They only want their leader," she said.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"You could do what you would;--the world is yours."
+
+He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. "The old dreams, and
+the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one
+man--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.
+
+"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of
+their hearts."
+
+He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "I have not your faith," he
+said, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let
+me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but
+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--.... One thing I
+promise you. This Labour slavery shall end."
+
+"And you will rule?"
+
+"Yes. Provided--. There is one thing."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That you will help me."
+
+"_I_--a girl!"
+
+"Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?"
+
+She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "Need you ask whether I
+will help you?" she said.
+
+There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+hour. Graham rose.
+
+"Even now," he said, "Ostrog will be waiting." He hesitated, facing her.
+"When I have asked him certain questions--. 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--?"
+
+"I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again."
+
+They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+
+Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day's
+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. "After all these years," said Ostrog, when
+Graham pressed enquiries; "the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." 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. "A
+little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division
+of our African agricultural police--the Consolidated African Companies
+have a very well drilled police--was 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."
+
+"Why should you expect trouble?" asked Graham abruptly.
+
+"There is a lot of discontent--social discontent."
+
+"The Labour Department?"
+
+"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is
+chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent
+supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. "We had to stir up their discontent,
+we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men
+equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that
+have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council.
+And now--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+people whom we have stirred up--remain 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--we have had to call in a little external help."
+
+"And here?"
+
+"There 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."
+
+Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke
+with restraint.
+
+"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said.
+
+"They are useful," said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash
+of ideas in their heads--such 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--only 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--that may happen. But it
+won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make
+revolutions are past."
+
+"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose they are." He mused. "This
+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."
+
+Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he
+said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crécy, 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--it 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--a multiplex, silly one--the
+man in the Crowd."
+
+Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre
+preoccupations.
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "The 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--tempered. 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."
+
+"Yet," said Graham, "there is something resists, something you are
+holding down--something that stirs and presses."
+
+"You will see," said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these
+difficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroy
+myself--trust me."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham.
+
+Ostrog stared.
+
+"_Must_ the world go this way?" said Graham with his emotions at the
+speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes
+been vain?"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
+
+"I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
+
+"Well,--but you are the chief tyrant."
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that
+change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the
+suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
+
+"But aristocracy! those people I met--"
+
+"Oh! not _those_!" said Ostrog. "But 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!"
+
+"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
+"There is that other thing--the 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--"
+
+Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+than before.
+
+"Don't trouble about these things," he said. "Everything 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_ 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--they are already murmuring against those
+who have overthrown the Council."
+
+"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary,
+without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped."
+
+"And 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--what 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--it's a fine duty too!--is 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."
+
+Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I can imagine
+how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You
+regret all the old forms of representative government--their 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,--had I not been busy. But you will
+learn better. The people are mad with envy--they 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." He
+smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You 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--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is
+impossible--that 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' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured.
+The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let
+them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will
+arise--other masters. The end will be the same."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham doggedly.
+
+For a moment he stood downcast.
+
+"But I must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a
+tone of confident mastery. "Only 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--and 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--the labour people
+more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"
+
+"You get that from our realistic novelists," suggested Ostrog, suddenly
+preoccupied.
+
+"I want reality," said Graham.
+
+"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought. "On the whole--"
+
+"I did not expect--"
+
+"I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the
+ways of the city and see the common people."
+
+Suddenly he came to some conclusion. "You would need to go disguised," he
+said. "The 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--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think the thing over, it
+seems to me not altogether--. 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."
+
+"You will not want to consult me in any matter?" asked Graham suddenly,
+struck by an odd suspicion.
+
+"Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any
+rate," said Ostrog, smiling. "Even if we differ--"
+
+Graham glanced at him sharply.
+
+"There is no fighting likely to happen soon?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't 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--"
+
+Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "I am not
+bringing negroes to London," he said slowly. "But if--"
+
+"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens," said
+Graham. "In that matter I am quite decided."
+
+Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_.
+They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "No
+disarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+letters and with variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No
+disarming." "No disarming." 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. "They all ought to be at work," said
+Asano. "They have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
+
+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's harvest of the first revolt.
+
+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.
+
+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--and his attention was vividly
+arrested by the façade of one of the Christian sects.
+
+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 "Salvation on
+the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker."
+"The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What
+Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a
+Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the
+Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk
+Blessings for Busy Business Men."
+
+"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream of
+mercantile piety towered above them.
+
+"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly
+for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+
+"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
+
+"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in the
+tone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I had
+forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people
+simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they
+used to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the
+countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
+
+"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white.
+"That is surely not the only--"
+
+"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn't
+_tell_ it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high
+class sects with quieter ways--costly 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--to you, I
+should say."
+
+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's signature, his first encounter with the curves and
+turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Home," 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"
+it vociferated. "He 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--all
+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."
+
+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 "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
+
+"Paris 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--don't 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!"
+
+The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+crowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this the
+Master's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
+
+"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
+
+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. "Yahaha, 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!" The nearer Babble Machine hooted
+stupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, and
+proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the
+horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the nearer
+Babble Machine.
+
+"But," began Graham.
+
+"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in an
+argument."
+
+"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
+
+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.
+
+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 "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt
+alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a
+man near him. "Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule?"
+
+Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he
+had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines
+pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is _this_
+the beginning of the Master's rule?
+
+Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely
+on the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was their
+trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure
+him that it was "all right."
+
+"But these outrages!"
+
+"You cannot have an omelette," said Asano, "without 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."
+
+"What! the Londoners?"
+
+"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order."
+
+"But burning women alive!"
+
+"A Commune!" said Asano. "They 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.
+
+"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--French
+speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
+
+"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--"
+
+"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
+
+Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+
+"I did not think," 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. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had
+them removed."
+
+Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
+
+"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after an interval.
+
+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's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of
+the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop,
+Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!--Hear a live paper yelp!" of
+its chief rival.
+
+Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _crèches_ 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's 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's manner that his identity was known, and
+proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place
+without reserve.
+
+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 _crèches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardous
+adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called
+Graham's 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.
+
+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
+_crèche_ company, the International Crèche Syndicate, lost not one-half
+per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But
+Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," he
+said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that
+they were not orphans.
+
+So soon as they had left the _crèche_ he began to speak of the horror the
+babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" he
+said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so
+unnatural--abominable almost."
+
+"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way of
+reply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it
+will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--except a
+few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women in London
+are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have
+one child--a 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."
+
+"Then do you mean that the population of the World--?"
+
+"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In
+spite of scientific discipline they are reckless--"
+
+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.
+
+"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile. "The 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."
+
+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.
+
+"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little
+ones you saw."
+
+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. "Look at them," said the little officer,
+"see how much they show of motherhood."
+
+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 "The Festival of the
+Awakening" was in progress.
+
+"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite
+apart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "These
+people are always ready for holidays."
+
+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.
+
+"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Workers--prosperous 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."
+
+"But--the women?"
+
+"The same. There's 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--there are a
+number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and
+enables them to enjoy themselves."
+
+"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl
+of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.
+"And these are--mothers."
+
+"Most of them."
+
+"The 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."
+
+In a little while he spoke again:
+
+"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way
+of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits
+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--all 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--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and
+serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a
+sort of worship--"
+
+He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
+
+"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
+
+Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.
+Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
+
+"Of 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's tribute to
+unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+police--and life is joyous."
+
+He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
+
+"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
+
+"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And
+in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
+
+"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the
+work cities."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Old people's 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."
+
+"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
+
+"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it
+well. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go
+off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary."
+
+"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause.
+"Yet 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--for
+well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+asleep two hundred years."
+
+For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+
+"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a wounded
+sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
+
+"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
+
+"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble. I
+am primitive--Paleolithic. _Their_ 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--men are dying in Paris to keep the
+world--that they may dance."
+
+Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," he
+said.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
+
+"Above and below--an intricate warren."
+
+"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
+
+"You 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."
+
+For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "I want
+to see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
+
+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.
+
+Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to
+it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "is
+something--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will not
+tell you. Come!"
+
+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--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which they
+went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost
+vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
+
+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's. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in the
+shadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.
+Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
+
+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. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,
+Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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 "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
+
+"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
+
+"You."
+
+"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
+
+"Didn't you have assurance?"
+
+Graham thought. "Insurance?"
+
+"Yes--Insurance. 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!"
+
+A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes
+on the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." 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.
+
+Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen 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."
+
+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 "X 5 pr. G."
+
+"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
+came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
+parasitic lunatics--"
+
+He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--even
+with a dialect of its own.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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_. 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.
+
+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 _cloisonné_ 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. "This is what I wanted to
+see," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid a
+start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+
+"She might have done better with herself than that," said Asano.
+
+Graham made some indignant comments.
+
+"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,"
+said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were
+nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."
+
+They continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonné_
+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.
+
+A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Stop that!" 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--the 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.
+
+And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What has happened now?" 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:
+"Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police."
+
+Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham's
+face, and told him the thing he already knew. "But how can they know?"
+asked Asano.
+
+Graham heard someone shouting. "Stop all work. Stop all work," and a
+swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down
+the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "This
+is Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." 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, "Ostrog the Knave!"
+
+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. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+heart began to beat fast and strong.
+
+"It has come," he said. "I might have known. The hour has come."
+
+He thought swiftly. "What am I to do?"
+
+"Go back to the Council House," said Asano.
+
+"Why should I not appeal--? The people are here."
+
+"You 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--with them."
+
+"Suppose this is only a rumour?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Asano.
+
+"Let us have the facts," said Graham.
+
+Asano shrugged his shoulders. "We had better get towards the Council
+House," he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may
+be impassable."
+
+Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+
+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.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Graham.
+
+"He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived
+here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices
+learnt. He said a girl."
+
+"A girl? Not--?"
+
+"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from the
+Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins."
+
+And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the
+street. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to
+his ward!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+
+As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "To your wards!
+To your wards!" 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.
+
+The cries of "To your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as
+they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+unintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse
+voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's 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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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. "Every man
+to his ward! Every man to his ward!" Here, by Asano's advice, Graham
+revealed his identity.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "To your wards! Every man to his ward!"
+
+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.
+
+"Where is Ostrog?" he demanded. "I must see Ostrog forthwith. He has
+disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands." 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.
+
+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.
+"Wards! Wards! Wards!" 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.
+
+"Ostrog," said Asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there." The
+little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham's face.
+
+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. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice
+the little party turned astonished.
+
+Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+
+Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What
+is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here--to keep the
+people down?"
+
+"It is none too soon," said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of hand
+more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated--"
+
+"Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?"
+
+"On the way. As it is, you have seen the people--outside?"
+
+"No wonder! But--after what was said. You have taken too much on
+yourself, Ostrog."
+
+Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+
+"These negroes must not come to London," said Graham. "I am Master and
+they shall not come."
+
+Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+attendants close behind him. "Why not?" asked Ostrog.
+
+"White men must be mastered by white men. Besides--"
+
+"The negroes are only an instrument."
+
+"But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master.
+And I tell you these negroes shall not come."
+
+"The people--"
+
+"I believe in the people."
+
+"Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past--an
+accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally--legally. But you
+are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master."
+
+He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think--I can guess
+something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn
+you. You dream of human equality--of some sort of socialistic order--you
+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."
+
+"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it--a sound like the sea. Not
+voices--but a voice. Do _you_ altogether understand?"
+
+"We taught them that," said Ostrog.
+
+"Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+negroes must not come."
+
+There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+
+"They will," he said.
+
+"I forbid it," said Graham.
+
+"They have started."
+
+"I will not have it."
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "Sorry as I am to follow the method of the
+Council--. For your own good--you must not side with--Disorder. And now
+that you are here--. It was kind of you to come here."
+
+Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's 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's cloak.
+
+He turned and struck at Lincoln's 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.
+
+He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg
+and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+
+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's 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's heaving throat.
+
+"You--are--a prisoner," panted Ostrog, exulting. "You--were rather a
+fool--to come back."
+
+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!
+
+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, "Save the Master!" "What are they doing to the Master?" "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was distracted, that
+Ostrog's 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's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the
+silk about his neck.
+
+But now men were coming towards them from the dais--men 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.
+
+He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not
+friends--that 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.
+
+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. "They can't
+come down," panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire. It's all right. We'll save
+him from them yet."
+
+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.
+
+The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+thousand throats were cheering.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Where has Ostrog gone?" he asked.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "The Master is with us! The Master! The Master!"
+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. "The Master
+is on our side!"
+
+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.
+
+"What has become of Ostrog?" 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 "Ostrog," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What are they doing? What are
+the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They
+will lift him--the monoplane will lift him! Ah!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tell
+the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"
+
+Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+enigmatical orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And then it rose.
+
+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.
+
+And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+upward into the wind-swept sky.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "For a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
+think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."
+
+While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+
+"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.
+
+"The people of the south-west wards are ready."
+
+"Ready!"
+
+He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+
+"I 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.
+
+"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
+the light grow brighter.
+
+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. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
+watching lights waned.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.
+
+She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+interrupt Graham's 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.
+
+"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
+very difficult."
+
+He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+
+"Men and women of the new age," he said; "you have arisen to do battle
+for the race!... There is no easy victory before us."
+
+He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of
+moving speech.
+
+"This night is a beginning," he said. "This 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I come out of the past to you," he said, "with the memory of an age
+that hoped. My age was an age of dreams--of 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?
+
+"Great 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--sorrow 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--. Is there a new faith?
+
+"Charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful
+things--effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself--as
+Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand.
+It does not matter if you seem to fail. You _know_--in the core of your
+hearts you _know_. There is no promise, there is no security--nothing to
+go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith--faith which is
+courage...."
+
+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....
+
+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. "Here and now," he cried, "I 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I knew," she whispered. "Oh! Father of the World--_Sire_! I knew you
+would say these things...."
+
+"I have said what I could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to
+her outstretched hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+
+The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+saying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it so
+soon," he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word to
+help them on their way."
+
+Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to
+his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That is good, that is good." He weighed a message. "Tell
+them;--well done South West."
+
+He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages," he
+explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we
+must prevent that."
+
+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.
+
+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. "Here I am doing nothing," he said.
+
+"It is impossible," protested the man in yellow. "It is a fight in a
+warren. Your place is here."
+
+He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+wait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where you
+are," he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence
+and decision."
+
+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--and 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's 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+
+Metallic voices were shouting "Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!"
+
+Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+dishevelled with excitement, "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people
+are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."
+
+She rose. "Victory?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! _What_?"
+
+"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is
+afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. _Ours_!--and we have
+taken the monoplane that lay thereon."
+
+A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+the Ward Leaders. "It is all over," he cried.
+
+"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been
+sighted at Boulogne!"
+
+"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+"Half an hour."
+
+"They still have three of the flying stages," said the old man.
+
+"Those guns?" cried Graham.
+
+"We cannot mount them--in half an hour."
+
+"Do you mean they are found?"
+
+"Too late," said the old man.
+
+"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "They have near a hundred
+aeroplanes in the first fleet."
+
+"Another hour?" asked Graham.
+
+"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found
+those guns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the
+roof spaces."
+
+"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
+
+"An hour--certainly."
+
+"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
+
+"_Is_ it too late?" said Graham. "Even now--. An hour!"
+
+He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but
+his face was white. "There is are chance. You said there was a
+monoplane--?"
+
+"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
+
+"Smashed?"
+
+"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."
+
+Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+pause. "_We_ have no aeronauts?"
+
+"None."
+
+He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Go to this flying stage--to this machine."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me
+were not altogether wasted."
+
+He turned to the old man in yellow. "Tell them to put it upon the
+guides."
+
+The man in yellow hesitated.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
+
+"This monoplane--it is a chance--."
+
+"You don't mean--?"
+
+"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. A big
+aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"
+
+"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send
+them my message--to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I
+see now why I am here!"
+
+The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and
+hurried out.
+
+Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But, Sire!--How
+can one fight? You will be killed."
+
+"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let some one else attempt it--."
+
+"You will be killed," she repeated.
+
+"I've said my word. Do you not see? It may save--London!"
+
+He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+
+They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+towering heroisms.
+
+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.
+
+"To wake," she cried, "for this!"
+
+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.
+
+He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said "Onward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+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. "He's down
+there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch. Yes. Between
+those bars."
+
+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.
+
+"I can't see him _now_," said the second man in a tone of provocation.
+
+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.
+
+"What's going on now?" 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.
+
+"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up and
+spoil shots. What are they after?"
+
+"Ssh!--they're shouting something."
+
+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. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's what
+they're after."
+
+He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his
+friend. "We've got no aeronauts."
+
+"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at the
+struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. "Mind these,
+mate," 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.
+
+"He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+that man is King," 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. "The Master is coming," shouted voices, "the Master is
+coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to
+thrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "The
+Sleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the voices.
+
+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....
+
+For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham's 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 "Clear for the start, you fools!" The bell that
+cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+
+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's 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--presently--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--throb, 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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face into
+an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath
+the nearer wing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+"Where was the other?" he thought. "They too--." 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....
+
+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--for Wimbledon Park was
+useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a
+furnace--were 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Massa Boss" 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.
+
+Suddenly Graham hit them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled
+by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the
+gust of its close passage.
+
+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.
+
+"_Two_!" 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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+He drew an immense breath. "They win," he shouted to the empty air; "the
+people win!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and
+went circling up. He saw Ostrog's 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--dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of
+Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing
+resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to 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.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The
+eastward stage, the one on Shooter's 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.
+
+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.
+
+He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the
+air was blowing past him and _upward_. 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.
+
+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's calculated treachery.
+
+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....
+
+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_ be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real.
+She was real. He would wake and meet her.
+
+Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth
+was very near.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12163-0.txt or 12163-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/1/6/12163/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
diff --git a/old/12163-0.zip b/old/12163-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71f88a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12163-0.zip
diff --git a/old/12163-h.zip b/old/12163-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ad6f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12163-h.zip
diff --git a/old/12163-h/12163-h.htm b/old/12163-h/12163-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c02929
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/12163-h/12163-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,11115 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells</title>
+
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent5   { margin-left: 5%;}
+    .indent10  { margin-left: 10%;}
+    .indent15  { margin-left: 15%;}
+    .indent20  { margin-left: 20%;}
+    .indent30  { margin-left: 30%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em;
+                font-variant: normal; font-style: normal;
+                text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD;
+                border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;}
+    .side      { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 25%; padding-left: 0.8em;
+               border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left;
+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
+               font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;}
+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sleeper Awakes
+       A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
+
+Author: H.G. Wells
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2004 [EBook #12163]
+Last Updated: May 19, 2021
+
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      A Revised Edition of &ldquo;When the Sleeper Wakes&rdquo;
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By H.G. Wells
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      1899
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE SLEEPER AWAKES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. &mdash; INSOMNIA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRANCE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE AWAKENING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE SOUND OF A TUMULT </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE MOVING WAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE HALL OF THE ATLAS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. &mdash; IN THE SILENT ROOMS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE ROOF SPACES </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. &mdash; THE PEOPLE MARCH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. &mdash; THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW
+      EVERYTHING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. &mdash; OSTROG </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; FROM THE CROW&rsquo;S NEST
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. &mdash; PROMINENT PEOPLE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; THE MONOPLANE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; THREE DAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; GRAHAM REMEMBERS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; OSTROG&rsquo;S POINT OF VIEW
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER XX. &mdash; IN THE CITY WAYS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; THE UNDER-SIDE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL
+      HOUSE </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE
+      COMING </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <i>When the Sleeper Wakes</i>, whose title I have now altered to <i>The
+      Sleeper Awakes</i>, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial
+      appearance in the <i>Graphic</i> and one or two American and colonial
+      periodicals. It is one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my
+      books, and I have taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to
+      make a number of excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work,
+      it was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not
+      only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of
+      the story. Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be
+      an almost unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in
+      the writing of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the
+      critic that instead of being put aside and thought over through a
+      leisurely interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end.
+      I was at that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition
+      to various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, <i>Love
+      and Mr. Lewisham</i>, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+      affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+      other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+      Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+      revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But fortune
+      was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall dangerously
+      ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my attempt to
+      put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my temperature
+      at a hundred and two. I couldn&rsquo;t endure the thought of leaving that
+      book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from the
+      consequences of that febrile spurt&mdash;<i>Love and Mr. Lewisham</i> is
+      indeed one of my most carefully balanced books&mdash;but the Sleeper
+      escaped me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+      of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+      reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+      editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+      passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+      sluggish <i>driven</i> pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at
+      the end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+      clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+      and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+      relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+      vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what the
+      newspaper syndicates call a &ldquo;love interest&rdquo; out of Helen.
+      There was even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the
+      flying-machine to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married
+      Helen. I have now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities.
+      Not the slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have
+      arisen between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl
+      and her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found
+      it possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+      objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+      on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+      the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that the
+      People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+      certainty of either victory or defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who will win&mdash;Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+      still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      H.G. WELLS.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. &mdash; INSOMNIA
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He glanced round at Isbister&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very,&rdquo; answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and
+      added in a colourless tone, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister stopped abruptly. &ldquo;No?&rdquo; was all he said, but his
+      bearing conveyed his helpful impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may sound incredible,&rdquo; said the stranger, turning weary
+      eyes to Isbister&rsquo;s face and emphasizing his words with a languid
+      hand, &ldquo;but I have had no sleep&mdash;no sleep at all for six nights.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had advice?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system....
+      They are all very well for the run of people. It&rsquo;s hard to explain.
+      I dare not take ... sufficiently powerful drugs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That makes it difficult,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never
+      suffered from sleeplessness myself,&rdquo; he said in a tone of
+      commonplace gossip, &ldquo;but in those cases I have known, people have
+      usually found something&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare make no experiments.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men
+      were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exercise?&rdquo; suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from
+      his interlocutor&rsquo;s face of wretchedness to the touring costume he
+      wore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the
+      coast, day after day&mdash;from New Quay. It has only added muscular
+      fatigue to the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork&mdash;trouble.
+      There was something&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in
+      which I have no part. I am wifeless&mdash;childless&mdash;who is it speaks
+      of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless,
+      childless&mdash;I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart.
+      One thing at last I set myself to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I said, I <i>will</i> do this, and to do it, to overcome the
+      inertia of this dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I&rsquo;ve had
+      enough of drugs! I don&rsquo;t know if <i>you</i> feel the heavy
+      inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind&mdash;time&mdash;life!
+      Live! We only live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull
+      digestive complacencies&mdash;or 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&rsquo;s
+      day is his own&mdash;even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+      those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+      rest&mdash;black coffee, cocaine&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did my work,&rdquo; said the sleepless man with a querulous
+      intonation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And this is the price?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel&mdash;a 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&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+      &ldquo;Towards the gulf.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must sleep,&rdquo; said Isbister decisively, and with an air of
+      a remedy discovered. &ldquo;Certainly you must sleep.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+      drawing towards the vortex. Presently&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day,
+      out of this sweet world of sanity&mdash;down&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; expostulated Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+      voice suddenly high. &ldquo;I shall kill myself. If in no other way&mdash;at
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s unreasonable,&rdquo; said Isbister, startled at the
+      man&rsquo;s hysterical gust of emotion. &ldquo;Drugs are better than that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There at any rate is sleep,&rdquo; repeated the stranger, not
+      heeding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister looked at him. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a cert, you know,&rdquo; he
+      remarked. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove&mdash;as
+      high, anyhow&mdash;and a little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives
+      to-day&mdash;sound and well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those rocks there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken
+      bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their eyes met. &ldquo;Sorry to upset your ideals,&rdquo; said Isbister
+      with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance. &ldquo;But a suicide over
+      that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He laughed. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s so damned amateurish.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the other thing,&rdquo; said the sleepless man irritably,
+      &ldquo;the other thing. No man can keep sane if night after night&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been walking along this coast alone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly sort of thing to do. If you&rsquo;ll 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&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at these rocks!&rdquo; cried the seated man with a sudden
+      force of gesture. &ldquo;Look 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+      bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. &ldquo;It is the garment of
+      my misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. &ldquo;You get a
+      night&rsquo;s sleep,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and you won&rsquo;t see much
+      misery out here. Take my word for it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+      in answer to Isbister&rsquo;s direct questions&mdash;and not to all of
+      those. But he made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What can be happening?&rdquo;
+      he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. &ldquo;What can be happening?
+      Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for
+      evermore.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood with his hand circling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, old chap,&rdquo; said Isbister with the air
+      of an old friend. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry yourself. Trust to me,&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My head is not like what it was,&rdquo; he said, gesticulating for
+      want of expressive phrases. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not like what it was. There
+      is a sort of oppression, a weight. No&mdash;not 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&rsquo;t express it. I can
+      hardly keep my mind on it&mdash;steadily enough to tell you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble, old chap,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I think
+      I can understand. At any rate, it don&rsquo;t matter very much just at
+      present about telling me, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Come down to my room,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and try a
+      pipe. I can show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you&rsquo;d care?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+      movements were slow and hesitating. &ldquo;Come in with me,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister, &ldquo;and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+      If you take alcohol?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+      his actions. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t drink,&rdquo; he said slowly, coming up
+      the garden path, and after a moment&rsquo;s interval repeated absently,
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I don&rsquo;t drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes&mdash;spin&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+      who sees nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you&rsquo;d care to have supper with me,&rdquo;
+      he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand&mdash;his mind troubled
+      with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. &ldquo;Only cold
+      mutton, you know, but passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe.&rdquo;
+      He repeated this after momentary silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+      complacency. &ldquo;At any rate one must give him a chance.&rdquo; He
+      struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mind; he started, and leaning over the
+      table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction.
+      Astonishment seized him and became&mdash;dread!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor&rsquo;s face. He
+      started violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of
+      white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Are you asleep?&rdquo; he said, with his voice jumping, and
+      again, &ldquo;Are you asleep?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please bring a light at once,&rdquo; he said in the passage.
+      &ldquo;There is something wrong with my friend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must fetch a doctor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is either
+      death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be
+      found?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. &mdash; THE TRANCE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;neither 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems only yesterday,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I remember it
+      all as though it happened yesterday&mdash;clearer, perhaps, than if it had
+      happened yesterday.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing gave me a shock,&rdquo; said Isbister. &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you never seen him since that time?&rdquo; asked Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Often wanted to come,&rdquo; said Isbister; &ldquo;but business
+      nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I&rsquo;ve been
+      in America most of the time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I remember rightly,&rdquo; said Warming, &ldquo;you were an
+      artist?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with
+      black and white, very soon&mdash;at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped
+      on to process. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good posters,&rdquo; admitted the solicitor, &ldquo;though I was
+      sorry to see them there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary,&rdquo; exclaimed Isbister
+      with satisfaction. &ldquo;The 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&rsquo;t expect that some day my
+      pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land&rsquo;s
+      End round again to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he&rsquo;s
+      not looking.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. &ldquo;I just missed
+      seeing you, if I recollect aright.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway
+      station. It was close on the Jubilee, Victoria&rsquo;s Jubilee, because I
+      remember the seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman
+      at Chelsea.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Diamond Jubilee, it was,&rdquo; said Warming; &ldquo;the second
+      one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee&mdash;the Fifty Year affair&mdash;I
+      was down at Wookey&mdash;a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had
+      with him! My landlady wouldn&rsquo;t take him in, wouldn&rsquo;t let him
+      stay&mdash;he looked so queer when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a
+      chair up to the hotel. And the Boscastle doctor&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t the
+      present chap, but the G.P. before him&mdash;was at him until nearly two,
+      with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;he was stiff and hard?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stiff!&mdash;wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood
+      him on his head and he&rsquo;d have stopped. I never saw such stiffness.
+      Of course this&rdquo;&mdash;he indicated the prostrate figure by a
+      movement of his head&mdash;&ldquo;is quite different. And the little
+      doctor&mdash;what was his name?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smithers?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smithers it was&mdash;was 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&mdash;ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly
+      little things, not dynamos&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coils.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. 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 <i>him</i>&mdash;stark
+      and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made me dream.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a strange state,&rdquo; said Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a sort of complete absence,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the body, empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It&rsquo;s
+      like a seat vacant and marked &lsquo;engaged.&rsquo; No feeling, no
+      digestion, no beating of the heart&mdash;not a flutter. <i>That</i> doesn&rsquo;t
+      make me feel as if there was a man present. In a sense it&rsquo;s 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; said Warming, with a flash of pain in his
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;but 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And while he has been lying here,&rdquo; said Isbister, with the
+      zest of a life freely spent, &ldquo;I have changed my plans in life;
+      married, raised a family, my eldest lad&mdash;I hadn&rsquo;t begun to
+      think of sons then&mdash;is an American citizen, and looking forward to
+      leaving Harvard. There&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      curious to think of.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming turned. &ldquo;And 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 <i>is</i> a young man nevertheless.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s been the War,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From beginning to end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And these Martians.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve understood,&rdquo; said Isbister after a pause, &ldquo;that
+      he had some moderate property of his own?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so,&rdquo; said Warming. He coughed primly. &ldquo;As it
+      happens&mdash;I have charge of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: &ldquo;No doubt&mdash;his
+      keep here is not expensive&mdash;no doubt it will have improved&mdash;accumulated?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has. He will wake up very much better off&mdash;if he wakes&mdash;than
+      when he slept.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a business man,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;that 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if he would have premeditated as much,&rdquo; said Warming.
+      &ldquo;He was not a far-sighted man. In fact&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We 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&mdash;. 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There&rsquo;s been a lot of
+      change these twenty years. It&rsquo;s Rip Van Winkle come real.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been a lot of change certainly,&rdquo; said Warming.
+      &ldquo;And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t
+      have thought it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was forty-three when his bankers&mdash;you remember you wired to
+      his bankers&mdash;sent on to me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, the addition is not difficult,&rdquo; said Warming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+      curiosity. &ldquo;He may go on for years yet,&rdquo; he said, and had a
+      moment of hesitation. &ldquo;We have to consider that. His affairs, you
+      know, may fall some day into the hands of&mdash;someone else, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems
+      most constantly before my mind. We happen to be&mdash;as a matter of fact,
+      there are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+      unprecedented position.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather,&rdquo; said Isbister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me it&rsquo;s a case of some public body, some
+      practically undying guardian. If he really is going on living&mdash;as 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t be a bad idea to hand him over to some public
+      body&mdash;the British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of
+      Physicians. Sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The difficulty is to induce them to take him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Red tape, I suppose?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Partly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pause. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a curious business, certainly,&rdquo; said
+      Isbister. &ldquo;And compound interest has a way of mounting up.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has,&rdquo; said Warming. &ldquo;And now the gold supplies are
+      running short there is a tendency towards ... appreciation.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve felt that,&rdquo; said Isbister with a grimace. &ldquo;But
+      it makes it better for <i>him</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>If</i> he wakes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he wakes,&rdquo; echoed Isbister. &ldquo;Do you notice the
+      pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warming looked and thought for a space. &ldquo;I doubt if he will wake,&rdquo;
+      he said at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never properly understood,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;what it
+      was brought this on. He told me something about overstudy. I&rsquo;ve
+      often been curious.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He 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&mdash;a Socialist&mdash;or typical Liberal, as
+      they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic&mdash;flighty&mdash;undisciplined.
+      Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he
+      wrote&mdash;a 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d give anything to be there,&rdquo; said Isbister, &ldquo;just
+      to hear what he would say to it all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So would I,&rdquo; said Warming. &ldquo;Aye! so would I,&rdquo;
+      with an old man&rsquo;s sudden turn to self pity. &ldquo;But I shall never
+      see him wake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. &ldquo;He will never
+      awake,&rdquo; he said at last. He sighed. &ldquo;He will never awake
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. &mdash; THE AWAKENING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity&mdash;the
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;he could not tell what name&mdash;that 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>
+    <p>
+      Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar
+      thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;but 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and amazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+      mind was quite clear&mdash;evidently 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&mdash;and he
+      saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow&mdash;was
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a
+      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&mdash;it rang but did not break&mdash;and sat down in
+      one of the armchairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+      bottle and drank&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      What was this place?&mdash;this 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. &ldquo;Beat, beat,&rdquo; that sweeping shadow had a
+      note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Wake!&rdquo; He heard some indistinct shrill cry,
+      and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha, ha!&rdquo; laughed one&mdash;a red-haired man in a short
+      purple robe. &ldquo;When the Sleeper wakes&mdash;<i>When</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Graham&rsquo;s knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+      collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. &mdash; THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham moved his head. &ldquo;What does this all mean?&rdquo; he said
+      slowly. &ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      ears. &ldquo;You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you
+      fell asleep. It is quite safe. You have been here some time&mdash;sleeping.
+      In a trance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better?&rdquo; asked the man in violet, as Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you wired my cousin?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;E. Warming, 27,
+      Chancery Lane?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. &ldquo;What an
+      odd <i>blurr</i> in his accent!&rdquo; whispered the red-haired man.
+      &ldquo;Wire, sir?&rdquo; said the young man with the flaxen beard,
+      evidently puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means send an electric telegram,&rdquo; volunteered the third, a
+      pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+      cry of comprehension. &ldquo;How stupid of me! You may be sure everything
+      shall be done, sir,&rdquo; he said to Graham. &ldquo;I am afraid it would
+      be difficult to&mdash;<i>wire</i> to your cousin. He is not in London now.
+      But don&rsquo;t trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a
+      very long time and the important thing is to get over that, sir.&rdquo;
+      (Graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it &ldquo;<i>Sire</i>.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Graham, and became quiet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;t 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+      taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&mdash;that makes me feel better,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      He pressed his throat and tried a third time. &ldquo;How long?&rdquo; he
+      asked in a level voice. &ldquo;How long have I been asleep?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some considerable time,&rdquo; said the flaxen-bearded man,
+      glancing quickly at the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very long time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;yes,&rdquo; said Graham, suddenly testy. &ldquo;But I
+      want&mdash;Is it&mdash;it is&mdash;some years? Many years? There was
+      something&mdash;I forget what. I feel&mdash;confused. But you&mdash;&rdquo;
+      He sobbed. &ldquo;You need not fence with me. How long&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+      and sat waiting for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They spoke in undertones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five or six?&rdquo; he asked faintly. &ldquo;More?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very much more than that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+      of his face. He looked his question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Many years,&rdquo; said the man with the red beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from his
+      face with a lean hand. &ldquo;Many years!&rdquo; he repeated. He shut his
+      eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar
+      thing to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many years?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must be prepared to be surprised.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than a gross of years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was irritated at the strange word. &ldquo;More than a <i>what</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+      &ldquo;decimal&rdquo; he did not catch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long did you say?&rdquo; asked Graham. &ldquo;How long? Don&rsquo;t
+      look like that. Tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: &ldquo;More
+      than a couple of centuries.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>What</i>?&rdquo; he cried, turning on the youth who he thought
+      had spoken. &ldquo;Who says&mdash;? What was that? A couple of <i>centuries</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the man with the red beard. &ldquo;Two hundred
+      years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+      and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred years,&rdquo; he said again, with the figure of a great
+      gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, &ldquo;Oh, but&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;did you say&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two hundred years. Two centuries of years,&rdquo; said the man with
+      the red beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+      heard was indeed true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it can&rsquo;t be,&rdquo; he said querulously. &ldquo;I am
+      dreaming. Trances&mdash;trances don&rsquo;t last. That is not right&mdash;this
+      is a joke you have played upon me! Tell me&mdash;some days ago, perhaps, I
+      was walking along the coast of Cornwall&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice failed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not very strong
+      in history, sir,&rdquo; he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was it, sir,&rdquo; said the youngster. &ldquo;Boscastle, in
+      the old Duchy of Cornwall&mdash;it&rsquo;s in the south-west country
+      beyond the dairy meadows. There is a house there still. I have been there.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boscastle!&rdquo; Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. &ldquo;That
+      was it&mdash;Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep&mdash;somewhere
+      there. I don&rsquo;t exactly remember. I don&rsquo;t exactly remember.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pressed his brows and whispered, &ldquo;More than <i>two hundred years</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold
+      within him. &ldquo;But if it <i>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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not answer him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State.
+      High and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a comfort! Is there London?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This <i>is</i> London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+      assistant-custodian. And these&mdash;? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. &ldquo;But why am I here? No! Don&rsquo;t
+      talk. Be quiet. Let me&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+      little foolishly. &ldquo;But&mdash;two&mdash;hun&mdash;dred&mdash;years!&rdquo;
+      he said. He grimaced hysterically and covered his face again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;These others,&rdquo; he said in a voice of extreme
+      irritation. &ldquo;You had better go.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go?&rdquo; said the red-bearded man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly&mdash;go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+      proceeded to interrogate the other&mdash;obviously his subordinate&mdash;-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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not confuse his mind by telling him things,&rdquo; he
+      repeated again and again. &ldquo;You must not confuse his mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+      with an ambiguous expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Feel queer?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so, now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, hadn&rsquo;t I better have some clothes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&mdash;&rdquo; said the thickset man and stopped, and the
+      flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. &ldquo;You will very
+      speedily have clothes,&rdquo; said the thickset man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred&mdash;?&rdquo;
+      asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+      matter of fact.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+      mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, &ldquo;Is
+      there a mill or dynamo near here?&rdquo; He did not wait for an answer.
+      &ldquo;Things have changed tremendously, I suppose?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that shouting?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; said the thickset man impatiently. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      people. You&rsquo;ll understand better later&mdash;perhaps. As you say,
+      things have changed.&rdquo; He spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he
+      glanced about him like a man trying to decide in an emergency. &ldquo;We
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham rubbed his chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a time
+      he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: &ldquo;Show us the
+      Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wild!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;How do they know? Do they know? Or is
+      it guessing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was perhaps an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t come,&rdquo; said the thickset man; &ldquo;I have <i>him</i>
+      to see to. But shout from the balcony.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an inaudible reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He came hurrying back to Graham. &ldquo;You must have clothes at once,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;You cannot stop here&mdash;and it will be impossible to&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+      moment he was back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you what is happening. It is too complex to
+      explain. In a moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes&mdash;in a
+      moment. And then I can take you away from here. You will find out our
+      troubles soon enough.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But those voices. They were shouting&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something about the Sleeper&mdash;that&rsquo;s you. They have some
+      twisted idea. I don&rsquo;t know what it is. I know nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the tailor,&rdquo; said the thickset man with an
+      introductory gesture. &ldquo;It 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?&rdquo; he said to the tailor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;You
+      will find the fashions altered, Sire,&rdquo; he said. He glanced from
+      under his brows at the thickset man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+      fabrics poured out over his knees. &ldquo;You lived, Sire, in a period
+      essentially cylindrical&mdash;the Victorian. With a tendency to the
+      hemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now&mdash;&rdquo; He flicked
+      out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled
+      the knob, and behold&mdash;a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope
+      fashion on the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern
+      of bluish white satin. &ldquo;That is my conception of your immediate
+      treatment,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have very little time,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trust me,&rdquo; said the tailor. &ldquo;My machine follows. What
+      do you think of this?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your days they showed you a fashion-plate,&rdquo; said the
+      tailor, &ldquo;but this is our modern development. See here.&rdquo; The
+      little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. &ldquo;Or
+      this,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that doing?&rdquo; asked Graham, pointing with the empty
+      glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new
+      comer. &ldquo;Is that&mdash;some sort of force&mdash;laid on?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the man with the flaxen beard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is <i>that</i>?&rdquo; He indicated the archway behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an
+      undertone, &ldquo;He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t mind, I will leave him to
+      explain.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Odd!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Guardian? Council?&rdquo; Then
+      turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, &ldquo;Why is
+      this man <i>glaring</i> at me? Is he a mesmerist?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capillotomist!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+      unsteady mind. &ldquo;Sixdoz lions?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds?
+      They are our monetary units.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was that you said&mdash;sixdoz?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things,
+      have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system&mdash;tens,
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But about this cap&mdash;what
+      was it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here are your clothes!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t
+      mean to say&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just made,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must shave,&rdquo; he said regarding himself in the glass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A seat,&rdquo; said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the
+      flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind Graham. &ldquo;Sit down, please,&rdquo;
+      said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+      glint of steel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand, Sire?&rdquo; cried the flaxen-bearded
+      man with hurried politeness. &ldquo;He is going to cut your hair.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Graham enlightened. &ldquo;But you called him&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A capillotomist&mdash;precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+      the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+      capillotomist came forward, examined Graham&rsquo;s ears and surveyed him,
+      felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but
+      for Howard&rsquo;s audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and
+      a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly a loud voice shouted&mdash;it seemed from a piece of machinery in
+      the corner&mdash;&ldquo;At once&mdash;at once. The people know all over
+      the city. Work is being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing,
+      but come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. &mdash; THE MOVING WAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must not stop here,&rdquo; shouted Howard suddenly at his side.
+      &ldquo;You must come away at once.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      boy had worn. He became aware of cries of &ldquo;The Sleeper. What has
+      happened to the Sleeper?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper,&rdquo; shouted voices.
+      &ldquo;That is never the Sleeper,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He perceived that the cries of &ldquo;The Sleeper!&rdquo; 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:
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper! The Sleeper!&rdquo; and yells and cheers, a waving of
+      garments and cries of &ldquo;Stop the Ways!&rdquo; They were also crying
+      another name strange to Graham. It sounded like &ldquo;Ostrog.&rdquo; The
+      slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the
+      movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop the Ways,&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;It is indeed the Sleeper.
+      It is indeed the Sleeper,&rdquo; they testified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He turned, and Howard&rsquo;s face was white. &ldquo;Come back,&rdquo; he
+      heard. &ldquo;They will stop the ways. The whole city will be in
+      confusion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get him away,&rdquo; cried Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must come away!&rdquo; said the man in red in a resolute voice.
+      His face and eyes were resolute, too. Graham&rsquo;s glances went from
+      face to face, and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour
+      in life, compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. &mdash; THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What was the
+      trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the
+      danger?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have our troubles,&rdquo; said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham&rsquo;s
+      enquiry. &ldquo;This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance,
+      your waking just now, has a sort of connexion&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be clearer later,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift
+      slow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about
+      a little,&rdquo; said Graham puzzled. &ldquo;It will be&mdash;it 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a huge place this is!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Is it all one
+      building? What place is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+      so forth.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it a social trouble&mdash;that&mdash;in the great roadway
+      place? How are you governed? Have you still a police?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Several?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About fourteen.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+      to you. To tell you the truth, I don&rsquo;t understand it myself very
+      clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps&mdash;bye and bye. We have to go
+      to the Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s guardian. That was odd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Go on,&rdquo;
+      cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to see more of that,&rdquo; cried Graham, resisting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; cried Howard, still gripping his arm. &ldquo;This
+      way. You must go this way.&rdquo; And the men in red following them seemed
+      ready to enforce his orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, &ldquo;The
+      Sleeper,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must remain here,&rdquo; murmured Howard, &ldquo;for a few
+      moments,&rdquo; and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the
+      gallery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, <i>why</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+      the men in red. &ldquo;You have to wait here, Sire,&rdquo; said the man in
+      red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Why</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Orders, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose orders?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our orders, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham looked his exasperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What place is this?&rdquo; he said presently. &ldquo;Who are those
+      men?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are the lords of the Council, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>The</i> Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+      chambers furnished in white and green. &ldquo;What Council was that?&rdquo;
+      began Graham. &ldquo;What were they discussing? What have they to do with
+      me?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; he grunted, a man
+      relieved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood regarding him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must understand,&rdquo; began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham&rsquo;s
+      eyes, &ldquo;that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a
+      bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter
+      of fact&mdash;it is a case of compound interest partly&mdash;your small
+      fortune, and the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you&mdash;and
+      certain other beginnings&mdash;have become very considerable. And in other
+      ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+      significance&mdash;of very considerable significance&mdash;involved in the
+      world&rsquo;s affairs.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have grave social troubles.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+      seclude you here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep me prisoner!&rdquo; exclaimed Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;to ask you to keep in seclusion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham turned on him. &ldquo;This is strange!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No harm will be done you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No harm!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you must be kept here&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While I learn my position, I presume.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Precisely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well then. Begin. Why <i>harm</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is too long a story, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All in good time, Sire,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;But not crudely,
+      not crudely. This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled
+      mind. Your awakening&mdash;no one expected your awakening. The Council is
+      consulting.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council you saw.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made a petulant movement. &ldquo;This is not right,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I should be told what is happening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must wait. Really you must wait.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham sat down abruptly. &ldquo;I suppose since I have waited so long to
+      resume life,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that I must wait a little longer.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is better,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;Yes, that is much
+      better. And I must leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the
+      discussion in the Council.... I am sorry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mysterious behaviour. There was an inkling
+      of some vast inheritance already in his mind&mdash;a vast inheritance
+      perhaps misapplied&mdash;of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+      What had he to do? And this room&rsquo;s secluded silence was eloquent of
+      imprisonment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It came into Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of
+      the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A flash of laughter came with the recognition. &ldquo;To call on old
+      Warming like this!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;and make him take me out to
+      lunch!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;<i>strange</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. &mdash; IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The
+      world has changed indeed,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thi Man huwdbi Kin&rdquo; forced itself on him as &ldquo;The Man
+      who would be King.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phonetic spelling,&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;The Heart of Darkness&rdquo; he had never heard of before nor
+      &ldquo;The Madonna of the Future&rdquo;&mdash;no doubt if they were indeed
+      stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;I have worked,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;but what have you been
+      doing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in
+      the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard &ldquo;when
+      the Sleeper wakes,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+      apparatus was blank again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;black almost, with a
+      dust of little stars....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;We were
+      making the future,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and hardly any of us troubled to
+      think what future we were making. And here it is!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the
+      midst of it all?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;un-English.&rdquo; His mind glanced at the rest of
+      the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He began to talk to himself. &ldquo;Two hundred and three years!&rdquo; he
+      said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. &ldquo;Then I am
+      two hundred and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they
+      haven&rsquo;t 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. &lsquo;Tis a great age!
+      Ha ha!&rdquo; He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then
+      laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was
+      behaving foolishly. &ldquo;Steady,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Steady!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His pacing became more regular. &ldquo;This new world,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand it. <i>Why</i>? ... But it is all <i>why</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+      remember just how it began.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must sleep,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And in those three days Graham&rsquo;s 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&mdash;even 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>
+    <p>
+      Howard&rsquo;s bearing went far to deepen Graham&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;To explain it
+      I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,&rdquo;
+      protested Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The thing is this,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You are afraid of
+      something I shall do. In some way I am arbitrator&mdash;I might be
+      arbitrator.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not that. But you have&mdash;I may tell you this much&mdash;the
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nineteenth century,&rdquo; corrected Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+      feature of our State.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I a fool?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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&mdash;a mere arrest of decay. And&mdash;but it is too complex.
+      We dare not suddenly&mdash;-while you are still half awake.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Suppose it is as you
+      say&mdash;why 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard pulled his lip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am beginning to feel&mdash;every hour I feel more clearly&mdash;a
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That note of suspicion&mdash;&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Now, 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 <i>live</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Live</i>!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard&rsquo;s face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in
+      an easy confidential tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+      Naturally&mdash;an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are
+      anxious that everything you may desire&mdash;every desire&mdash;every sort
+      of desire ... There may be something. Is there any sort of company?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused meaningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham thoughtfully. &ldquo;There is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! <i>Now</i>! We have treated you neglectfully.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The crowds in yonder streets of yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; said Howard, &ldquo;I am afraid&mdash;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him. The
+      implication of Howard&rsquo;s suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+      Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of <i>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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by company?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;Human beings,&rdquo;
+      he said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. &ldquo;Our social ideas,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in
+      comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as
+      this&mdash;by 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&mdash;discreet&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stopped dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would pass the time,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;It is a thing I
+      should perhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much
+      is happening&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He indicated the exterior world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+      his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>No</i>!&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He began striding rapidly up and down the room. &ldquo;Everything you say,
+      everything you do, convinces me&mdash;of 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&mdash;and 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&mdash;. And meanwhile I am here
+      like a rabbit in a bag.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+      stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it this is a message to the Council,&rdquo; said Howard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s movement was
+      quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from
+      the nineteenth century was alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+      flung them down. &ldquo;What a fool I have been!&rdquo; 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&mdash;because he was afraid of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment was
+      unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms&mdash;new legal forms&mdash;of
+      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&mdash;humane. Yet they
+      had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well as
+      chastity?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Why should
+      anything be done to me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the worst comes to the worst,&rdquo; he found himself saying at
+      last, &ldquo;I can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why
+      don&rsquo;t they ask me for it instead of cooping me up?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council&rsquo;s possible
+      intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. &mdash; THE ROOF SPACES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He remained motionless&mdash;his 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be afraid,&rdquo; said a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood under the vane. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; he whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were the Sleeper?&rdquo; said the stranger at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What do you want with me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from Ostrog, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you? What do you want?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want to speak to you, Sire,&rdquo; said the intruder. &ldquo;We
+      want&mdash;I can&rsquo;t hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way
+      to you&mdash;these three days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it rescue?&rdquo; whispered Graham. &ldquo;Escape?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sire. If you will.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are my party&mdash;the party of the Sleeper?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What am I to do?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a struggle. The stranger&rsquo;s arm appeared, and his hand was
+      bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. &ldquo;Stand
+      away from me,&rdquo; he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands
+      and one shoulder at Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are indeed the Sleeper,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I saw you
+      asleep. When it was the law that anyone might see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the man who was in the trance,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;They
+      have imprisoned me here. I have been here since I awoke&mdash;at least
+      three days.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Mind!&rdquo;
+      cried a voice. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; The voice came from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not see you, Sire,&rdquo; panted the man. He rose and
+      assisted Graham to rise. &ldquo;Are you hurt, Sire?&rdquo; he panted. A
+      succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to
+      Graham&rsquo;s face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell
+      over, and lay fiat upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; cried Graham, confused and looking at the
+      ventilator. &ldquo;Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I
+      understand nothing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand back,&rdquo; said the stranger, and drew him from under the
+      ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want you to come, Sire,&rdquo; 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.
+      &ldquo;Your people call for you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come where? My people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+      spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided&mdash;this
+      very day&mdash;either 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&mdash;shouting. The
+      whole city shouts against the Council. We have arms.&rdquo; He wiped the
+      blood with his hand. &ldquo;Your life here is not worth&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why arms?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your poison!&rdquo; said a voice in Graham&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;a ladder&mdash;was being lowered through the
+      opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not understand,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I trust. Tell me what
+      to do.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the cut brow gripped Graham&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;Clamber up
+      the ladder,&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Quick. They will have heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. &ldquo;This
+      way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind!&rdquo; said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable.
+      &ldquo;Between them and not across them,&rdquo; said the voice. And,
+      &ldquo;We must hurry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the people?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The people you
+      said awaited me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger did not answer. He left Graham&rsquo;s arm as the path grew
+      narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+      a minute he found himself running. &ldquo;Are the others coming?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; said his guide. Running now, they drew near a
+      little windmill spinning high in the air. &ldquo;Stoop,&rdquo; said Graham&rsquo;s
+      guide, and they avoided an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of
+      the vane. &ldquo;This way!&rdquo; and they were ankle deep in a gutter
+      full of drifted thawing snow, between two low walls of metal that
+      presently rose waist high. &ldquo;I will go first,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Come
+      on!&rdquo; cried his guide, with terror in his voice. &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the ridge, following his guide&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have missed us already!&rdquo; cried Graham&rsquo;s guide in
+      an accent of terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get on this,&rdquo; cried Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s
+      benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+      shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They cowered panting and stared out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will be chasing us,&rdquo; cried the leader. &ldquo;We are
+      scarcely halfway there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space&mdash;at
+      least until it snows more thickly again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His teeth chattered in his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where are the markets?&rdquo; asked Graham staring out. &ldquo;Where
+      are all the people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other made no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Look</i>!&rdquo; whispered Graham, crouched close, and became
+      very still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Now</i>!&rdquo; cried his companion. &ldquo;Come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do as I do,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;It is a ledge,&rdquo; he
+      whispered. &ldquo;In the dark all the way along. Do as I did.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s. &ldquo;<i>Still</i>!&rdquo; whispered the latter very
+      softly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep still; they were just turning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For awhile both were motionless, then Graham&rsquo;s companion stood up,
+      and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+      indistinct tackle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The man&rsquo;s movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;Put the cross between
+      your legs,&rdquo; whispered the guide hysterically, &ldquo;and grip the
+      holdfasts. Grip tightly, grip!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham did as he was told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jump,&rdquo; said the voice. &ldquo;In heaven&rsquo;s name, jump!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jump! Jump&mdash;in God&rsquo;s name! Or they will have us,&rdquo;
+      cried Graham&rsquo;s guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him
+      forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Saved! The Master. He is safe!&rdquo; The stage rushed up
+      towards him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+      countless multitude. &ldquo;It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper is with us! The Master&mdash;the Owner! The Master is
+      with us. He is safe.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+      by one arm. &ldquo;Let me go into a little room,&rdquo; he said, weeping;
+      &ldquo;a little room,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. &mdash; THE PEOPLE MARCH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+      abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Who am I? Who am I?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The others came nearer to hear his words. &ldquo;Who am I?&rdquo; His eyes
+      searched their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have told him nothing!&rdquo; cried the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, tell me!&rdquo; cried Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+      pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again.
+      &ldquo;I have been awake three days&mdash;a prisoner three days. I judge
+      there is some struggle between a number of people in this city&mdash;it is
+      London?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the younger man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 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. <i>Why</i>, I don&rsquo;t
+      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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To keep you insensible,&rdquo; said the man in yellow. &ldquo;To
+      prevent your interference.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>why</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because <i>you</i> are the Atlas, Sire,&rdquo; said the man in
+      yellow. &ldquo;The world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+      just heard. &ldquo;The Council,&rdquo; he repeated blankly, and then
+      snatched at a name that had struck him. &ldquo;But who is Ostrog?&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is the organiser&mdash;the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader&mdash;in
+      your name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my name?&mdash;And you? Why is he not here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&mdash;has deputed us. I am his brother&mdash;his 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In your name,&rdquo; shouted the younger man. &ldquo;They have
+      ruled, crushed, tyrannised. At last even&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my name! My name! Master?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;No 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the hall dominated everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready&mdash;. Even now there is
+      a rumour of fighting beginning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. &ldquo;Ostrog
+      has it planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize
+      the flying stages&mdash;. Even now he may be doing that. Then&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This public theatre,&rdquo; bawled the man in yellow, &ldquo;is
+      only a contingent. We have five myriads of drilled men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have arms,&rdquo; cried Lincoln. &ldquo;We have plans. A leader.
+      Their police have gone from the streets and are massed in the&mdash;&rdquo;
+      (inaudible). &ldquo;It is now or never. The Council is rocking&mdash;They
+      cannot trust even their drilled men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear the people calling to you!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      The door opened, Lincoln&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+      was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for &ldquo;Order! Silence!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;tramp, tramp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wave your arm to them,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Wave your arm to
+      them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This,&rdquo; said a voice on the other side, &ldquo;he must have
+      this.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hall was a vast and intricate space&mdash;galleries, 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 &ldquo;Ostrog.&rdquo;
+      All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+      song. The multitude were beating time with their feet&mdash;marking 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
+      &ldquo;To the Council!&rdquo; Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his
+      arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout &ldquo;March!&rdquo;
+      His mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and
+      pointed to the archway, shouting &ldquo;Onward!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln&rsquo;s 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&mdash;three 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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. &mdash; THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mind that these also
+      should have swarmed with people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt a curious emotion&mdash;throbbing&mdash;very 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;to 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 &ldquo;The
+      lights!&rdquo; Voices were crying together one thing. &ldquo;The lights!&rdquo;
+      cried these voices. &ldquo;The lights!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something rapped
+      sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, &ldquo;It is all
+      right&mdash;all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+      forehead against Lincoln&rsquo;s and bawled, &ldquo;What is this darkness?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must wait&mdash;stop.
+      The people will go on. They will&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, &ldquo;Save the Sleeper. Take
+      care of the Sleeper.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      A voice bawled in his ear, &ldquo;The red police,&rdquo; and receded
+      forthwith beyond his questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+      once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+      gallery. Someone was shouting&mdash;it 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!&rdquo;
+      shouted a multitude of throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+      &ldquo;Before the next light!&rdquo; he cried. His haste was contagious.
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+      the writhing body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;They are coming!&rdquo; and a muffled cry close to
+      him. His foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream
+      under foot. He heard shouts of &ldquo;The Sleeper!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s, 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. &ldquo;Hullo!&rdquo;
+      he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching Sleeper&rsquo;s
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+      shouting, &ldquo;To hell with the Council!&rdquo; was about to fire again.
+      Then it seemed to Graham that the half of this man&rsquo;s neck had
+      vanished. A drop of moisture fell on Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;They 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!&rdquo; There were women
+      and children in the crowd as well as men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+      were a series of platforms of the &ldquo;ways,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Ostrog&rdquo;
+      as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their
+      struggle. Frantic development of his world! &ldquo;I do not understand,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;I do not understand!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+      accosted by no one&mdash;a dark figure among dark figures&mdash;the
+      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&mdash;so 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&mdash;his pace slackened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake&mdash;a
+      roaring and thundering&mdash;a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the
+      city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry&mdash;a
+      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>
+    <p>
+      A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. &ldquo;What
+      have they blown up?&rdquo; asked the man breathlessly. &ldquo;That was an
+      explosion,&rdquo; and before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Here is Eadhamite,&rdquo; or, &ldquo;Labour
+      Bureau&mdash;Little Side&rdquo;? Grotesque thought, that all these
+      cliff-like houses were his!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is no dream,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;no dream.&rdquo; And he
+      bowed his face upon his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. &mdash; THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+      couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have ye any news?&rdquo; asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a
+      very old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. &ldquo;None,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stay here till the lights come again,&rdquo; said the old man.
+      &ldquo;These blue scoundrels are everywhere&mdash;everywhere.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dark and damnable,&rdquo; said the old man suddenly. &ldquo;Dark
+      and damnable. Turned out of my room among all these dangers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s hard,&rdquo; ventured Graham. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s hard
+      on you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone
+      mad. War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don&rsquo;t
+      they bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+      fell over a dead man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re safer with company,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;if
+      it&rsquo;s company of the right sort,&rdquo; and peered frankly. He rose
+      suddenly and came towards Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+      relieved to be no longer alone. &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but this
+      is a terrible time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there&mdash;men,
+      strong men, dying in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where
+      they are to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: &ldquo;God knows where they are
+      to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+      Again the old man&rsquo;s voice ended the pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This Ostrog will win,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;He 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&rsquo;re not common people. Though they&rsquo;ve
+      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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog!&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The greatest Boss the world has ever seen,&rdquo; said the voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham ransacked his mind. &ldquo;The Council has few friends among the
+      people,&rdquo; he hazarded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Few friends. And poor ones at that. They&rsquo;ve had their time.
+      Eh! They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held
+      election. And Ostrog&mdash;. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay
+      it, nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog&mdash;Ostrog the Boss.
+      I heard of his rages at the time&mdash;he 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a little while. &ldquo;This Sleeper,&rdquo; he said, and
+      stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+      close. &ldquo;The real Sleeper&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Died years ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Graham, sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Years ago. Died. Years ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say so!&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who&rsquo;s woke up&mdash;they
+      changed in the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn&rsquo;t
+      tell all I know. I mustn&rsquo;t tell all I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him.
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know the ones that put him to sleep&mdash;that was
+      before my time&mdash;but I know the man who injected the stimulants and
+      woke him again. It was ten to one&mdash;wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time they rejected him. I&rsquo;ve followed it all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rejected whom?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The Sleeper?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sleeper? <i>No</i>. Ostrog. He was terrible&mdash;terrible! And he
+      was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were&mdash;not
+      to be more afraid of him. Now all the city&rsquo;s his millstone, and such
+      as we dust ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work&mdash;the
+      workers cut each other&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;t been this gross of years. Eh!&mdash;but
+      &lsquo;tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! It&rsquo;s ill.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you say&mdash;there had not been&mdash;what?&mdash;for a gross
+      of years?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+      this a third time. &ldquo;Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and
+      fools bawling freedom and the like,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Not in
+      all my life has there been that. These are like the old days&mdash;for
+      sure&mdash;when the Paris people broke out&mdash;three gross of years ago.
+      That&rsquo;s what I mean hasn&rsquo;t been. But it&rsquo;s the world&rsquo;s
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are rather well-informed on these things,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what I hear. It isn&rsquo;t all Babble Machine with me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be.
+      &ldquo;And you are certain this Ostrog&mdash;you are certain Ostrog
+      organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just
+      to assert himself&mdash;because he was not elected to the Council?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everyone knows that, I should think,&rdquo; said the old man.
+      &ldquo;Except&mdash;just 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&rsquo;t
+      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&rsquo;s
+      real and woke of his own accord&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful,&rdquo; said
+      Graham. &ldquo;Lots of things that have happened&mdash;especially of late
+      years&mdash;. If I was the Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn&rsquo;t
+      know less about them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the voice. &ldquo;Old, are you? You don&rsquo;t
+      sound so very old! But it&rsquo;s not everyone keeps his memory to my time
+      of life&mdash;truly. But these notorious things! But you&rsquo;re not so
+      old as me&mdash;not nearly so old as me. Well! I ought not to judge other
+      men by myself, perhaps. I&rsquo;m young&mdash;for so old a man. Maybe you&rsquo;re
+      old for so young.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;And I&rsquo;ve 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&rsquo;s
+      interesting to hear you talk of these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know a few things,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I know a thing
+      or two. But&mdash;. Hark!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh! but how things work together!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;This
+      Sleeper that all the fools put their trust in! I&rsquo;ve the whole
+      history of it&mdash;I was always a good one for histories. When I was a
+      boy&mdash;I&rsquo;m that old&mdash;I used to read printed books. You&rsquo;d
+      hardly think it. Likely you&rsquo;ve seen none&mdash;they rot and dust so&mdash;and
+      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&mdash;they don&rsquo;t seem new-fangled to you, eh?&mdash;they&rsquo;re
+      easy to hear, easy to forget. But I&rsquo;ve traced all the Sleeper
+      business from the first.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will scarcely believe it,&rdquo; said Graham slowly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+      so ignorant&mdash;I&rsquo;ve been so preoccupied in my own little affairs,
+      my circumstances have been so odd&mdash;I know nothing of this Sleeper&rsquo;s
+      history. Who was he?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I know, I know. He was a poor
+      nobody, and set on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance.
+      There&rsquo;s the old things they had, those brown things&mdash;silver
+      photographs&mdash;still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years
+      ago&mdash;a gross and a half of years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Set on a playful woman, poor soul,&rdquo; said Graham softly to
+      himself, and then aloud, &ldquo;Yes&mdash;well go on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+      children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads&mdash;the first
+      Eadhamite roads. But surely you&rsquo;ve 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&mdash;the old things&mdash;in two dozen
+      years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn&rsquo;t
+      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&rsquo;t 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&rsquo;-worth or more of property at the very
+      beginning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was his name?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Graham.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I mean&mdash;that American&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isbister.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isbister!&rdquo; cried Graham. &ldquo;Why, I don&rsquo;t even know
+      the name.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Of course not.
+      People don&rsquo;t 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&rsquo;t 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did it grow?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&mdash;but you&rsquo;re not up to things. Money attracts money&mdash;and
+      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&mdash;they grew. And for years the twelve trustees
+      hid the growing of the Sleeper&rsquo;s 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&mdash;the Sleeper&rsquo;s estate. And all
+      growing out of a whim&mdash;out of this Warming&rsquo;s will, and an
+      accident to Isbister&rsquo;s sons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men are strange,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;The 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&rsquo;ve slipped back. In
+      my young days speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of
+      God. We didn&rsquo;t think they could do wrong. We didn&rsquo;t know of
+      their women and all that! Or else I&rsquo;ve got wiser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men are strange,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Here are you,
+      young and ignorant, and me&mdash;sevendy years old, and I might reasonably
+      before getting&mdash;explaining it all to you short and clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sevendy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;sevendy, and I hear and see&mdash;hear
+      better than I see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the
+      happenings of things. Sevendy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember
+      him long before he&rsquo;d pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes
+      Control. I&rsquo;ve seen many changes. Eh! I&rsquo;ve worn the blue. And
+      at last I&rsquo;ve 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if I have it
+      right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. &ldquo;The
+      Sleeper has been asleep&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Changed,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper&rsquo;s property grew in the
+      hands of Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great
+      ownership of the world. The Twelve Trustees&mdash;by virtue of this
+      property have become masters of the world. Because they are the paying
+      power&mdash;just as the old English Parliament used to be&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s so&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      a good comparison. You&rsquo;re not so&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now this Ostrog&mdash;has suddenly revolutionised the world by
+      waking the Sleeper&mdash;whom no one but the superstitious, common people
+      had ever dreamt would wake again&mdash;raising the Sleeper to claim his
+      property from the Council, after all these years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+      strange,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to meet a man who learns these things for
+      the first time to-night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s strange.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you been in a Pleasure City?&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;All
+      my life I&rsquo;ve longed&mdash;&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;Even now,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;I could enjoy a little fun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow.&rdquo;
+      He mumbled a sentence Graham did not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Sleeper&mdash;when did he awake?&rdquo; said Graham suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three days ago.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog 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&mdash;where
+      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&mdash;everyone
+      was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even then! But you&rsquo;re
+      joking! Surely you&rsquo;re pretending. It was to stop the shouting of the
+      Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that they turned off the
+      electricity&mdash;and put this damned darkness upon us. Do you mean to say&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had heard the Sleeper was rescued,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But&mdash;to
+      come back a minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t let him go,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn&rsquo;t a
+      thousand things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that.
+      Did I tell you? In a way I&rsquo;m a sort of relation of Ostrog&rsquo;s. A
+      sort of relation. Through my daughter-in-law.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there&rsquo;s no chance of this Sleeper asserting
+      himself. I suppose he&rsquo;s certain to be a puppet&mdash;in Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      hands or the Council&rsquo;s, as soon as the struggle is over.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Ostrog&rsquo;s hands&mdash;certainly. Why shouldn&rsquo;t he be
+      a puppet? Look at his position. Everything done for him, every pleasure
+      possible. Why should he want to assert himself?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are these Pleasure Cities?&rdquo; said Graham, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+      Graham&rsquo;s words, he nudged him violently. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s <i>too</i>
+      much,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re poking fun at an old man. I&rsquo;ve
+      been suspecting you know more than you pretend.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I do,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;But no! why should I go on
+      acting? No, I do not know what a Pleasure City is.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;if you had a glass of
+      drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to tell me all these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun.&rdquo;
+      A withered hand caressed Graham&rsquo;s arm for a moment. &ldquo;Silk.
+      Well, well! But, all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the
+      Sleeper. He&rsquo;ll have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He&rsquo;s
+      a queer looking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I&rsquo;ve
+      got tickets and been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show
+      him, this substitute used to be. Yellow. But he&rsquo;ll get fed up. It&rsquo;s
+      a queer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he&rsquo;ll
+      be sent to Capri. It&rsquo;s the best fun for a greener.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+      pleasures and strange delights. &ldquo;The luck of it, the luck of it! All
+      my life I&rsquo;ve been in London, hoping to get my chance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you don&rsquo;t know that the Sleeper died,&rdquo; said Graham,
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man made him repeat his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men don&rsquo;t live beyond ten dozen. It&rsquo;s not in the order
+      of things,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a fool. Fools may
+      believe it, but not me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham became angry with the old man&rsquo;s assurance. &ldquo;Whether you
+      are a fool or not,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it happens you are wrong about
+      the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven&rsquo;t told you before,
+      but I will tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know? I thought you didn&rsquo;t know anything&mdash;not
+      even about Pleasure Cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;How are you
+      to know? It&rsquo;s very few men&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I <i>am</i> the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to repeat it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a brief pause. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a silly thing to say, sir,
+      if you&rsquo;ll excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like
+      this,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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&mdash;I who speak to you&mdash;who awakened again these four
+      days since.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four days since!&mdash;the Sleeper! But they&rsquo;ve <i>got</i>
+      the Sleeper. They have him and they won&rsquo;t let him go. Nonsense! You&rsquo;ve
+      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&rsquo;t
+      let him go about alone. Trust them. You&rsquo;re a queer fellow. One of
+      these fun pokers. I see now why you have been clipping your words so
+      oddly, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you&rsquo;re
+      telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What&rsquo;s
+      your game? And besides, we&rsquo;ve been talking of the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stood up. &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am the Sleeper.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;re an odd man,&rdquo; said the old man, &ldquo;to sit
+      here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s exasperation fell to laughter. &ldquo;It is preposterous,&rdquo;
+      he cried. &ldquo;Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and
+      wilder. Here am I&mdash;in this damned twilight&mdash;I never knew a dream
+      in twilight before&mdash;an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to
+      persuade an old fool that I am myself, and meanwhile&mdash;Ugh!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+      was pursuing him. &ldquo;Eh! but don&rsquo;t go!&rdquo; cried the old man.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an old fool, I know. Don&rsquo;t go. Don&rsquo;t leave me
+      in all this darkness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+      flashed into his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t mean to offend you&mdash;disbelieving you,&rdquo;
+      said the old man coming near. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no manner of harm. Call
+      yourself the Sleeper if it pleases you. &lsquo;Tis a foolish trick&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time he heard the old man&rsquo;s hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+      cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. &mdash; OSTROG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Presently a man stopped before him. &ldquo;Have you heard?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Graham, starting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Near a dozand,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;a dozand men!&rdquo; and
+      hurried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+      shouting: &ldquo;Capitulated! Given up!&rdquo; &ldquo;A dozand of men.&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Two dozand of men.&rdquo; &ldquo;Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!&rdquo;
+      These cries receded, became indistinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;nigger&rdquo;
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the &ldquo;wind-vane
+      offices&rdquo; whatever the &ldquo;wind-vane offices&rdquo; 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&mdash;knowing no other means of transit&mdash;and 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&rsquo;s voice singing, &ldquo;tralala
+      tralala.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+      excitedly. &ldquo;They have surrendered!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Council! Surely
+      not the Council!&rdquo; &ldquo;They are saying so in the Ways.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Strike straight across,&rdquo; said a woman&rsquo;s voice.
+      He left his guiding wall, and in a moment had stumbled against a little
+      table on which were utensils of glass. Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It is you. And you are not dead!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made a brief explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother is waiting,&rdquo; explained Lincoln. &ldquo;He is alone
+      in the wind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He
+      doubted&mdash;and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are
+      telling them <i>there</i>&mdash;or he would have come to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. &ldquo;It
+      is Ostrog!&rdquo; he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+      everything was still again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+      and stood before it. Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Ostrog?&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am Ostrog.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Boss?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I am called.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. &ldquo;I have to thank you
+      chiefly, I understand, for my safety,&rdquo; he said presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We were afraid you were killed,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Or sent
+      to sleep again&mdash;for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our
+      secret&mdash;the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How
+      did you get here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham told him briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog listened in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled faintly. &ldquo;Do you know what I was doing when they came to
+      tell me you had come?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I guess?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Preparing your double.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My double?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A 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&mdash;something of your
+      position?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very little,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is like this.&rdquo; Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room
+      and turned. &ldquo;You are absolute owner,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;of 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard the vague outline of these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wondered.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I came upon a garrulous old man.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see.... Our masses&mdash;the word comes from your days&mdash;you
+      know, of course, that we still have masses&mdash;regard you as our actual
+      ruler. Just as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as
+      the ruler. They are discontented&mdash;the masses all over the earth&mdash;with
+      the rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+      old quarrel of the common man with his commonness&mdash;the 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&mdash;when your waking came.
+      Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunely.&rdquo;
+      He smiled. &ldquo;The public mind, making no allowance for your years of
+      quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing to
+      you, and&mdash;Flash!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+      that he understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council muddled&mdash;quarrelled. They always do. They could
+      not decide what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see. I see. And now&mdash;we win?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That 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&mdash;not half
+      of them could be massed at the Council House&mdash;have been broken up,
+      disarmed or killed. All London is ours&mdash;now. Only the Council House
+      remains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half 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&mdash;the 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&mdash;So!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very ignorant,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I suppose&mdash;I do
+      not clearly understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could
+      explain. Where is the Council? Where is the fight?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a moment you will see the fighting,&rdquo; said Ostrog at his
+      elbow. &ldquo;Those fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the
+      roof space of London&mdash;all the houses are practically continuous now.
+      The streets and public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your
+      time have disappeared.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Ostrog, &ldquo;comes the Council House,&rdquo; and
+      slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the Council House,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Their last
+      stronghold. And the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month
+      in blowing up the buildings all about them&mdash;to stop our attack. You
+      heard the smash? It shattered half the brittle glass in the city.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>coup
+      d'itat</i>. Ostrog&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Council is really overthrown?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Overthrown,&rdquo; said Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I&mdash;. Is it indeed true that I&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are Master of the World.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that white flag&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the flag of the Council&mdash;the 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;help. Is this city the world?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Practically 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But haven&rsquo;t the Council flying machines? Why is there no
+      fighting with them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt
+      with us. They wouldn&rsquo;t take the risk of fighting on our side, but
+      they would not stir against us. We <i>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&mdash;an 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&mdash;for
+      some did&mdash;we kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get
+      near the Council House. If they dropped they couldn&rsquo;t rise again,
+      because there&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s way. Upsetting in a flying
+      machine isn&rsquo;t a very attractive prospect. There&rsquo;s no chance
+      for the Council that way. Its days are done.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;But these things I must explain more fully later. At
+      present there are&mdash;duties. The people are coming by the moving ways
+      towards this ward from every part of the city&mdash;the 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&mdash;thousands 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely&mdash;I can&rsquo;t go ...&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;There
+      are kineto-telephoto-graphs,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;As you bow to the
+      people here&mdash;all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed
+      and still in darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of
+      course&mdash;not like this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the
+      shouting in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is an optical contrivance we shall use,&rdquo; said
+      Ostrog, &ldquo;used 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&mdash;so that even the
+      furtherest man in the remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your
+      eyelashes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. &ldquo;What
+      is the population of London?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight and twaindy myriads.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eight and what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More than thirty-three millions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These figures went beyond Graham&rsquo;s imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be expected to say something,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Not
+      what you used to call a Speech, but what our people call a word&mdash;just
+      one sentence, six or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest&mdash;&lsquo;I
+      have awakened and my heart is with you.&rsquo; That is the sort of thing
+      they want.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was that?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;I am awakened and my heart is with you.&rsquo; And bow&mdash;bow
+      royally. But first we must get you black robes&mdash;for black is your
+      colour. Do you mind? And then they will disperse to their homes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated. &ldquo;I am in your hands,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+      Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s arm
+      and pointed to the mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even as we turned away,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;?&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in
+      little jerks up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are clamorous,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog kept his grip of Graham&rsquo;s arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have raised the people,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have given
+      them arms. For to-day at least their wishes must be law.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. &mdash; THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;Word&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s rule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+      of it in the oval mirror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you let them see you, Sire?&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They
+      are very anxious to see you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Master, the Master! God and the Master,&rdquo; shouted the
+      people. &ldquo;To hell with the Council!&rdquo; 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&mdash;and this as well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV. &mdash; FROM THE CROW&rsquo;S NEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The
+      rest of the world hung in suspense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; time a
+      representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in the
+      state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s-eye view of the city from the crow&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;minute they looked
+      from above&mdash;rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were
+      the specula, <i>en rapport</i> with the wind-vane keeper&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+      below. St. Paul&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for the
+      sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines&mdash;the 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&mdash;an 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;as 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&rsquo;s
+      estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer&rsquo;s shop and
+      church&mdash;the 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&mdash;simply
+      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&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+      contemporary men, strained Graham&rsquo;s imagination to picture. And when
+      he glanced &ldquo;over beyond there&rdquo; at the strange things that
+      existed on the Continent, it failed him altogether.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Pidgin&rdquo;
+      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&mdash;German, 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 &ldquo;Pidgin&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+      &ldquo;black belt&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV. &mdash; PROMINENT PEOPLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;amorist,&rdquo; wore his hair in two becoming plaits <i>` 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Everyone&rsquo;s movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln
+      that he saw men as Raphael&rsquo;s cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him
+      that the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every
+      rich person&rsquo;s education. The Master&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s, 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&rsquo;s vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+      exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; he asked almost involuntarily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bishop of London,&rdquo; said Lincoln.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;the other, I mean.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poet Laureate.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You still&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t make poetry, of course. He&rsquo;s a cousin of
+      Wotton&mdash;one of the Councillors. But he&rsquo;s one of the Red Rose
+      Royalists&mdash;a delightful club&mdash;and they keep up the tradition of
+      these things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asano told me there was a King.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King doesn&rsquo;t belong. They had to expel him. It&rsquo;s
+      the Stuart blood, I suppose; but really&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Far too much.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham&rsquo;s ideas,
+      with the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances
+      of loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master&rsquo;s 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 &ldquo;aerial dog&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      used that phrase&mdash;that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+      thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn&rsquo;t
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to see that type endures,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Phonographs and kinematographs,&rdquo; said Lincoln, a little
+      spitefully. &ldquo;He has studied from the life.&rdquo; Graham glanced at
+      the burly form again. It was oddly reminiscent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As a matter of fact we bought him,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Partly.
+      And partly he was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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&rsquo;s functions, and
+      asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+      seemed quietly amused at the Master&rsquo;s 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. &ldquo;We have conquered Cram,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;completely conquered Cram&mdash;there is not an examination left in
+      the world. Aren&rsquo;t you glad?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you get the work done?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We make it attractive&mdash;as attractive as possible. And if it
+      does not attract then&mdash;we let it go. We cover an immense field.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+      learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. &ldquo;There
+      is a certain type of girl, for example,&rdquo; said the Surveyor-General,
+      dilating with a sense of his usefulness, &ldquo;with a perfect passion for
+      severe studies&mdash;when they are not too difficult you know. We cater
+      for them by the thousand. At this moment,&rdquo; he said with a Napoleonic
+      touch, &ldquo;nearly 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the public elementary schools,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Do
+      you control them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Surveyor-General did, &ldquo;entirely.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s words. &ldquo;We
+      try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children.
+      They will have to work so soon. Just a few simple principles&mdash;obedience&mdash;industry.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You teach them very little?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse
+      them. Even as it is&mdash;there are troubles&mdash;agitations. Where the
+      labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are
+      socialistic dreams&mdash;anarchy even! Agitators <i>will</i> get to work
+      among them. I take it&mdash;I have always taken it&mdash;that my foremost
+      duty is to fight against popular discontent. Why should people be made
+      unhappy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham thoughtfully. &ldquo;But there are a
+      great many things I want to know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham&rsquo;s face throughout the
+      conversation, intervened. &ldquo;There are others,&rdquo; he said in an
+      undertone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo;
+      said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, &ldquo;you would like to know
+      some of these ladies?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;dear old days,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have tried,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;countless times&mdash;to
+      imagine those old romantic days. And to you&mdash;they 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Into this,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out of your life&mdash;out of all that was familiar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old life was not a happy one,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I do
+      not regret that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+      encouragingly. &ldquo;No?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;It was a little life&mdash;and
+      unmeaning. But this&mdash;We thought the world complex and crowded and
+      civilised enough. Yet I see&mdash;although in this world I am barely four
+      days old&mdash;looking back on my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric
+      time&mdash;the mere beginning of this new order. The mere beginning of
+      this new order. You will find it hard to understand how little I know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may ask me what you like,&rdquo; she said, smiling at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell me who these people are. I&rsquo;m still very much in the
+      dark about them. It&rsquo;s puzzling. Are there any Generals?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men in hats and feathers?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+      public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That? He&rsquo;s 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud,&rdquo; said Graham.
+      &ldquo;Pills! What a wonderful time it is! That man in purple?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He 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 <i>doing</i>
+      something&mdash;&rdquo; She smiled away the social pretensions of all such
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are any of your great artists or authors here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No authors. They are mostly such queer people&mdash;and so
+      preoccupied about themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will
+      fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn&rsquo;t
+      it? But I think Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From
+      Capri.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Capillotomist,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Ah! I remember. An
+      artist! Why not?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have to cultivate him,&rdquo; she said apologetically. &ldquo;Our
+      heads are in his hands.&rdquo; She smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was expressive.
+      &ldquo;Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Who are your great painters?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. &ldquo;For a moment,&rdquo;
+      she said, &ldquo;I thought you meant&mdash;&rdquo; She laughed again.
+      &ldquo;You 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&rsquo;t any. People grew tired of
+      that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what did you think I meant?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+      and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. &ldquo;And here,&rdquo;
+      and she indicated her eyelid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Who is
+      that talking with the lady in saffron?&rdquo; he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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;&mdash;the 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&mdash;hitherto there had been a
+      rule of clerical monogamy&mdash;&ldquo;neither 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, bye the bye,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;are you an Anglican?&rdquo;
+      Graham was on the verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a
+      &ldquo;subsidiary wife,&rdquo; apparently an euphemistic phrase, when
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+      himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+      bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      Ah! Now he remembered!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an <i>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>
+    <p>
+      Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this
+      gathering reasserted itself, the <i>motif</i> of the marching song, once
+      it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+      and grasped her opportunity to escape. &ldquo;Would you care to know that
+      girl, Sire?&rdquo; she asked boldly. &ldquo;She is Helen Wotton&mdash;a
+      niece of Ostrog&rsquo;s. She knows a great many serious things. She is one
+      of the most serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed lady
+      had fluttered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember you quite well,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You were in
+      that little room. When all the people were singing and beating time with
+      their feet. Before I walked across the Hall.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face was
+      steady. &ldquo;It was wonderful,&rdquo; she said, hesitated, and spoke
+      with a sudden effort. &ldquo;All those people would have died for you,
+      Sire. Countless people did die for you that night.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard her
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; she
+      said quickly, &ldquo;I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people
+      are very unhappy; they are oppressed&mdash;they are misgoverned. Do not
+      forget the people, who faced death&mdash;death that you might live.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing&mdash;&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell you now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln&rsquo;s face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the
+      girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You find the new world amusing, Sire?&rdquo; asked Lincoln, with
+      smiling deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering
+      by one comprehensive gesture. &ldquo;At any rate, you find it changed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;changed. And yet, after all, not so
+      greatly changed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait till you are in the air,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;The wind
+      has fallen; even now an aeroplane awaits you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl&rsquo;s attitude awaited dismissal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI. &mdash; THE MONOPLANE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;the starting carriers&mdash;that
+      could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails
+      to the end of the fabric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;one,
+      two, three, pause; one, two, three&mdash;which 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&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the
+      sky. Throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat.
+      He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon
+      his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return&mdash;perhaps a little
+      artificially. &ldquo;A little strange at first,&rdquo; he shouted before
+      he recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time.
+      He stared over the aeronaut&rsquo;s 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&mdash;beat;
+      suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose&mdash;!
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s crow&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;innumerable minute oblongs of
+      ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;sunlit and pleasant&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;trouble in the
+      under-ways,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said
+      Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. &ldquo;London aeroplane, Sire,&rdquo;
+      bawled the aeronaut, pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came and
+      nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb&mdash;beat, of the
+      monoplane&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham&rsquo;s
+      enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Land,&rdquo; called the aeronaut, his voice small against the
+      whistling of the air over the wind-screen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet,&rdquo; bawled Graham, laughing. &ldquo;Not land yet. I
+      want to learn more of this machine.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant&mdash;&rdquo; said the aeronaut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to learn more of this machine,&rdquo; repeated Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming to you,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to have these things explained,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What
+      do you do when you move that engine forward?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, &ldquo;They are complex, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind,&rdquo; shouted Graham. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+      mind.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s pause. &ldquo;Aeronautics is the secret&mdash;the
+      privilege&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. But I&rsquo;m the Master, and I mean to know.&rdquo; He
+      laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from
+      the upper air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham&rsquo;s
+      face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+      west. The two men looked into each other&rsquo;s eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire, there are rules&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not where I am concerned,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;You seem to
+      forget.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut scrutinised his face &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I do
+      not forget, Sire. But in all the earth&mdash;no man who is not a sworn
+      aeronaut&mdash;has ever a chance. They come as passengers&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard something of the sort. But I&rsquo;m not going to
+      argue these points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To
+      fly!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; said the aeronaut, &ldquo;the rules&mdash;if I break
+      the rules&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham waved the penalties aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then if you will watch me&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine
+      lifted its nose again for an ascent. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s 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&mdash;to 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&mdash;. In my past it was my
+      dream to fly. Now&mdash;keep your balance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I Master of the earth?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Or is your
+      Society? Now. Take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes&mdash;so.
+      And now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sire,&rdquo; said the aeronaut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will protect me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation.
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s clearly to your advantage, this journey,&rdquo; he said
+      with a loud laugh&mdash;for the air was like strong wine&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      teach me quickly and well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back, Sire! Back!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back&mdash;right. One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;good God! Ah! Up
+      she goes! But this is living!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;What was that?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;I
+      did not see.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;That,&rdquo; and he indicated the white thing
+      still fluttering down, &ldquo;was a swan.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never saw it,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+      forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII. &mdash; THREE DAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;I must learn to fly,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences,&rdquo;
+      said Lincoln. &ldquo;I do not know what you will care to do now. We have
+      music that may seem novel.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the present,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;flying holds me. Let me
+      learn more of that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union
+      objection to one&rsquo;s learning.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, I believe,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;But for you&mdash;!
+      If you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn
+      aeronaut to-morrow.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a
+      while. &ldquo;And as for affairs,&rdquo; he asked abruptly. &ldquo;How are
+      things going on?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln waved affairs aside. &ldquo;Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;Everything 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&rsquo;s hands.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you
+      call it, forthwith&mdash;before I sleep?&rdquo; said Graham, pacing.
+      &ldquo;Then I could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be possible,&rdquo; said Lincoln thoughtfully. &ldquo;Quite
+      possible. Indeed, it shall be done.&rdquo; He laughed. &ldquo;I 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&rsquo;t think that after you have
+      dined you might prefer&mdash;?&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had prepared a show of dancers&mdash;they have been brought from
+      the Capri theatre.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hate ballets,&rdquo; said Graham, shortly. &ldquo;Always did.
+      That other&mdash;. That&rsquo;s 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Lincoln. &ldquo;Though our dancers&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can afford to wait,&rdquo; said Graham; &ldquo;they can afford
+      to wait. I know. I&rsquo;m not a Latin. There&rsquo;s questions I want to
+      ask some expert&mdash;about your machinery. I&rsquo;m keen. I want no
+      distractions.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have the world to choose from,&rdquo; said Lincoln; &ldquo;whatever
+      you want is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+      through the city streets to Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s answers to the endless questions Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+      kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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.
+      &ldquo;We were savages,&rdquo; was his refrain, &ldquo;we were savages. We
+      were in the stone age&mdash;compared with this.... And what else have you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      &ldquo;calculating boys,&rdquo; 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&mdash;a 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Here&mdash;or a hundred feet below here,&rdquo; he
+      could say, &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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; &ldquo;a
+      little trouble&rdquo; soon to be settled in this city, &ldquo;a slight
+      disturbance&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s nest slumbered in his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVIII. &mdash; GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He felt a regal impulse to assist her. &ldquo;I have wanted to see you,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;A few days ago you wanted to tell me something&mdash;you
+      wanted to tell me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said the people were unhappy?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment she was silent still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have seemed strange to you,&rdquo; she said abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It did. And yet&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was an impulse.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+      &ldquo;You forget,&rdquo; she said, drawing a deep breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You forget the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked interrogative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you
+      are. You do not know the things that are happening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not understand.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not clearly, perhaps. But&mdash;tell me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned to him with sudden resolution. &ldquo;It is so hard to explain.
+      I have meant to, I have wanted to. And now&mdash;I cannot. I am not ready
+      with words. But about you&mdash;there is something. It is wonder. Your
+      sleep&mdash;your awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least&mdash;and
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Master of the earth,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So they tell me. But
+      try and imagine how little I know of it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cities&mdash;Trusts&mdash;the Labour Department&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Principalities, powers, dominions&mdash;the power and the glory.
+      Yes, I have heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With
+      Ostrog, the Boss&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny. &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled. &ldquo;To take the responsibility.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what we have begun to fear.&rdquo; For a moment she said no
+      more. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said slowly. &ldquo;<i>You</i> will take the
+      responsibility. You will take the responsibility. The people look to you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She spoke softly. &ldquo;Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep&mdash;in
+      every generation&mdash;multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+      multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake&mdash;<i>prayed</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham moved to speak and did not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. &ldquo;Do you
+      know that you have been to myriads&mdash;King Arthur, Barbarossa&mdash;the
+      King who would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose the imagination of the people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you not heard our proverb, &lsquo;When the Sleeper wakes&rsquo;?
+      While you lay insensible and motionless there&mdash;thousands 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted wall
+      before her. Her voice fell. &ldquo;When I was a little girl I used to look
+      at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience of
+      God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what we thought of you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That is how
+      you seemed to us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. &ldquo;In
+      the city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see
+      what you will do, full of strange incredible expectations.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog&mdash;no one&mdash;can take that responsibility.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that 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&mdash;do 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know how great this kingship of mine is,&rdquo; he said
+      haltingly. &ldquo;I know how great it seems. But is it real? It is
+      incredible&mdash;dreamlike. Is it real, or is it only a great delusion?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is real,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;if you dare.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an
+      illusion in the minds of men.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you dare!&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Countless men,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and while it is in their
+      minds&mdash;they will obey.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+      these others&mdash;the 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped blankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am still hardly more than a girl,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But 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&mdash;and
+      robbed life of&mdash;everything worth having.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. &ldquo;Your days were
+      the days of freedom. Yes&mdash;I have thought. I have been made to think,
+      for my life&mdash;has not been happy. Men are no longer free&mdash;no
+      greater, no better than the men of your time. That is not all. This city&mdash;is
+      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&mdash;for 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&mdash;they know
+      they suffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights
+      since&mdash;! You owe your life to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Graham, slowly. &ldquo;Yes. I owe my life to them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;from the days when this new
+      tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny&mdash;a
+      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&mdash;there was nobility! Common
+      men led lives of love and faithfulness then&mdash;they did a thousand
+      things. And you&mdash;you come from that time.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was not&mdash;. But never mind. How is it now&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery&mdash;unthanked,
+      unhonoured, slavery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slavery!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slavery.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say that human beings are chattels.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Worse. 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?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everywhere.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are the slaves&mdash;your slaves. They are the slaves of the
+      Labour Department you own.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Labour Department! In some way&mdash;that 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&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck
+      you. Nearly a third of our people wear it&mdash;more assume it now every
+      day. This Labour Department has grown imperceptibly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What <i>is</i> this Labour Department?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was the workhouse&mdash;which the parishes maintained.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Workhouse! Yes&mdash;there was something. In our history lessons. I
+      remember now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew&mdash;partly&mdash;out
+      of something&mdash;you, perhaps, may remember it&mdash;an emotional
+      religious organisation called the Salvation Army&mdash;that 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nowadays 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&mdash;or
+      seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means&mdash;for 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&mdash;that is the first
+      condition of the Department&rsquo;s incorporation&mdash;and in return for
+      a day&rsquo;s shelter the Department extracts a day&rsquo;s work, and then
+      returns the visitor&rsquo;s proper clothing and sends him or her out
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men
+      starved in your streets. That was bad. But they died&mdash;<i>men</i>.
+      These people in blue&mdash;. The proverb runs: &lsquo;Blue canvas once and
+      ever.&rsquo; The Department trades in their labour, and it has taken care
+      to assure itself of the supply. People come to it starving and helpless&mdash;they
+      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&mdash;enough 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&mdash;brought 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&rsquo;s care. The mother owes them
+      a month thereafter&mdash;the children they cherish and educate until they
+      are fourteen, and they pay two years&rsquo; service. You may be sure these
+      children are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Department
+      works.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And none are destitute in the city?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have
+      abolished destitution. It is engraved upon the Department&rsquo;s checks.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they will not work?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+      There are stages of unpleasantness in the work&mdash;stoppage of food&mdash;and
+      a man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+      system in the Department&rsquo;s 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&mdash;dark and miserable&mdash;out
+      of sight below. There are prisons now for many things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More 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&rsquo;s 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a space Graham sat downcast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there has been a revolution,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;All these
+      things will be changed. Ostrog&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That 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&mdash;you who come from a happier age&mdash;it is to
+      you the people look. To you.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what am I to do?&rdquo; he said with his eyes upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rule,&rdquo; she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a
+      low tone. &ldquo;Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good
+      and happiness of men. For you might rule it&mdash;you could rule it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are stirring. All over the world the people are
+      stirring. It wants but a word&mdash;but a word from you&mdash;to bring
+      them all together. Even the middle sort of people are restless&mdash;unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people
+      will not go back to their drudgery&mdash;they refuse to be disarmed.
+      Ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of&mdash;he has
+      awakened hopes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+      considerations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They only want their leader,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could do what you would;&mdash;the world is yours.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. &ldquo;The old
+      dreams, and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams?
+      Could one man&mdash;<i>one man</i>&mdash;?&rdquo; His voice sank and
+      ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not one man, but all men&mdash;give them only a leader to speak the
+      desire of their hearts.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. &ldquo;I have not your faith,&rdquo;
+      he said, &ldquo;I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me.
+      No&mdash;let me speak. I want to do&mdash;not right&mdash;I have not the
+      strength for that&mdash;but 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&mdash;.... One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery
+      shall end.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will rule?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Provided&mdash;. There is one thing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That you will help me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i>&mdash;a girl!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. &ldquo;Need you ask
+      whether I will help you?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+      hour. Graham rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even now,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Ostrog will be waiting.&rdquo; He
+      hesitated, facing her. &ldquo;When I have asked him certain questions&mdash;.
+      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&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here
+      again.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+      from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIX. &mdash; OSTROG&rsquo;S POINT OF VIEW
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day&rsquo;s
+      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. &ldquo;After all these years,&rdquo; said Ostrog, when Graham
+      pressed enquiries; &ldquo;the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+      the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;A
+      little,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;In one quarter only. But the Senegalese
+      division of our African agricultural police&mdash;the Consolidated African
+      Companies have a very well drilled police&mdash;was 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should you expect trouble?&rdquo; asked Graham abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a lot of discontent&mdash;social discontent.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Labour Department?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are learning,&rdquo; said Ostrog with a touch of surprise.
+      &ldquo;Yes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It
+      was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow&mdash;that
+      and your awakening.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. &ldquo;We had to stir up their
+      discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness&mdash;all
+      men equal&mdash;all men happy&mdash;no luxury that everyone may not share&mdash;ideas
+      that have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+      these ideals, impossible as they are&mdash;in order to overthrow the
+      Council. And now&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+      people whom we have stirred up&mdash;remain 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&mdash;we have had to call in a little external help.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke with
+      restraint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are useful,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They are fine loyal
+      brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads&mdash;such 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&mdash;only 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&mdash;that
+      may happen. But it won&rsquo;t interrupt your aeronautics. The days when
+      the People could make revolutions are past.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose they are,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I suppose they are.&rdquo;
+      He mused. &ldquo;This 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. &ldquo;The day of democracy is past,&rdquo;
+      he said. &ldquo;Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crécy, 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&mdash;it 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&mdash;a multiplex, silly one&mdash;the man
+      in the Crowd.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre preoccupations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;The 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&mdash;tempered. 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;there is something resists,
+      something you are holding down&mdash;something that stirs and presses.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see,&rdquo; said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would
+      brush these difficult questions aside. &ldquo;I have not roused the force
+      to destroy myself&mdash;trust me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog stared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Must</i> the world go this way?&rdquo; said Graham with his
+      emotions at the speaking point. &ldquo;Must it indeed go in this way? Have
+      all our hopes been vain?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Hopes?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&mdash;but you are the chief tyrant.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Ostrog, &ldquo;take the general question. It is
+      the way that change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of
+      the best&mdash;the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better
+      things.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But aristocracy! those people I met&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! not <i>those</i>!&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;But 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pleasant extinction,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Yet&mdash;.&rdquo;
+      He thought for an instant. &ldquo;There is that other thing&mdash;the
+      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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+      than before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble about these things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Everything
+      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 <i>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&mdash;they are already murmuring against those who have
+      overthrown the Council.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;They shouted because their lives
+      were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me&mdash;in me&mdash;they
+      hoped.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 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&mdash;what 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&mdash;it&rsquo;s a fine duty too!&mdash;is
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. &ldquo;I can
+      imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian
+      Englishman. You regret all the old forms of representative government&mdash;their
+      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,&mdash;had I not been busy.
+      But you will learn better. The people are mad with envy&mdash;they 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.&rdquo;
+      He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. &ldquo;You 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&mdash;not without. It is each man&rsquo;s own affair. Suppose&mdash;which
+      is impossible&mdash;that 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&rsquo; delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal
+      and assured. The end will be the Over-man&mdash;for all the mad protests
+      of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others
+      will arise&mdash;other masters. The end will be the same.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder,&rdquo; said Graham doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he stood downcast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must see these things for myself,&rdquo; he said, suddenly
+      assuming a tone of confident mastery. &ldquo;Only 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&mdash;and 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&mdash;the
+      labour people more especially&mdash;how they work, marry, bear children,
+      die&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You get that from our realistic novelists,&rdquo; suggested Ostrog,
+      suddenly preoccupied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want reality,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are difficulties,&rdquo; said Ostrog, and thought. &ldquo;On
+      the whole&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not expect&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought&mdash;. And yet perhaps&mdash;. You say you want to
+      go through the ways of the city and see the common people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he came to some conclusion. &ldquo;You would need to go
+      disguised,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The 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&mdash;this idea of yours&mdash;.
+      Yes, now I think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether&mdash;. 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not want to consult me in any matter?&rdquo; asked Graham
+      suddenly, struck by an odd suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at
+      any rate,&rdquo; said Ostrog, smiling. &ldquo;Even if we differ&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham glanced at him sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no fighting likely to happen soon?&rdquo; he asked
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been thinking about these negroes. I don&rsquo;t 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&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. &ldquo;I am not
+      bringing negroes to London,&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;But if&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens,&rdquo;
+      said Graham. &ldquo;In that matter I am quite decided.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XX. &mdash; IN THE CITY WAYS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;it was odd to see a procession parading the city <i>seated</i>.
+      They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. &ldquo;No
+      disarmament,&rdquo; said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+      letters and with variant spelling, and &ldquo;Why should we disarm?&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;No disarming.&rdquo; &ldquo;No disarming.&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;They
+      all ought to be at work,&rdquo; said Asano. &ldquo;They have had no food
+      these two days, or they have stolen it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s harvest of the first revolt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and his attention was vividly arrested
+      by the fagade of one of the Christian sects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Salvation on
+      the First Floor and turn to the Right.&rdquo; &ldquo;Put your Money on
+      your Maker.&rdquo; &ldquo;The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert
+      Operators! Look Slippy!&rdquo; &ldquo;What Christ would say to the
+      Sleeper;&mdash;Join the Up-to-date Saints!&rdquo; &ldquo;Be a Christian&mdash;without
+      hindrance to your present Occupation.&rdquo; &ldquo;All the Brightest
+      Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual.&rdquo; &ldquo;Brisk
+      Blessings for Busy Business Men.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this is appalling!&rdquo; said Graham, as that deafening scream
+      of mercantile piety towered above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is appalling?&rdquo; asked his little officer, apparently
+      seeking vainly for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>This</i>! Surely the essence of religion is reverence.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh <i>that</i>!&rdquo; Asano looked at Graham. &ldquo;Does it shock
+      you?&rdquo; he said in the tone of one who makes a discovery. &ldquo;I
+      suppose it would, of course. I had forgotten. Nowadays the competition for
+      attention is so keen, and people simply haven&rsquo;t the leisure to
+      attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do.&rdquo; He smiled.
+      &ldquo;In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the countryside. Though
+      somewhere I&rsquo;ve read of Sunday afternoons that&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But <i>that</i>,&rdquo; said Graham, glancing back at the receding
+      blue and white. &ldquo;That is surely not the only&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect
+      doesn&rsquo;t <i>tell</i> it doesn&rsquo;t pay. Worship has moved with the
+      times. There are high class sects with quieter ways&mdash;costly 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&mdash;to you, I should say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      signature, his first encounter with the curves and turns of that familiar
+      autograph for two hundred and three years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Home,&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+      followed by a vast leathery voice. &ldquo;The Master is sleeping
+      peacefully,&rdquo; it vociferated. &ldquo;He 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&mdash;all
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Galloop,
+      Galloop,&rdquo; and broke out again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paris 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&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+      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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+      crowd. &ldquo;Damned niggers.&rdquo; A man began to harangue near them.
+      &ldquo;Is this the Master&rsquo;s doing, brothers? Is this the Master&rsquo;s
+      doing?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Black police!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;What is that? You don&rsquo;t
+      mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Yahaha, 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!&rdquo; The nearer Babble Machine
+      hooted stupendously, &ldquo;Galloop, Galloop,&rdquo; drowned the end of
+      the sentence, and proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with
+      novel comments on the horrors of disorder. &ldquo;Law and order must be
+      maintained,&rdquo; said the nearer Babble Machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; began Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask questions here,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;or you
+      will be involved in an argument.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then let us go on,&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;for I want to know
+      more of this.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Lynched policemen,&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Women burnt alive,&rdquo; &ldquo;Fuzzy Wuzzy.&rdquo; &ldquo;But
+      does the Master allow such things?&rdquo; asked a man near him. &ldquo;Is
+      <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s rule?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s rule? For a long time
+      after he had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the
+      machines pursued him; &ldquo;Galloop, Galloop,&rdquo; &ldquo;Yahahah,
+      Yaha, Yap! Yaha!&rdquo; Is <i>this</i> the beginning of the Master&rsquo;s
+      rule?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely on
+      the nature of the Parisian struggle. &ldquo;This disarmament! What was
+      their trouble? What does it all mean?&rdquo; Asano seemed chiefly anxious
+      to reassure him that it was &ldquo;all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these outrages!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot have an omelette,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;without
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! the Londoners?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But burning women alive!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A Commune!&rdquo; said Asano. &ldquo;They 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes&mdash;French
+      speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Regiments?&rdquo; said Graham, &ldquo;I thought there was only one&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Asano, and glanced at him. &ldquo;There is more
+      than one.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not think,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I never thought,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Ostrog
+      must have had them removed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stared. &ldquo;How was I to know?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he thought they would annoy you,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must be replaced directly I return,&rdquo; said Graham after
+      an interval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of the
+      ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, &ldquo;Galloop,
+      Galloop!&rdquo; or the shrill &ldquo;Yahaha, Yaha Yap!&mdash;Hear a live
+      paper yelp!&rdquo; of its chief rival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Repeated, too, everywhere, were such <i>crèches</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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s manner that his identity
+      was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of
+      the place without reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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
+      <i>crèches</i> had almost entirely replaced the hazardous adventures of
+      the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>crèche</i>
+      company, the International Crèche Syndicate, lost not one-half per cent,
+      of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But Graham&rsquo;s
+      prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham was still not clear upon many points. &ldquo;But so many orphans,&rdquo;
+      he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again
+      that they were not orphans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So soon as they had left the <i>crèche</i> he began to speak of the horror
+      the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. &ldquo;Is motherhood
+      gone?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct.
+      This seems so unnatural&mdash;abominable almost.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Along here we shall come to the dancing place,&rdquo; said Asano by
+      way of reply. &ldquo;It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the
+      political unrest it will be crowded. The women take no great interest in
+      politics&mdash;except a few here and there. You will see the mothers&mdash;most
+      young women in London are mothers. In that class it is considered a
+      creditable thing to have one child&mdash;a 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then do you mean that the population of the World&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour
+      Department. In spite of scientific discipline they are reckless&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see,&rdquo; said Asano with a faint smile. &ldquo;The
+      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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;are the fathers and mothers of the
+      little ones you saw.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Look at them,&rdquo; said the little officer,
+      &ldquo;see how much they show of motherhood.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;The Festival of the Awakening&rdquo; was
+      in progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that,
+      quite apart from the labourers who refuse to go back,&rdquo; said Asano.
+      &ldquo;These people are always ready for holidays.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of people are these?&rdquo; he asked abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Workers&mdash;prosperous 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;the women?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The same. There&rsquo;s 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&mdash;there
+      are a number of methods of contract&mdash;and that gives them more money,
+      and enables them to enjoy themselves.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash
+      and swirl of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink
+      helpless limbs. &ldquo;And these are&mdash;mothers.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a little while he spoke again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the
+      modern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me&mdash;habits
+      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&mdash;all 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&mdash;that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely
+      mistress of a home, mother and maker of men&mdash;to love her was a sort
+      of worship&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and repeated, &ldquo;A sort of worship.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ideals change,&rdquo; said the little man, &ldquo;as needs change.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words. Graham&rsquo;s
+      mind returned to the thing at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of 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&rsquo;s tribute
+      to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+      purposes&mdash;his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+      police&mdash;and life is joyous.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at the dancers again. &ldquo;Joyous,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are weary moments,&rdquo; said the little officer,
+      reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man.
+      And in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are young. There are few old people in this class in the work
+      cities.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old people&rsquo;s 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that Euthanasy!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;The easy death?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does
+      it well. People will pay the sum&mdash;it is a costly thing&mdash;long
+      beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and
+      weary, very weary.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is a lot left for me to understand,&rdquo; said Graham after
+      a pause. &ldquo;Yet 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&mdash;for
+      well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+      asleep two hundred years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+      evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before God,&rdquo; said Graham, suddenly, &ldquo;I would rather be
+      a wounded sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the snow,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;one might think differently.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am uncivilised,&rdquo; said Graham, not heeding him. &ldquo;That
+      is the trouble. I am primitive&mdash;Paleolithic. <i>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&mdash;men
+      are dying in Paris to keep the world&mdash;that they may dance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano smiled faintly. &ldquo;For that matter, men are dying in London,&rdquo;
+      he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a moment&rsquo;s silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do these sleep?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Above and below&mdash;an intricate warren.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where do they work? This is&mdash;the domestic life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. &ldquo;I
+      want to see the workers. I have seen enough of these,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to it,
+      and turned to Graham with a smile. &ldquo;Here, Sire,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;is something&mdash;will be familiar to you at least&mdash;and yet&mdash;.
+      But I will not tell you. Come!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the
+      first ladder he had seen since his awakening&mdash;up 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s. 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For a long time he was silent. &ldquo;This,&rdquo; he said at last,
+      smiling in the shadow, &ldquo;seems the strangest thing of all. To stand
+      in the dome of St. Paul&rsquo;s and look once more upon these familiar,
+      silent stars!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Skin your eyes and slide,&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;Gewhoop, Bonanza,&rdquo; &ldquo;Gollipers come and hark!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET&rsquo;R. WE ASSURE THE
+      PROPRAIET&rsquo;R.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s the proprietor?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do they assure me?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What do they
+      assure me?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you have assurance?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham thought. &ldquo;Insurance?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;Insurance. 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!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+      suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. &ldquo;Anuetes
+      on the Propraiet&rsquo;r&mdash;x 5 pr. G.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. &ldquo;Seventeen 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;X 5 pr. G.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to get out of this,&rdquo; said Graham to Asano. &ldquo;This
+      is not what I came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people
+      in blue. These parasitic lunatics&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXI. &mdash; THE UNDER-SIDE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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&mdash;even with a dialect of its own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>cloisonné</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. &ldquo;This is what
+      I wanted to see,&rdquo; said Graham; &ldquo;this is what I wanted to see,&rdquo;
+      trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She might have done better with herself than that,&rdquo; said
+      Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham made some indignant comments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,&rdquo;
+      said Asano. &ldquo;In your days people could stand such crudities, they
+      were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They continued along one of the lower galleries of this <i>cloisonné</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>
+    <p>
+      A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop that!&rdquo; 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&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+      painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has happened now?&rdquo; 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:
+      &ldquo;Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+      coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano&rsquo;s face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at
+      Graham&rsquo;s face, and told him the thing he already knew. &ldquo;But
+      how can they know?&rdquo; asked Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham heard someone shouting. &ldquo;Stop all work. Stop all work,&rdquo;
+      and a swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping
+      down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English,
+      &ldquo;This is Ostrog&rsquo;s doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is
+      betrayed.&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Ostrog the Knave!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo; they cried.
+      &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+      heart began to beat fast and strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has come,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I might have known. The hour
+      has come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He thought swiftly. &ldquo;What am I to do?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go back to the Council House,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should I not appeal&mdash;? The people are here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You 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&mdash;with them.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose this is only a rumour?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds true,&rdquo; said Asano.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us have the facts,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Asano shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;We had better get towards the Council
+      House,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;That is where they will swarm. Even now the
+      ruins may be impassable.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he say?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have
+      arrived here before the people knew&mdash;had not someone in the Wind-Vane
+      Offices learnt. He said a girl.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A girl? Not&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said a girl&mdash;he did not know who she was. Who came out from
+      the Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+      tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street.
+      &ldquo;To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to his
+      ward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXII. &mdash; THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+      they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. &ldquo;To your
+      wards! To your wards!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      The cries of &ldquo;To your wards!&rdquo; became at last a continuous
+      shouting as they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+      unintelligible. &ldquo;Ostrog has betrayed us,&rdquo; one man bawled in a
+      hoarse voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Every
+      man to his ward! Every man to his ward!&rdquo; Here, by Asano&rsquo;s
+      advice, Graham revealed his identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;To your wards! Every man to his ward!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Ostrog?&rdquo; he demanded. &ldquo;I must see Ostrog
+      forthwith. He has disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his
+      hands.&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Wards! Wards!
+      Wards!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; said Asano, &ldquo;will be in the small offices
+      beyond there.&rdquo; The little man looked livid now and his eyes searched
+      Graham&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; shouted Graham, and at the sound of
+      his voice the little party turned astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. &ldquo;What
+      is this I hear?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Are you bringing negroes here&mdash;to
+      keep the people down?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is none too soon,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;They have been
+      getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the way. As it is, you have seen the people&mdash;outside?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No wonder! But&mdash;after what was said. You have taken too much
+      on yourself, Ostrog.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These negroes must not come to London,&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;I
+      am Master and they shall not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+      attendants close behind him. &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; asked Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White men must be mastered by white men. Besides&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The negroes are only an instrument.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the
+      Master. And I tell you these negroes shall not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe in the people.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past&mdash;an
+      accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally&mdash;legally. But
+      you are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He glanced at Lincoln again. &ldquo;I know now what you think&mdash;I can
+      guess something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to
+      warn you. You dream of human equality&mdash;of some sort of socialistic
+      order&mdash;you 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;You can hear it&mdash;a sound
+      like the sea. Not voices&mdash;but a voice. Do <i>you</i> altogether
+      understand?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We taught them that,&rdquo; said Ostrog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+      negroes must not come.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I forbid it,&rdquo; said Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have started.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not have it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ostrog. &ldquo;Sorry as I am to follow the method
+      of the Council&mdash;. For your own good&mdash;you must not side with&mdash;Disorder.
+      And now that you are here&mdash;. It was kind of you to come here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lincoln laid his hand on Graham&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s cloak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and struck at Lincoln&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant&rsquo;s
+      leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s heaving
+      throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;are&mdash;a prisoner,&rdquo; panted Ostrog, exulting.
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;were rather a fool&mdash;to come back.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Save
+      the Master!&rdquo; &ldquo;What are they doing to the Master?&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;The Master is betrayed!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then he realised that Ostrog&rsquo;s attention was distracted, that
+      Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s throat, and Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      hands clutching the silk about his neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But now men were coming towards them from the dais&mdash;men 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>
+    <p>
+      He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not friends&mdash;that
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t
+      come down,&rdquo; panted Ostrog. &ldquo;They daren&rsquo;t fire. It&rsquo;s
+      all right. We&rsquo;ll save him from them yet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+      thousand throats were cheering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Where has Ostrog gone?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The Master is with us! The Master! The
+      Master!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The Master is on our side!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has become of Ostrog?&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;Ostrog,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: &ldquo;What are they doing? What
+      are the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured?
+      They will lift him&mdash;the monoplane will lift him! Ah!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are grounding!&rdquo; cried the man in yellow. &ldquo;They are
+      grounding. Tell the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+      enigmatical orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And then it rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+      upward into the wind-swept sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;the 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIII. &mdash; GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;For a moment,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I must wait. I did
+      not think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+      that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What news of the flying stages?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people of the south-west wards are ready.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ready!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?&rdquo; he said,
+      and felt the light grow brighter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; cried someone, and a door
+      opened. Graham turned, and the watching lights waned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+      interrupt Graham&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have helped me,&rdquo; he said lamely&mdash;&ldquo;helped me
+      very much.... This is very difficult.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+      him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men and women of the new age,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you have
+      arisen to do battle for the race!... There is no easy victory before us.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of moving
+      speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This night is a beginning,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come out of the past to you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;with the
+      memory of an age that hoped. My age was an age of dreams&mdash;of
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great 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&mdash;sorrow 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&mdash;. Is
+      there a new faith?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Charity and mercy,&rdquo; he floundered; &ldquo;beauty and the love
+      of beautiful things&mdash;effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would
+      give myself&mdash;as Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not
+      matter if you understand. It does not matter if you seem to fail. You <i>know</i>&mdash;in
+      the core of your hearts you <i>know</i>. There is no promise, there is no
+      security&mdash;nothing to go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith&mdash;faith
+      which is courage....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Here and now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;I 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.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Oh! Father of the World&mdash;<i>Sire</i>!
+      I knew you would say these things....&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have said what I could,&rdquo; he answered lamely and grasped and
+      clung to her outstretched hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXIV. &mdash; WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+      saying that the south-west wards were marching. &ldquo;I never expected it
+      so soon,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;They have done wonders. You must send
+      them a word to help them on their way.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to his
+      previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That is good, that is good.&rdquo; He
+      weighed a message. &ldquo;Tell them;&mdash;well done South West.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+      between conflicting ideas. &ldquo;We must capture the flying stages,&rdquo;
+      he explained. &ldquo;Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all
+      costs we must prevent that.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Here I am doing nothing,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible,&rdquo; protested the man in yellow. &ldquo;It is
+      a fight in a warren. Your place is here.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+      wait, he insisted no other course was possible. &ldquo;We must know where
+      you are,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;At any moment a crisis may arise needing
+      your presence and decision.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;and
+      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&rsquo;s
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+      girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Metallic voices were shouting &ldquo;Victory!&rdquo; Yes it was &ldquo;Victory!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+      dishevelled with excitement, &ldquo;Victory,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;victory!
+      The people are winning. Ostrog&rsquo;s people have collapsed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She rose. &ldquo;Victory?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; asked Graham. &ldquo;Tell me! <i>What</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood,
+      Streatham is afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. <i>Ours</i>!&mdash;and
+      we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+      the Ward Leaders. &ldquo;It is all over,&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have
+      been sighted at Boulogne!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Channel!&rdquo; said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+      &ldquo;Half an hour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They still have three of the flying stages,&rdquo; said the old
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those guns?&rdquo; cried Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot mount them&mdash;in half an hour.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean they are found?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; said the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we could stop them another hour!&rdquo; cried the man in yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing can stop them now,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;They
+      have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another hour?&rdquo; asked Graham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be so near!&rdquo; said the Ward Leader. &ldquo;Now that we have
+      found those guns. To be so near&mdash;. If once we could get them out upon
+      the roof spaces.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long would that take?&rdquo; asked Graham suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour&mdash;certainly.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too late,&rdquo; cried the Ward Leader, &ldquo;too late.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Is</i> it too late?&rdquo; said Graham. &ldquo;Even now&mdash;.
+      An hour!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but his
+      face was white. &ldquo;There is are chance. You said there was a monoplane&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the Roehampton stage, Sire.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smashed?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+      guides&mdash;easily. But there is no aeronaut&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+      pause. &ldquo;<i>We</i> have no aeronauts?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. &ldquo;I must do it.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do what?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to this flying stage&mdash;to this machine.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am an aeronaut. After all&mdash;. Those days for which you
+      reproached me were not altogether wasted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to the old man in yellow. &ldquo;Tell them to put it upon the
+      guides.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man in yellow hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean to do?&rdquo; cried Helen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This monoplane&mdash;it is a chance&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To fight&mdash;yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before&mdash;.
+      A big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man&mdash;!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;never since flying began&mdash;&rdquo; cried the man in
+      yellow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now&mdash;send
+      them my message&mdash;to put it upon the guides. I see now something to
+      do. I see now why I am here!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. &ldquo;But, Sire!&mdash;How
+      can one fight? You will be killed.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps. Yet, not to do it&mdash;or to let some one else attempt it&mdash;.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be killed,&rdquo; she repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve said my word. Do you not see? It may save&mdash;London!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+      gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+      towering heroisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To wake,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;for this!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said &ldquo;Onward.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XXV. &mdash; THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s down there still,&rdquo;
+      said the marksman. &ldquo;See that little patch. Yes. Between those bars.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see him <i>now</i>,&rdquo; said the second man in a
+      tone of provocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s going on now?&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want all these fools,&rdquo; said his friend.
+      &ldquo;They only crowd up and spoil shots. What are they after?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ssh!&mdash;they&rsquo;re shouting something.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re putting it on the carrier&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      what they&rsquo;re after.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good?&rdquo;
+      said his friend. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got no aeronauts.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they&rsquo;re doing anyhow.&rdquo; He looked at
+      his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the
+      wounded man. &ldquo;Mind these, mate,&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+      that man is King,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The Master is coming,&rdquo; shouted
+      voices, &ldquo;the Master is coming,&rdquo; and the crowd about him grew
+      denser and denser. He began to thrust himself towards the central groove.
+      &ldquo;The Master is coming!&rdquo; &ldquo;The Sleeper, the Master!&rdquo;
+      &ldquo;God and the Master!&rdquo; roared the voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham&rsquo;s
+      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 &ldquo;Clear for the start, you fools!&rdquo; The bell
+      that cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&mdash;presently&mdash;the
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      Throb, throb, throb&mdash;throb, 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>
+    <p>
+      Throb, throb, throb&mdash;pause&mdash;throb, throb&mdash;he set his teeth,
+      his face into an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck
+      upward beneath the nearer wing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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.
+      &ldquo;Where was the other?&rdquo; he thought. &ldquo;They too&mdash;.&rdquo;
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for Wimbledon Park was useless
+      because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a furnace&mdash;were
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Massa Boss&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Graham hit them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;if it was a charge&mdash;of 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Two</i>!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s 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&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      He drew an immense breath. &ldquo;They win,&rdquo; he shouted to the empty
+      air; &ldquo;the people win!&rdquo; 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and went
+      circling up. He saw Ostrog&rsquo;s 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&mdash;dropped
+      and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of Ostrog&rsquo;s
+      aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog&rsquo;s attitude a wincing
+      resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him&mdash;to 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>
+    <p>
+      He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The eastward
+      stage, the one on Shooter&rsquo;s 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>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the air
+      was blowing past him and <i>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>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s calculated treachery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>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>
+    <p>
+      Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth was
+      very near.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      THE END.
+    </h3>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12163-h.htm or 12163-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/1/6/12163/
+
+Etext produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+HTML file produced by David Widger
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/old/12163-8.txt b/old/old/12163-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebd4f44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/12163-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9157 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sleeper Awakes
+       A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
+
+Author: H.G. Wells
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2004 [EBook #12163]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+              A Revised Edition of "When the Sleeper Wakes"
+
+                               H.G. WELLS
+
+                                  1899
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+
+_When the Sleeper Wakes_, whose title I have now altered to _The Sleeper
+Awakes_, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial appearance
+in the _Graphic_ and one or two American and colonial periodicals. It is
+one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I have
+taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of
+excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work, it was written
+under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the
+writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story.
+Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an almost
+unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the writing
+of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic that
+instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely
+interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. I was at
+that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
+various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, _Love
+and Mr. Lewisham_, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But
+fortune was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall
+dangerously ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my
+attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my
+temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't endure the thought of
+leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from
+the consequences of that febrile spurt--_Love and Mr. Lewisham_ is indeed
+one of my most carefully balanced books--but the Sleeper escaped me.
+
+It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+sluggish _driven_ pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at the
+end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what
+the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of Helen. There was
+even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the flying-machine
+to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married Helen. I have
+now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities. Not the
+slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have arisen
+between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl and
+her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found it
+possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that
+the People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+certainty of either victory or defeat.
+
+Who will win--Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+
+H.G. WELLS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       I. INSOMNIA
+
+      II. THE TRANCE
+
+     III. THE AWAKENING
+
+      IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+       V. THE MOVING WAYS
+
+      VI. THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+     VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+    VIII. THE ROOF SPACES
+
+      IX. THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+       X. THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+      XI. THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+     XII. OSTROG
+
+    XIII. THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+     XIV. FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+      XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+     XVI. THE MONOPLANE
+
+    XVII. THREE DAYS
+
+   XVIII. GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+     XIX. OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+      XX. IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+     XXI. THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+    XXII. THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+   XXIII. GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+    XXIV. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+     XXV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INSOMNIA
+
+
+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.
+
+He glanced round at Isbister's 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.
+
+"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a
+colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
+
+Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
+conveyed his helpful impulse.
+
+"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
+Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
+have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."
+
+"Had advice?"
+
+"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They are
+all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare not
+take ... sufficiently powerful drugs."
+
+"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
+
+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. "I've never suffered from
+sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
+those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"
+
+"I dare make no experiments."
+
+He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
+men were silent.
+
+"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
+interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.
+
+"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
+day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
+mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
+something--"
+
+He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
+hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
+
+"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
+have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
+as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
+find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
+myself to do.
+
+"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
+dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
+don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
+exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
+in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
+complacencies--or 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's
+day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+rest--black coffee, cocaine--"
+
+"I see," said Isbister.
+
+"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
+
+"And this is the price?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+
+"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a 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--" He paused. "Towards
+the gulf."
+
+"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
+discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."
+
+"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
+of this sweet world of sanity--down--"
+
+"But," expostulated Isbister.
+
+The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at 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."
+
+"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
+gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."
+
+"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
+
+Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
+"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
+little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."
+
+"But those rocks there?"
+
+"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones
+grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"
+
+Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
+of devil-may-careish brilliance. "But a suicide over that cliff (or any
+cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's
+so damned amateurish."
+
+"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
+thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"
+
+"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll 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--eh?"
+
+Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+
+"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of
+gesture. "Look 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--"
+
+He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
+misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery."
+
+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.
+
+He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a
+night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take
+my word for it."
+
+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.
+
+His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. But he
+made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.
+
+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. "What can be happening?" he
+asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be happening? Spin, spin,
+spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore."
+
+He stood with his hand circling.
+
+"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
+"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me,"
+
+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.
+
+"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of
+expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
+oppression, a weight. No--not 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't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on
+it--steadily enough to tell you."
+
+He stopped feebly.
+
+"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
+any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me,
+you know."
+
+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. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
+show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
+
+The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+
+Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said
+Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+If you take alcohol?"
+
+The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden path,
+and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--I don't drink. It
+goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"
+
+He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+who sees nothing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
+unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with ideas of a
+furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
+passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
+momentary silence.
+
+The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
+regarding him.
+
+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. "Perhaps," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I wonder," ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+complacency. "At any rate one must give him a chance." He struck a match
+in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind; he started, and leaning over the
+table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became
+conviction. Astonishment seized him and became--dread!
+
+No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+
+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.
+
+Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He started
+violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.
+
+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. "Are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping, and again, "Are
+you asleep?"
+
+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.
+
+"Please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "There is
+something wrong with my friend."
+
+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. "I must fetch a doctor," he said. "It is either death or a fit. Is
+there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TRANCE
+
+
+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.
+
+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--neither 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?
+
+"It seems only yesterday," said Isbister. "I remember it all as though it
+happened yesterday--clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I 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."
+
+"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.
+
+"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too
+serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of
+the time."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
+
+"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and
+white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
+Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
+
+"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see
+them there."
+
+"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
+satisfaction. "The 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't expect that some day my pigments would
+glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again
+to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."
+
+Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "I just missed seeing
+you, if I recollect aright."
+
+"You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It
+was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the
+seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea."
+
+"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."
+
+"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at
+Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My
+landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer
+when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And
+the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before
+him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights
+and so forth."
+
+"Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?"
+
+"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
+head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
+this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
+quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"
+
+"Smithers?"
+
+"Smithers it was--was 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--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little
+things, not dynamos--"
+
+"Coils."
+
+"Yes. 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_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made
+me dream."
+
+Pause.
+
+"It's a strange state," said Warming.
+
+"It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body,
+empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and
+marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not
+a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In
+a sense it's 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--"
+
+"I know," said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.
+
+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--but 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.
+
+"And while he has been lying here," said Isbister, with the zest of a
+life freely spent, "I have changed my plans in life; married, raised a
+family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an
+American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's 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's curious to think of."
+
+Warming turned. "And 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_ a young man nevertheless."
+
+"And there's been the War," said Isbister.
+
+"From beginning to end."
+
+"And these Martians."
+
+"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some
+moderate property of his own?"
+
+"That is so," said Warming. He coughed primly. "As it happens--I have
+charge of it."
+
+"Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here is
+not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"
+
+"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when
+he slept."
+
+"As a business man," said Isbister, "that 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--"
+
+"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said Warming. "He was
+not a far-sighted man. In fact--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"We 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--. 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?"
+
+"It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change
+these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."
+
+"There has been a lot of change certainly," said Warming. "And, among
+other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."
+
+Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn't
+have thought it."
+
+"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his
+bankers--sent on to me."
+
+"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.
+
+"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.
+
+There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of
+hesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall
+some day into the hands of--someone else, you know."
+
+"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most
+constantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, there
+are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+unprecedented position."
+
+"Rather," said Isbister.
+
+"It seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically
+undying guardian. If he really is going on living--as 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."
+
+"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the
+British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit
+odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd."
+
+"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
+
+"Red tape, I suppose?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Pause. "It's a curious business, certainly," said Isbister. "And compound
+interest has a way of mounting up."
+
+"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies are running short
+there is a tendency towards ... appreciation."
+
+"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it better
+for _him_."
+
+"_If_ he wakes."
+
+"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-in look of his
+nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?"
+
+Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt if he will wake," he
+said at last.
+
+"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what it was brought this
+on. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious."
+
+"He 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--a Socialist--or typical
+Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school.
+Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this
+for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote--a 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."
+
+"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just to hear what he
+would say to it all."
+
+"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would I," with an old man's sudden
+turn to self pity. "But I shall never see him wake."
+
+He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "He will never awake,"
+he said at last. He sighed. "He will never awake again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+
+What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity--the 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's 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.
+
+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--he could not tell what name--that 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....
+
+Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some
+unfamiliar thing.
+
+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.
+
+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--but 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....
+
+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--and amazed.
+
+He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+mind was quite clear--evidently 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--and he saw
+with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--a
+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--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of
+the armchairs.
+
+When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+bottle and drank--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+What was this place?--this 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. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
+own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
+shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "When
+the Sleeper wakes--_When_!"
+
+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.
+
+Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
+"Where am I?"
+
+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.
+
+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's ears.
+"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
+It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."
+
+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.
+
+"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's 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.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"You 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"
+
+They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
+_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
+the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.
+
+"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
+pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall
+be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be difficult
+to--_wire_ to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't trouble
+about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the
+important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the word was
+sir, but this man pronounced it "_Sire_.")
+
+"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.
+
+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't 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.
+
+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.
+
+They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+
+"That--that makes me feel better," 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.
+
+He pressed his throat and tried a third time. "How long?" he asked in a
+level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly
+at the others.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"A very long time."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some
+years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.
+But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"
+
+He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+and sat waiting for an answer.
+
+They spoke in undertones.
+
+"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"
+
+"Very much more than that."
+
+"More!"
+
+"More."
+
+He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+of his face. He looked his question.
+
+"Many years," said the man with the red beard.
+
+Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from
+his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes
+tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing
+to another.
+
+"How many years?" he asked.
+
+"You must be prepared to be surprised."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"More than a gross of years."
+
+He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"
+
+Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+"decimal" he did not catch.
+
+"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
+that. Tell me."
+
+Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
+couple of centuries."
+
+"_What_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
+says--? What was that? A couple of _centuries_!"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
+
+Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+
+"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
+opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
+
+They said nothing.
+
+"You--did you say--?"
+
+"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the
+red beard.
+
+There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+heard was indeed true.
+
+"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances--trances
+don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me!
+Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
+Cornwall--?"
+
+His voice failed him.
+
+The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history,
+sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+
+"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
+Cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There
+is a house there still. I have been there."
+
+"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
+it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
+exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."
+
+He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than _two hundred years_!"
+
+He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was
+cold within him. "But if it _is_ 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."
+
+They did not answer him.
+
+"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High
+and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?"
+
+"That's a comfort! Is there London?"
+
+"This _is_ London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!"
+
+He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
+talk. Be quiet. Let me--"
+
+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.
+
+Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced
+hysterically and covered his face again.
+
+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. "What 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?"
+
+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. "These others," he said in a voice of extreme
+irritation. "You had better go."
+
+"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
+
+"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
+
+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.
+
+For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---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.
+
+"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again
+and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
+
+His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+with an ambiguous expression.
+
+"Feel queer?" he asked.
+
+"Very."
+
+"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"
+
+"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
+
+"I suppose so, now."
+
+"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"
+
+"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
+met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
+the thickset man.
+
+"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked Graham.
+
+"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+matter of fact."
+
+Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a
+mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
+changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
+understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
+spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
+trying to decide in an emergency. "We 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."
+
+Graham rubbed his chin.
+
+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.
+
+Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
+time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
+Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
+
+The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+
+"Wild!" he cried. "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
+
+There was perhaps an answer.
+
+"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But shout
+from the balcony."
+
+There was an inaudible reply.
+
+"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."
+
+He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
+said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
+
+He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+moment he was back.
+
+"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a
+moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then I can
+take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough."
+
+"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
+
+"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I
+don't know what it is. I know nothing."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture.
+"It 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?" he
+said to the tailor.
+
+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. "You will
+find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his
+brows at the thickset man.
+
+He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
+essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere
+in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a little appliance
+the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and
+behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the
+dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white
+satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
+
+The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+
+"We have very little time," he said.
+
+"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you
+think of this?"
+
+"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+
+"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
+this is our modern development. See here." The little figure repeated its
+evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the
+busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Is
+that--some sort of force--laid on?"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.
+
+"Who is _that_?" He indicated the archway behind him.
+
+The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in
+an undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire--it's
+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--if you don't mind, I will
+leave him to explain."
+
+"Odd!" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the
+new comer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man _glaring_ at me? Is
+he a mesmerist?"
+
+"Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."
+
+"Capillotomist!"
+
+"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."
+
+It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
+our monetary units."
+
+"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"
+
+"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have
+altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
+system--tens, 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?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"
+
+The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"Here are your clothes!" 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. "You don't mean to say--!"
+
+"Just made," 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.
+
+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.
+
+"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.
+
+"In a moment," said Howard.
+
+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.
+
+"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man
+had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.
+
+Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+glint of steel.
+
+"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried
+politeness. "He is going to cut your hair."
+
+"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--"
+
+"A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+the world."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+capillotomist came forward, examined Graham's ears and surveyed him, felt
+the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for
+Howard's audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a
+succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham's 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.
+
+Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in the
+corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Work is
+being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MOVING WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+façade 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's 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's 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's 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.
+
+"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must
+come away at once."
+
+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's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has
+happened to the Sleeper?" 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.
+
+"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
+never the Sleeper," 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.
+
+He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
+And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
+
+He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" 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: "The
+Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and
+cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to
+Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick
+with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves
+opposite to him.
+
+"Stop the Ways," 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: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the
+Sleeper," they testified.
+
+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.
+
+He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They will
+stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."
+
+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.
+
+"Get him away," cried Howard.
+
+"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"
+
+"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face
+and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face, and
+he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,
+compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+
+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.
+"I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a
+whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?"
+
+"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.
+"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking
+just now, has a sort of connexion--"
+
+He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He
+stopped abruptly.
+
+"I don't understand," said Graham.
+
+"It will be clearer later," said Howard.
+
+He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the
+lift slow.
+
+"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a
+little," said Graham puzzled. "It will be--it 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."
+
+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.
+
+"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What
+place is it?"
+
+"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+so forth."
+
+"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are you
+governed? Have you still a police?"
+
+"Several," said Howard.
+
+"Several?"
+
+"About fourteen."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+to you. To tell you the truth, I don't understand it myself very
+clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps--bye and bye. We have to go to
+the Council."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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's guardian.
+That was odd.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Go
+on," cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+
+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.
+
+"I want to see more of that," cried Graham, resisting.
+
+"No, no," cried Howard, still gripping his arm. "This way. You must go
+this way." And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce
+his orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "The Sleeper,"
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"You must remain here," murmured Howard, "for a few moments," and,
+without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.
+
+"But, _why_--?" began Graham.
+
+He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+the men in red. "You have to wait here, Sire," said the man in red.
+
+"_Why_?"
+
+"Orders, Sire."
+
+"Whose orders?"
+
+"Our orders, Sire."
+
+Graham looked his exasperation.
+
+"What place is this?" he said presently. "Who are those men?"
+
+"They are the lords of the Council, Sire."
+
+"What Council?"
+
+"_The_ Council."
+
+"Oh!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's 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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+chambers furnished in white and green. "What Council was that?" began
+Graham. "What were they discussing? What have they to do with me?" 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. "Ugh!" he grunted, a man relieved.
+
+Graham stood regarding him.
+
+"You must understand," began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham's eyes,
+"that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare
+unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of
+fact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, and
+the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you--and certain
+other beginnings--have become very considerable. And in other ways that
+will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the
+world's affairs."
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Graham.
+
+"We have grave social troubles."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+seclude you here."
+
+"Keep me prisoner!" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Well--to ask you to keep in seclusion."
+
+Graham turned on him. "This is strange!" he said.
+
+"No harm will be done you."
+
+"No harm!"
+
+"But you must be kept here--"
+
+"While I learn my position, I presume."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Very well then. Begin. Why _harm_?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It is too long a story, Sire."
+
+"All 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?"
+
+"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely.
+This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
+awakening--no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."
+
+"What council?"
+
+"The Council you saw."
+
+Graham made a petulant movement. "This is not right," he said. "I should
+be told what is happening."
+
+"You must wait. Really you must wait."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to
+resume life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."
+
+"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must
+leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the
+Council.... I am sorry."
+
+He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+
+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's mysterious behaviour. There was an
+inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance
+perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+What had he to do? And this room's secluded silence was eloquent of
+imprisonment!
+
+It came into Graham's 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.
+
+Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
+of the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+
+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.
+
+A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming
+like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"
+
+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.
+
+The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge façade 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--_strange_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King."
+
+"Phonetic spelling," 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. "The Heart of Darkness"
+he had never heard of before nor "The Madonna of the Future"--no doubt if
+they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+
+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.
+
+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. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have you been doing?"
+
+"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.
+Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard "when the Sleeper
+wakes," 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.
+
+At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+apparatus was blank again.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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--black almost, with a dust of
+little stars....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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. "We were making
+the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future
+we were making. And here it is!"
+
+"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst
+of it all?" 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!
+
+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 "un-English." His mind glanced at
+the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+
+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.
+
+He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to
+himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred
+and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't
+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. 'Tis a great age! Ha
+ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed
+again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving
+foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
+
+His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't
+understand it. _Why_? ... But it is all _why_!"
+
+"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+remember just how it began."
+
+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....
+
+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. "I must sleep," 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....
+
+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.
+
+And in those three days Graham's 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--even 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....
+
+Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's 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. "To explain
+it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,"
+protested Howard.
+
+"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shall
+do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
+
+"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the 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."
+
+"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
+
+"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+feature of our State."
+
+"Am I a fool?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
+
+"You 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--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too complex. We dare
+not suddenly---while you are still half awake."
+
+"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why 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?"
+
+Howard pulled his lip.
+
+"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a 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?"
+
+"That note of suspicion--" said Howard.
+
+"Ugh!" said Graham. "Now, 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_--"
+
+"_Live_!"
+
+Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an
+easy confidential tone.
+
+"The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+Naturally--an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious
+that everything you may desire--every desire--every sort of desire ...
+There may be something. Is there any sort of company?"
+
+He paused meaningly.
+
+"Yes," said Graham thoughtfully. "There is."
+
+"Ah! _Now_! We have treated you neglectfully."
+
+"The crowds in yonder streets of yours."
+
+"That," said Howard, "I am afraid--But--"
+
+Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him.
+The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of
+_company_? 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.
+
+"What do you mean by company?"
+
+Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he
+said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he
+said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with
+your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this--by 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--discreet--"
+
+Graham stopped dead.
+
+"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should perhaps
+have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening--"
+
+He indicated the exterior world.
+
+Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+
+"_No_!" he shouted.
+
+He began striding rapidly up and down the room. "Everything you say,
+everything you do, convinces me--of 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--and 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--. And meanwhile I am here like
+a rabbit in a bag."
+
+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.
+
+"I 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--"
+
+He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+
+"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
+
+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's movement was quick.
+In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the
+nineteenth century was alone.
+
+For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" 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--because he was afraid of fear.
+
+Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment
+was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of
+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--humane. Yet
+they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as
+well as chastity?
+
+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. "Why should
+anything be done to me?"
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
+can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they ask
+me for it instead of cooping me up?"
+
+He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
+intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's 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?
+
+"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"
+
+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:
+
+"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ROOF SPACES
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked
+up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.
+
+He remained motionless--his 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.
+
+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. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.
+
+Graham stood under the vane. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+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.
+
+For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+
+"You were the Sleeper?" said the stranger at last.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "What do you want with me?"
+
+"I come from Ostrog, Sire."
+
+"Ostrog?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" he said.
+
+"We want to speak to you, Sire," said the intruder. "We want--I
+can't hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you--these
+three days."
+
+"Is it rescue?" whispered Graham. "Escape?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. If you will."
+
+"You are my party--the party of the Sleeper?"
+
+"Yes, Sire."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Graham.
+
+There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was
+bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Stand
+away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and
+one shoulder at Graham's 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.
+
+"You are indeed the Sleeper," he said. "I saw you asleep. When it was the
+law that anyone might see you."
+
+"I am the man who was in the trance," said Graham. "They have imprisoned
+me here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days."
+
+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. "Mind!"
+cried a voice. "Oh!" The voice came from above.
+
+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.
+
+"I did not see you, Sire," panted the man. He rose and assisted
+Graham to rise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy
+blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face,
+and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat
+upon the floor.
+
+"What is this?" cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator.
+"Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing."
+
+"Stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator
+as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+
+"We want you to come, Sire," 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.
+"Your people call for you."
+
+"Come where? My people?"
+
+"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very
+day--either 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--shouting. The whole city shouts
+against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.
+"Your life here is not worth--"
+
+"But why arms?"
+
+"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.
+
+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--a ladder--was being lowered through the
+opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+
+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!
+
+"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."
+
+The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
+he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
+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.
+
+"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them
+and not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."
+
+"Where are the people?" said Graham. "The people you said awaited me?"
+
+The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew
+narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" 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.
+
+"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill
+spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided
+an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This way!"
+and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow,
+between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will go
+first," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Come on!" cried his
+guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"
+
+Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+
+Over the ridge, following his guide's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of
+terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.
+
+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.
+
+"Get on this," cried Graham's 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's benumbed feet, and a
+faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+
+"Come on!" 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....
+
+In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
+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.
+
+They cowered panting and stared out.
+
+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.
+
+"They will be chasing us," cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfway
+there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until it
+snows more thickly again."
+
+His teeth chattered in his head.
+
+"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all
+the people?"
+
+The other made no answer.
+
+"_Look_!" whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.
+
+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.
+
+"_Now_!" cried his companion. "Come!"
+
+He pulled Graham's 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.
+
+"Do as I do," 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. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In
+the dark all the way along. Do as I did."
+
+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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+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's. "_Still_!" whispered the latter very softly.
+
+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.
+
+"Keep still; they were just turning."
+
+For awhile both were motionless, then Graham's companion stood up, and
+reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+indistinct tackle.
+
+"What is that?" asked Graham.
+
+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.
+
+The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+Graham's 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. "Put the cross between your
+legs," whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. Grip
+tightly, grip!"
+
+Graham did as he was told.
+
+"Jump," said the voice. "In heaven's name, jump!"
+
+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.
+
+"Jump! Jump--in God's name! Or they will have us," cried Graham's guide,
+and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards him with
+rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then--
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+countless multitude. "It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!"
+
+"The Sleeper is with us! The Master--the Owner! The Master is with us.
+He is safe."
+
+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.
+
+He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+by one arm. "Let me go into a little room," he said, weeping; "a little
+room," 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+
+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.
+
+He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+
+"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"
+
+The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched
+their faces.
+
+"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.
+
+"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.
+
+"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world."
+
+He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I
+have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is some
+struggle between a number of people in this city--it is London?"
+
+"Yes," said the younger man.
+
+"And 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 don't 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?"
+
+"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "To prevent your
+interference."
+
+"But _why_?"
+
+"Because _you_ are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world
+is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."
+
+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.
+
+Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a
+name that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said.
+
+"He is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader--in
+your name."
+
+"In my name?--And you? Why is he not here?"
+
+"He--has deputed us. I am his brother--his 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."
+
+"In your name," shouted the younger man. "They have ruled, crushed,
+tyrannised. At last even--"
+
+"In my name! My name! Master?"
+
+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. "No 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."
+
+Again the hall dominated everything.
+
+"Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready--. Even now there is a rumour
+of fighting beginning."
+
+The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. "Ostrog has it
+planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the
+flying stages--. Even now he may be doing that. Then--"
+
+"This public theatre," bawled the man in yellow, "is only a contingent.
+We have five myriads of drilled men--"
+
+"We have arms," cried Lincoln. "We have plans. A leader. Their police
+have gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "It is
+now or never. The Council is rocking--They cannot trust even their
+drilled men--"
+
+"Hear the people calling to you!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+The door opened, Lincoln's 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. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the
+burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for "Order! Silence!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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--tramp, tramp.
+
+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.
+
+"Wave your arm to them," said Lincoln. "Wave your arm to them."
+
+"This," said a voice on the other side, "he must have this." 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's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the
+stage facing the people.
+
+The hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, 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 "Ostrog." All
+his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+song. The multitude were beating time with their feet--marking 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 "To
+the Council!" Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the
+roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout "March!" His mouth
+shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the
+archway, shouting "Onward!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's 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--three 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind that these also should
+have swarmed with people.
+
+He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--to 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 "The lights!"
+Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!" cried these voices.
+"The lights!" 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.
+
+He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something
+rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, "It is all
+right--all right."
+
+Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+forehead against Lincoln's and bawled, "What is this darkness?"
+
+"The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must
+wait--stop. The people will go on. They will--"
+
+His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take care
+of the Sleeper." 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.
+
+A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and receded forthwith beyond
+his questions.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+
+He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+gallery. Someone was shouting--it 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.
+
+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. "The
+Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden,
+everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.
+
+Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+"Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham's
+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 façade 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.
+
+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 façade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was
+crowded and bawling and firing at him.
+
+Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+the writhing body.
+
+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 "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. His
+foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under
+foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" 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's, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!"
+he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching
+Sleeper's face.
+
+He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+shouting, "To hell with the Council!" was about to fire again. Then it
+seemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A drop of
+moisture fell on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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, "They 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!" There were women and children
+in the crowd as well as men.
+
+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.
+
+Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+were a series of platforms of the "ways," 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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 "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was
+convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not
+understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the 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--so 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--his pace slackened.
+
+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?
+
+And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring
+and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the
+smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a 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.
+
+A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. "What have
+they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and
+before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+
+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 "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--Little
+Side"? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+"It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face upon
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+
+He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+
+He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+
+"Have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old
+man.
+
+Graham hesitated. "None," he said.
+
+"I stay here till the lights come again," said the old man. "These blue
+scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly. "Dark and damnable.
+Turned out of my room among all these dangers."
+
+"That's hard," ventured Graham. "That's hard on you."
+
+"Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad.
+War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don't they
+bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+fell over a dead man."
+
+"You're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of
+the right sort," and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came
+towards Graham.
+
+Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+relieved to be no longer alone. "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible
+time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dying
+in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night."
+
+The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they are
+to-night."
+
+Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+Again the old man's voice ended the pause.
+
+"This Ostrog will win," he said. "He 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're not common people. Though they've 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!"
+
+His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+
+"Ostrog!" said Graham.
+
+"The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice.
+
+Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the
+people," he hazarded.
+
+"Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! They
+should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And
+Ostrog--. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can
+stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his
+rages at the time--he 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."
+
+He was silent for a little while. "This Sleeper," he said, and stopped.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "Well?"
+
+The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+close. "The real Sleeper--"
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"Died years ago."
+
+"What?" said Graham, sharply.
+
+"Years ago. Died. Years ago."
+
+"You don't say so!" said Graham.
+
+"I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's woke up--they changed in
+the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I
+know. I mustn't tell all I know."
+
+For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for
+him. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my
+time--but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again.
+It was ten to one--wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog's way."
+
+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's 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:
+
+"The first time they rejected him. I've followed it all."
+
+"Rejected whom?" said Graham. "The Sleeper?"
+
+"Sleeper? _No_. Ostrog. He was terrible--terrible! And he was promised
+then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be more
+afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust
+ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workers
+cut each other's 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't been this gross of years. Eh!--but 'tis ill
+on small folks when the great fall out! It's ill."
+
+"Did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?"
+
+"Eh?" said the old man.
+
+The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+this a third time. "Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools
+bawling freedom and the like," said the old man. "Not in all my life has
+there been that. These are like the old days--for sure--when the Paris
+people broke out--three gross of years ago. That's what I mean hasn't
+been. But it's the world's 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."
+
+"You are rather well-informed on these things," said Graham.
+
+"I know what I hear. It isn't all Babble Machine with me."
+
+"No," said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. "And you are
+certain this Ostrog--you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and
+arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself--because
+he was not elected to the Council?"
+
+"Everyone knows that, I should think," said the old man. "Except--just
+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't 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's real and woke of his own
+accord--eh?"
+
+"I'm a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful," said Graham. "Lots of
+things that have happened--especially of late years--. If I was the
+Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn't know less about them."
+
+"Eh!" said the voice. "Old, are you? You don't sound so very old! But
+it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. But these
+notorious things! But you're not so old as me--not nearly so old as me.
+Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I'm young--for
+so old a man. Maybe you're old for so young."
+
+"That's it," said Graham. "And I've 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's interesting to hear you talk of
+these things."
+
+"I know a few things," said the old man. "I know a thing or two.
+But--. Hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "This Sleeper that
+all the fools put their trust in! I've the whole history of it--I was
+always a good one for histories. When I was a boy--I'm that old--I used
+to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seen
+none--they rot and dust so--and 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--they don't seem new-fangled to
+you, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all the
+Sleeper business from the first."
+
+"You will scarcely believe it," said Graham slowly, "I'm so
+ignorant--I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my
+circumstances have been so odd--I know nothing of this Sleeper's history.
+Who was he?"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "I know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set
+on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There's the
+old things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--still
+showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a half
+of years."
+
+"Set on a playful woman, poor soul," said Graham softly to himself, and
+then aloud, "Yes--well go on."
+
+"You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first
+Eadhamite roads. But surely you've 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--the old things--in two dozen
+years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn't 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't 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'-worth or more of property at
+the very beginning."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Graham."
+
+"No--I mean--that American's."
+
+"Isbister."
+
+"Isbister!" cried Graham. "Why, I don't even know the name."
+
+"Of course not," said the old man. "Of course not. People don't 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't 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."
+
+"And how did it grow?"
+
+"Eh!--but you're not up to things. Money attracts money--and 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--they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the
+growing of the Sleeper's 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--the Sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a
+whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's sons.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "The 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've slipped back. In my young days
+speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We
+didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all
+that! Or else I've got wiser.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "Here are you, young and
+ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before
+getting--explaining it all to you short and clear.
+
+"Sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than I
+see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of
+things. Sevendy!
+
+"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him
+long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control.
+I've seen many changes. Eh! I've worn the blue. And at last I've 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!"
+
+His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+
+Graham thought. "Let me see," he said, "if I have it right."
+
+He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "The Sleeper
+has been asleep--"
+
+"Changed," said the old man.
+
+"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands of
+Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of
+the world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have become
+masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--just as the old
+English Parliament used to be--"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison.
+You're not so--"
+
+"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the
+Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt
+would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the
+Council, after all these years."
+
+The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "It's strange," he
+said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time
+to-night."
+
+"Aye," said Graham, "it's strange."
+
+"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I've
+longed--" He laughed. "Even now," he said, "I could enjoy a little fun.
+Enjoy seeing things, anyhow." He mumbled a sentence Graham did not
+understand.
+
+"The Sleeper--when did he awake?" said Graham suddenly.
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Ostrog 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--where 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--everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even
+then! But you're joking! Surely you're pretending. It was to stop the
+shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that
+they turned off the electricity--and put this damned darkness upon us.
+Do you mean to say--?"
+
+"I had heard the Sleeper was rescued," said Graham. "But--to come back a
+minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?"
+
+"He won't let him go," said the old man.
+
+"And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard--"
+
+"So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn't a thousand
+things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell
+you? In a way I'm a sort of relation of Ostrog's. A sort of relation.
+Through my daughter-in-law."
+
+"I suppose--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose there's no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose
+he's certain to be a puppet--in Ostrog's hands or the Council's, as soon
+as the struggle is over."
+
+"In Ostrog's hands--certainly. Why shouldn't he be a puppet? Look at his
+position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he
+want to assert himself?"
+
+"What are these Pleasure Cities?" said Graham, abruptly.
+
+The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+Graham's words, he nudged him violently. "That's _too_ much," said he.
+"You're poking fun at an old man. I've been suspecting you know more than
+you pretend."
+
+"Perhaps I do," said Graham. "But no! why should I go on acting? No, I do
+not know what a Pleasure City is."
+
+The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+
+"What 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."
+
+"Come, come," said the old man, "if you had a glass of drink now, would
+you put it in your ear or your eye?"
+
+"I want you to tell me all these things."
+
+"He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun." A
+withered hand caressed Graham's arm for a moment. "Silk. Well, well! But,
+all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He'll
+have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He's a queer looking
+face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've got tickets and
+been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this
+substitute used to be. Yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's a queer world.
+Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll be sent to Capri.
+It's the best fun for a greener."
+
+His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my
+life I've been in London, hoping to get my chance."
+
+"But you don't know that the Sleeper died," said Graham, suddenly.
+
+The old man made him repeat his words.
+
+"Men don't live beyond ten dozen. It's not in the order of things," said
+the old man. "I'm not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me."
+
+Graham became angry with the old man's assurance. "Whether you are a fool
+or not," he said, "it happens you are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven't told you before, but I will
+tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything--not even about
+Pleasure Cities."
+
+Graham paused.
+
+"You don't know," said the old man. "How are you to know? It's very
+few men--"
+
+"I _am_ the Sleeper."
+
+He had to repeat it.
+
+There was a brief pause. "There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll
+excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this," said
+the old man.
+
+Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+
+"I 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--I who speak to you--who awakened again these four days since."
+
+"Four days since!--the Sleeper! But they've _got_ the Sleeper. They have
+him and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've 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't let him go about alone.
+Trust them. You're a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why
+you have been clipping your words so oddly, but--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+
+"As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you're telling
+that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What's
+your game? And besides, we've been talking of the Sleeper."
+
+Graham stood up. "Listen," he said. "I am the Sleeper."
+
+"You're an odd man," said the old man, "to sit here in the dark, talking
+clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But--"
+
+Graham's exasperation fell to laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried.
+"Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am
+I--in this damned twilight--I never knew a dream in twilight before--an
+anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that
+I am myself, and meanwhile--Ugh!"
+
+He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+was pursuing him. "Eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "I'm an old
+fool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness."
+
+Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+flashed into his mind.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you," said the old man coming
+near. "It's no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases
+you. 'Tis a foolish trick--"
+
+Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+
+For a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw
+him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OSTROG
+
+
+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.
+
+Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
+
+"No!" said Graham, starting.
+
+"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
+
+A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+shouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand of
+men." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, became
+indistinct.
+
+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 "nigger"
+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's 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.
+
+It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the
+"wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" 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--knowing no other means of transit--and 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's voice singing, "tralala tralala."
+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.
+
+The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+excitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not the
+Council!" "They are saying so in the Ways." 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. "Strike
+straight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and in
+a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of
+glass. Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 façade 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.
+
+"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
+
+Graham made a brief explanation.
+
+"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the wind-vane
+offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted--and
+things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them
+_there_--or he would have come to you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It is
+Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+everything was still again.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+and stood before it. Graham's 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.
+
+"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
+
+"I am Ostrog."
+
+"The Boss?"
+
+"So I am called."
+
+Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank you
+chiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
+
+"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog. "Or sent to sleep
+again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret--the
+secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?"
+
+Graham told him briefly.
+
+Ostrog listened in silence.
+
+He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tell
+me you had come?"
+
+"How can I guess?"
+
+"Preparing your double."
+
+"My double?"
+
+"A 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--something of your
+position?"
+
+"Very little," said Graham.
+
+"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned.
+"You are absolute owner," he said, "of 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--"
+
+"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
+
+"I wondered."
+
+"I came upon a garrulous old man."
+
+"I see.... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, of
+course, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just
+as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the
+ruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the
+rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+old quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the 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--when your waking came.
+Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more
+opportunely." He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for
+your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you
+and appealing to you, and--Flash!"
+
+He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+that he understood.
+
+"The Council muddled--quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide
+what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
+
+"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
+
+"We 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."
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"That 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--not half of them
+could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed or
+killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
+
+"Half 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--the 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--So!"
+
+"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearly
+understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where
+is the Council? Where is the fight?"
+
+Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for
+an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow. "Those
+fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of
+London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and
+public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have
+disappeared."
+
+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--it 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.
+
+"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge
+crept into view and gathered Graham's 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.
+
+"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And the
+fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the
+buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It
+shattered half the brittle glass in the city."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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'état_. Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
+
+"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
+
+"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"
+
+"You are Master of the World."
+
+"But that white flag--"
+
+"That is the flag of the Council--the 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."
+
+"But--help. Is this city the world?"
+
+"Practically 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."
+
+"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting
+with them?"
+
+"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with
+us. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would
+not stir against us. We _had_ 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--an 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--for some did--we
+kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council
+House. If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's 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's way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive
+prospect. There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "But these things I must explain more
+fully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by the
+moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the 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--thousands 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--"
+
+"But surely--I can't go ..."
+
+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. "There are
+kineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "As you bow to the people here--all
+over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened
+halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--not like this.
+And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.
+
+"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "used 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--so that even the furtherest man in the
+remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
+
+Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "What is
+the population of London?" he said.
+
+"Eight and twaindy myriads."
+
+"Eight and what?"
+
+"More than thirty-three millions."
+
+These figures went beyond Graham's imagination.
+
+"You will be expected to say something," said Ostrog. "Not what you used
+to call a Speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, six
+or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakened
+and my heart is with you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
+
+"What was that?" asked Graham.
+
+"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. But
+first we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do you mind?
+And then they will disperse to their homes."
+
+Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+Ostrog's 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's arm and pointed
+to the mirror.
+
+"Even as we turned away," he said.
+
+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.
+
+"Do you mean--?" he began.
+
+"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
+
+"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks
+up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+
+The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+
+"They are clamorous," he said.
+
+Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
+
+"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. For
+to-day at least their wishes must be law."
+
+Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+
+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 "Word" 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's rule.
+
+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's
+eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+of it in the oval mirror.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxious
+to see you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "To
+hell with the Council!" 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--and this as well?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest
+of the world hung in suspense.
+
+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' time a
+representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in
+the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's 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's-eye view of the city from the crow's 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.
+
+Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's 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--minute they looked
+from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the
+specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+below. St. Paul's 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.
+
+And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for
+the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines--the 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--an 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--as 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's estate, and the
+place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church--the 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--simply 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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture. And when he
+glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the
+Continent, it failed him altogether.
+
+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
+"Pidgin" 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--German, 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 "Pidgin" 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.
+
+And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+"black belt" 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....
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "amorist," wore his hair in two becoming plaits _à
+la_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he
+saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the
+attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich
+person's education. The Master's 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.
+
+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's, 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's vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily.
+
+"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.
+
+"No--the other, I mean."
+
+"Poet Laureate."
+
+"You still--?"
+
+"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one of the
+Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful
+club--and they keep up the tradition of these things."
+
+"Asano told me there was a King."
+
+"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood, I
+suppose; but really--"
+
+"Too much?"
+
+"Far too much."
+
+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.
+
+His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with
+the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of
+loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's 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 "aerial dog"--he
+used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't 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.
+
+"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham.
+
+"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He
+has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It
+was oddly reminiscent.
+
+"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly he
+was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him."
+
+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_ of a Victorian pattern,
+and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.
+Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and
+asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+seemed quietly amused at the Master's 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. "We have conquered Cram," he said,
+"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the
+world. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.
+
+"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does not
+attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."
+
+He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. "There
+is a certain type of girl, for example," said the Surveyor-General,
+dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for
+severe studies--when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for
+them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch,
+"nearly 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."
+
+"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you
+control them?"
+
+The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." 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's words. "We try and make the elementary
+schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so
+soon. Just a few simple principles--obedience--industry."
+
+"You teach them very little?"
+
+"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.
+Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers get
+the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic
+dreams--anarchy even! Agitators _will_ get to work among them. I take
+it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against
+popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
+
+"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things
+I want to know."
+
+Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the
+conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.
+
+The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
+said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
+of these ladies?"
+
+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 "dear old days," 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.
+
+"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
+days. And to you--they 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!"
+
+"Into this," said Graham.
+
+"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."
+
+"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."
+
+She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+encouragingly. "No?"
+
+"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--We
+thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I
+see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on my
+own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this
+new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to
+understand how little I know."
+
+"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark about
+them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"
+
+"Men in hats and feathers?"
+
+"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"
+
+"That? He's 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!"
+
+"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What a
+wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"
+
+"He 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_
+something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.
+
+"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"
+
+"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about
+themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of
+them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn't it? But I think
+Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."
+
+"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"
+
+"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are in
+his hands." She smiled.
+
+Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was
+expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he
+said. "Who are your great painters?"
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I
+thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You 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't
+any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."
+
+"But what did you think I meant?"
+
+She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And here," and
+she indicated her eyelid.
+
+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. "I see," 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. "Who is that
+talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+
+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;--the 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--hitherto there had
+been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither 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?"
+
+"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the
+verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"
+apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+
+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.
+
+Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+
+Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the 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.
+
+Ah! Now he remembered!
+
+He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_
+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.
+
+Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of
+this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once
+it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+
+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.
+
+The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care to know that girl,
+Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a niece of Ostrog's. She
+knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons
+alive. I am sure you will like her."
+
+In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed
+lady had fluttered away.
+
+"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that little room.
+When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before
+I walked across the Hall."
+
+Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face
+was steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with a
+sudden effort. "All those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless
+people did die for you that night."
+
+Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard
+her words.
+
+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. "Sire," she said
+quickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very
+unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget the
+people, who faced death--death that you might live."
+
+"I know nothing--" began Graham.
+
+"I cannot tell you now."
+
+Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.
+
+"You find the new world amusing, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smiling
+deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one
+comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatly
+changed."
+
+"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; even
+now an aeroplane awaits you."
+
+The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MONOPLANE
+
+
+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's 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--the starting
+carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly
+inclined rails to the end of the fabric.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which 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--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into
+the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,
+throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and
+saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a
+little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he
+recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He
+stared over the aeronaut's 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--beat; suppose some
+trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! 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.
+
+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's crow's 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 façade.
+
+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.
+
+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--innumerable minute oblongs
+of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--sunlit and
+pleasant--the 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.
+
+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 "trouble in the
+under-ways," 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. "What?" said
+Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled
+the aeronaut, pointing.
+
+They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
+and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
+monoplane's 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.
+
+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.
+
+They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's
+enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+
+"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of
+the air over the wind-screen.
+
+"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more
+of this machine."
+
+"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
+
+"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
+
+"I'm coming to you," 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.
+
+"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do
+when you move that engine forward?"
+
+The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
+
+"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
+
+"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of
+this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
+
+The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's
+face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
+
+"Sire, there are rules--"
+
+"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
+
+The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.
+But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a
+chance. They come as passengers--"
+
+"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these
+points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
+
+Graham waved the penalties aside.
+
+"Then if you will watch me--"
+
+"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its
+nose again for an ascent. "That's 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--to 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--. In my past it was my dream to fly.
+Now--keep your balance."
+
+"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your
+hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we
+turn her nose down to the glide?"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will protect me?"
+
+"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
+
+And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial
+navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with
+a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and
+well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
+
+"Back, Sire! Back!"
+
+"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this
+is living!"
+
+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.
+
+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. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
+
+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, "That," and he indicated the white thing still
+fluttering down, "was a swan."
+
+"I never saw it," said Graham.
+
+The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+forehead.
+
+They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THREE DAYS
+
+
+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. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I 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."
+
+"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
+Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
+may seem novel."
+
+"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
+that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
+one's learning."
+
+"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to
+occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
+
+Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for
+a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things
+going on?"
+
+Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,"
+he said. "Everything 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's hands."
+
+"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it,
+forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it
+the very first thing to-morrow again...."
+
+"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
+Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I 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't think that after you have dined you might
+prefer--?" He paused.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
+Capri theatre."
+
+"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's
+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--"
+
+"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
+
+"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know.
+I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your
+machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
+
+"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want
+is yours."
+
+Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+through the city streets to Graham's 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's answers to the endless questions Graham's 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.
+
+Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+Graham's 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 bayadère. "We were
+savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone
+age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
+
+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 "calculating boys," 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--a 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
+say, "I 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."
+
+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; "a little
+trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" 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's nest slumbered in his mind.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+
+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.
+
+He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you," he
+said. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tell
+me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?"
+
+She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"You said the people were unhappy?"
+
+For a moment she was silent still.
+
+"It must have seemed strange to you," she said abruptly.
+
+"It did. And yet--"
+
+"It was an impulse."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+"You forget," she said, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people--"
+
+"Do you mean--?"
+
+"You forget the people."
+
+He looked interrogative.
+
+"Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are.
+You do not know the things that are happening."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"Not clearly, perhaps. But--tell me."
+
+She turned to him with sudden resolution. "It is so hard to explain. I
+have meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready with
+words. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--your
+awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and 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."
+
+"Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine how
+little I know of it."
+
+"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"
+
+"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I have
+heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog,
+the Boss--"
+
+He paused.
+
+She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny.
+"Well?"
+
+He smiled. "To take the responsibility."
+
+"That is what we have begun to fear." For a moment she said no more.
+"No," she said slowly. "_You_ will take the responsibility. You will take
+the responsibility. The people look to you."
+
+She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--in
+every generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake--_prayed_."
+
+Graham moved to speak and did not.
+
+She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you know
+that you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King who
+would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?"
+
+"I suppose the imagination of the people--"
+
+"Have you not heard our proverb, 'When the Sleeper wakes'? While you lay
+insensible and motionless there--thousands 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."
+
+She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted
+wall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to
+look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the
+patience of God."
+
+"That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how you
+seemed to us."
+
+She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In the
+city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what
+you will do, full of strange incredible expectations."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Ostrog--no one--can take that responsibility."
+
+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.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that 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--do 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?"
+
+"I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know
+how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is it
+real, or is it only a great delusion?"
+
+"It is real," she said; "if you dare."
+
+"After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion
+in the minds of men."
+
+"If you dare!" she said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--they
+will obey."
+
+"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+these others--the 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--"
+
+He stopped blankly.
+
+"I am still hardly more than a girl," she said. "But 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--and robbed
+life of--everything worth having."
+
+She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the
+days of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for my
+life--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no better
+than the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is 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--for 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--they know they suffer. These
+countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You owe
+your life to them."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, slowly. "Yes. I owe my life to them."
+
+"You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the cities
+was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a 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--there was nobility! Common men led lives of
+love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you come
+from that time."
+
+"It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"
+
+"Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,
+slavery."
+
+"Slavery!" he said.
+
+"Slavery."
+
+"You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."
+
+"Worse. 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?"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+"They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour
+Department you own."
+
+"The Labour Department! In some way--that 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--?"
+
+"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you.
+Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. This
+Labour Department has grown imperceptibly."
+
+"What _is_ this Labour Department?" asked Graham.
+
+"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"
+
+"There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."
+
+"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
+now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
+something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
+organisation called the Salvation Army--that 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."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Nowadays 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--or seek
+some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for 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--that is the first
+condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
+shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
+visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved
+in your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people in
+blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Department
+trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
+supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they 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--enough 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--brought 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's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--the
+children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
+two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the
+blue canvas. And so it is the Department works."
+
+"And none are destitute in the city?"
+
+"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished
+destitution. It is engraved upon the Department's checks."
+
+"If they will not work?"
+
+"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+There are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a
+man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+system in the Department's 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--dark and miserable--out of sight
+below. There are prisons now for many things."
+
+"And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"
+
+"More 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's 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."
+
+For a space Graham sat downcast.
+
+"But there has been a revolution," he said. "All these things will be
+changed. Ostrog--"
+
+"That 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--you who come from a happier age--it is to
+you the people look. To you."
+
+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.
+
+"But what am I to do?" he said with his eyes upon her.
+
+"Rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone.
+"Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of
+men. For you might rule it--you could rule it.
+
+"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It
+wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Even
+the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.
+
+"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will
+not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has
+awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."
+
+His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+considerations.
+
+"They only want their leader," she said.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"You could do what you would;--the world is yours."
+
+He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. "The old dreams, and
+the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one
+man--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.
+
+"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of
+their hearts."
+
+He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "I have not your faith," he
+said, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let
+me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but
+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--.... One thing I
+promise you. This Labour slavery shall end."
+
+"And you will rule?"
+
+"Yes. Provided--. There is one thing."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That you will help me."
+
+"_I_--a girl!"
+
+"Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?"
+
+She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "Need you ask whether I
+will help you?" she said.
+
+There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+hour. Graham rose.
+
+"Even now," he said, "Ostrog will be waiting." He hesitated, facing her.
+"When I have asked him certain questions--. 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--?"
+
+"I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again."
+
+They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+
+Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day's
+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. "After all these years," said Ostrog, when
+Graham pressed enquiries; "the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." 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. "A
+little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division
+of our African agricultural police--the Consolidated African Companies
+have a very well drilled police--was 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."
+
+"Why should you expect trouble?" asked Graham abruptly.
+
+"There is a lot of discontent--social discontent."
+
+"The Labour Department?"
+
+"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is
+chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent
+supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. "We had to stir up their discontent,
+we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men
+equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that
+have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council.
+And now--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+people whom we have stirred up--remain 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--we have had to call in a little external help."
+
+"And here?"
+
+"There 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."
+
+Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke
+with restraint.
+
+"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said.
+
+"They are useful," said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash
+of ideas in their heads--such 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--only 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--that may happen. But it
+won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make
+revolutions are past."
+
+"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose they are." He mused. "This
+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."
+
+Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he
+said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Creçy, 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--it 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--a multiplex, silly one--the
+man in the Crowd."
+
+Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre
+preoccupations.
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "The 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--tempered. 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."
+
+"Yet," said Graham, "there is something resists, something you are
+holding down--something that stirs and presses."
+
+"You will see," said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these
+difficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroy
+myself--trust me."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham.
+
+Ostrog stared.
+
+"_Must_ the world go this way?" said Graham with his emotions at the
+speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes
+been vain?"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
+
+"I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
+
+"Well,--but you are the chief tyrant."
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that
+change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the
+suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
+
+"But aristocracy! those people I met--"
+
+"Oh! not _those_!" said Ostrog. "But 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!"
+
+"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
+"There is that other thing--the 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--"
+
+Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+than before.
+
+"Don't trouble about these things," he said. "Everything 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_ 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--they are already murmuring against those
+who have overthrown the Council."
+
+"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary,
+without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped."
+
+"And 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--what 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--it's a fine duty too!--is 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."
+
+Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I can imagine
+how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You
+regret all the old forms of representative government--their 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,--had I not been busy. But you will
+learn better. The people are mad with envy--they 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." He
+smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You 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--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is
+impossible--that 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' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured.
+The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let
+them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will
+arise--other masters. The end will be the same."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham doggedly.
+
+For a moment he stood downcast.
+
+"But I must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a
+tone of confident mastery. "Only 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--and 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--the labour people
+more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"
+
+"You get that from our realistic novelists," suggested Ostrog, suddenly
+preoccupied.
+
+"I want reality," said Graham.
+
+"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought. "On the whole--"
+
+"I did not expect--"
+
+"I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the
+ways of the city and see the common people."
+
+Suddenly he came to some conclusion. "You would need to go disguised," he
+said. "The 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--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think the thing over, it
+seems to me not altogether--. 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."
+
+"You will not want to consult me in any matter?" asked Graham suddenly,
+struck by an odd suspicion.
+
+"Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any
+rate," said Ostrog, smiling. "Even if we differ--"
+
+Graham glanced at him sharply.
+
+"There is no fighting likely to happen soon?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't 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--"
+
+Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "I am not
+bringing negroes to London," he said slowly. "But if--"
+
+"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens," said
+Graham. "In that matter I am quite decided."
+
+Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_.
+They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "No
+disarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+letters and with variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No
+disarming." "No disarming." 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. "They all ought to be at work," said
+Asano. "They have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
+
+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's harvest of the first revolt.
+
+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.
+
+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--and his attention was vividly
+arrested by the façade of one of the Christian sects.
+
+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 "Salvation on
+the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker."
+"The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What
+Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a
+Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the
+Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk
+Blessings for Busy Business Men."
+
+"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream of
+mercantile piety towered above them.
+
+"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly
+for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+
+"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
+
+"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in the
+tone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I had
+forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people
+simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they
+used to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the
+countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
+
+"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white.
+"That is surely not the only--"
+
+"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn't
+_tell_ it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high
+class sects with quieter ways--costly 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--to you, I
+should say."
+
+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's signature, his first encounter with the curves and
+turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Home," 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"
+it vociferated. "He 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--all
+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."
+
+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 "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
+
+"Paris 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--don't 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!"
+
+The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+crowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this the
+Master's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
+
+"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
+
+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. "Yahaha, 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!" The nearer Babble Machine hooted
+stupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, and
+proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the
+horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the nearer
+Babble Machine.
+
+"But," began Graham.
+
+"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in an
+argument."
+
+"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
+
+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.
+
+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 "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt
+alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a
+man near him. "Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule?"
+
+Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he
+had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines
+pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is _this_
+the beginning of the Master's rule?
+
+Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely
+on the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was their
+trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure
+him that it was "all right."
+
+"But these outrages!"
+
+"You cannot have an omelette," said Asano, "without 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."
+
+"What! the Londoners?"
+
+"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order."
+
+"But burning women alive!"
+
+"A Commune!" said Asano. "They 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.
+
+"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--French
+speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
+
+"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--"
+
+"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
+
+Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+
+"I did not think," 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. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had
+them removed."
+
+Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
+
+"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after an interval.
+
+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's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of
+the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop,
+Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!--Hear a live paper yelp!" of
+its chief rival.
+
+Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _crèches_ 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's 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's manner that his identity was known, and
+proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place
+without reserve.
+
+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 _crèches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardous
+adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called
+Graham's 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.
+
+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
+_crèche_ company, the International Crèche Syndicate, lost not one-half
+per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But
+Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," he
+said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that
+they were not orphans.
+
+So soon as they had left the _crèche_ he began to speak of the horror the
+babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" he
+said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so
+unnatural--abominable almost."
+
+"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way of
+reply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it
+will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--except a
+few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women in London
+are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have
+one child--a 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."
+
+"Then do you mean that the population of the World--?"
+
+"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In
+spite of scientific discipline they are reckless--"
+
+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.
+
+"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile. "The 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."
+
+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.
+
+"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little
+ones you saw."
+
+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. "Look at them," said the little officer,
+"see how much they show of motherhood."
+
+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 "The Festival of the
+Awakening" was in progress.
+
+"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite
+apart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "These
+people are always ready for holidays."
+
+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.
+
+"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Workers--prosperous 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."
+
+"But--the women?"
+
+"The same. There's 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--there are a
+number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and
+enables them to enjoy themselves."
+
+"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl
+of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.
+"And these are--mothers."
+
+"Most of them."
+
+"The 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."
+
+In a little while he spoke again:
+
+"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way
+of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits
+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--all 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--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and
+serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a
+sort of worship--"
+
+He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
+
+"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
+
+Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.
+Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
+
+"Of 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's tribute to
+unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+police--and life is joyous."
+
+He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
+
+"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
+
+"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And
+in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
+
+"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the
+work cities."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Old people's 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."
+
+"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
+
+"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it
+well. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go
+off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary."
+
+"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause.
+"Yet 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--for
+well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+asleep two hundred years."
+
+For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+
+"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a wounded
+sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
+
+"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
+
+"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble. I
+am primitive--Paleolithic. _Their_ 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--men are dying in Paris to keep the
+world--that they may dance."
+
+Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," he
+said.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
+
+"Above and below--an intricate warren."
+
+"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
+
+"You 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."
+
+For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "I want
+to see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
+
+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.
+
+Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to
+it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "is
+something--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will not
+tell you. Come!"
+
+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--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which they
+went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost
+vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
+
+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's. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in the
+shadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.
+Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
+
+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. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,
+Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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 "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
+
+"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
+
+"You."
+
+"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
+
+"Didn't you have assurance?"
+
+Graham thought. "Insurance?"
+
+"Yes--Insurance. 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!"
+
+A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes
+on the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." 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.
+
+Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen 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."
+
+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 "X 5 pr. G."
+
+"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
+came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
+parasitic lunatics--"
+
+He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--even
+with a dialect of its own.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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_. 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.
+
+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 _cloisonné_ 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. "This is what I wanted to
+see," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid a
+start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+
+"She might have done better with herself than that," said Asano.
+
+Graham made some indignant comments.
+
+"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,"
+said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were
+nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."
+
+They continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonné_
+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.
+
+A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Stop that!" 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--the 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.
+
+And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What has happened now?" 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:
+"Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police."
+
+Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham's
+face, and told him the thing he already knew. "But how can they know?"
+asked Asano.
+
+Graham heard someone shouting. "Stop all work. Stop all work," and a
+swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down
+the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "This
+is Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." 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, "Ostrog the Knave!"
+
+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. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+heart began to beat fast and strong.
+
+"It has come," he said. "I might have known. The hour has come."
+
+He thought swiftly. "What am I to do?"
+
+"Go back to the Council House," said Asano.
+
+"Why should I not appeal--? The people are here."
+
+"You 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--with them."
+
+"Suppose this is only a rumour?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Asano.
+
+"Let us have the facts," said Graham.
+
+Asano shrugged his shoulders. "We had better get towards the Council
+House," he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may
+be impassable."
+
+Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+
+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.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Graham.
+
+"He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived
+here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices
+learnt. He said a girl."
+
+"A girl? Not--?"
+
+"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from the
+Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins."
+
+And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the
+street. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to
+his ward!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+
+As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "To your wards!
+To your wards!" 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.
+
+The cries of "To your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as
+they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+unintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse
+voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's 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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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. "Every man
+to his ward! Every man to his ward!" Here, by Asano's advice, Graham
+revealed his identity.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "To your wards! Every man to his ward!"
+
+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.
+
+"Where is Ostrog?" he demanded. "I must see Ostrog forthwith. He has
+disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands." 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.
+
+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.
+"Wards! Wards! Wards!" 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.
+
+"Ostrog," said Asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there." The
+little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham's face.
+
+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. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice
+the little party turned astonished.
+
+Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+
+Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What
+is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here--to keep the
+people down?"
+
+"It is none too soon," said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of hand
+more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated--"
+
+"Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?"
+
+"On the way. As it is, you have seen the people--outside?"
+
+"No wonder! But--after what was said. You have taken too much on
+yourself, Ostrog."
+
+Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+
+"These negroes must not come to London," said Graham. "I am Master and
+they shall not come."
+
+Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+attendants close behind him. "Why not?" asked Ostrog.
+
+"White men must be mastered by white men. Besides--"
+
+"The negroes are only an instrument."
+
+"But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master.
+And I tell you these negroes shall not come."
+
+"The people--"
+
+"I believe in the people."
+
+"Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past--an
+accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally--legally. But you
+are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master."
+
+He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think--I can guess
+something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn
+you. You dream of human equality--of some sort of socialistic order--you
+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."
+
+"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it--a sound like the sea. Not
+voices--but a voice. Do _you_ altogether understand?"
+
+"We taught them that," said Ostrog.
+
+"Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+negroes must not come."
+
+There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+
+"They will," he said.
+
+"I forbid it," said Graham.
+
+"They have started."
+
+"I will not have it."
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "Sorry as I am to follow the method of the
+Council--. For your own good--you must not side with--Disorder. And now
+that you are here--. It was kind of you to come here."
+
+Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's 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's cloak.
+
+He turned and struck at Lincoln's 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.
+
+He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg
+and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+
+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's 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's heaving throat.
+
+"You--are--a prisoner," panted Ostrog, exulting. "You--were rather a
+fool--to come back."
+
+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!
+
+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, "Save the Master!" "What are they doing to the Master?" "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was distracted, that
+Ostrog's 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's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the
+silk about his neck.
+
+But now men were coming towards them from the dais--men 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.
+
+He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not
+friends--that 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.
+
+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. "They can't
+come down," panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire. It's all right. We'll save
+him from them yet."
+
+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.
+
+The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+thousand throats were cheering.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Where has Ostrog gone?" he asked.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "The Master is with us! The Master! The Master!"
+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. "The Master
+is on our side!"
+
+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.
+
+"What has become of Ostrog?" 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 "Ostrog," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What are they doing? What are
+the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They
+will lift him--the monoplane will lift him! Ah!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tell
+the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"
+
+Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+enigmatical orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And then it rose.
+
+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.
+
+And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+upward into the wind-swept sky.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "For a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
+think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."
+
+While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+
+"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.
+
+"The people of the south-west wards are ready."
+
+"Ready!"
+
+He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+
+"I 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.
+
+"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
+the light grow brighter.
+
+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. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
+watching lights waned.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.
+
+She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+interrupt Graham's 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.
+
+"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
+very difficult."
+
+He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+
+"Men and women of the new age," he said; "you have arisen to do battle
+for the race!... There is no easy victory before us."
+
+He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of
+moving speech.
+
+"This night is a beginning," he said. "This 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I come out of the past to you," he said, "with the memory of an age
+that hoped. My age was an age of dreams--of 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?
+
+"Great 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--sorrow 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--. Is there a new faith?
+
+"Charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful
+things--effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself--as
+Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand.
+It does not matter if you seem to fail. You _know_--in the core of your
+hearts you _know_. There is no promise, there is no security--nothing to
+go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith--faith which is
+courage...."
+
+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....
+
+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. "Here and now," he cried, "I 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I knew," she whispered. "Oh! Father of the World--_Sire_! I knew you
+would say these things...."
+
+"I have said what I could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to
+her outstretched hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+
+The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+saying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it so
+soon," he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word to
+help them on their way."
+
+Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to
+his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That is good, that is good." He weighed a message. "Tell
+them;--well done South West."
+
+He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages," he
+explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we
+must prevent that."
+
+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.
+
+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. "Here I am doing nothing," he said.
+
+"It is impossible," protested the man in yellow. "It is a fight in a
+warren. Your place is here."
+
+He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+wait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where you
+are," he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence
+and decision."
+
+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--and 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's 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+
+Metallic voices were shouting "Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!"
+
+Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+dishevelled with excitement, "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people
+are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."
+
+She rose. "Victory?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! _What_?"
+
+"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is
+afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. _Ours_!--and we have
+taken the monoplane that lay thereon."
+
+A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+the Ward Leaders. "It is all over," he cried.
+
+"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been
+sighted at Boulogne!"
+
+"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+"Half an hour."
+
+"They still have three of the flying stages," said the old man.
+
+"Those guns?" cried Graham.
+
+"We cannot mount them--in half an hour."
+
+"Do you mean they are found?"
+
+"Too late," said the old man.
+
+"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "They have near a hundred
+aeroplanes in the first fleet."
+
+"Another hour?" asked Graham.
+
+"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found
+those guns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the
+roof spaces."
+
+"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
+
+"An hour--certainly."
+
+"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
+
+"_Is_ it too late?" said Graham. "Even now--. An hour!"
+
+He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but
+his face was white. "There is are chance. You said there was a
+monoplane--?"
+
+"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
+
+"Smashed?"
+
+"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."
+
+Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+pause. "_We_ have no aeronauts?"
+
+"None."
+
+He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Go to this flying stage--to this machine."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me
+were not altogether wasted."
+
+He turned to the old man in yellow. "Tell them to put it upon the
+guides."
+
+The man in yellow hesitated.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
+
+"This monoplane--it is a chance--."
+
+"You don't mean--?"
+
+"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. A big
+aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"
+
+"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send
+them my message--to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I
+see now why I am here!"
+
+The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and
+hurried out.
+
+Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But, Sire!--How
+can one fight? You will be killed."
+
+"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let some one else attempt it--."
+
+"You will be killed," she repeated.
+
+"I've said my word. Do you not see? It may save--London!"
+
+He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+
+They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+towering heroisms.
+
+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.
+
+"To wake," she cried, "for this!"
+
+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.
+
+He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said "Onward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+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. "He's down
+there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch. Yes. Between
+those bars."
+
+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.
+
+"I can't see him _now_," said the second man in a tone of provocation.
+
+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.
+
+"What's going on now?" 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.
+
+"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up and
+spoil shots. What are they after?"
+
+"Ssh!--they're shouting something."
+
+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. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's what
+they're after."
+
+He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his
+friend. "We've got no aeronauts."
+
+"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at the
+struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. "Mind these,
+mate," 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.
+
+"He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+that man is King," 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. "The Master is coming," shouted voices, "the Master is
+coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to
+thrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "The
+Sleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the voices.
+
+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....
+
+For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham's 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 "Clear for the start, you fools!" The bell that
+cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+
+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's 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--presently--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--throb, 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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face into
+an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath
+the nearer wing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+"Where was the other?" he thought. "They too--." 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....
+
+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--for Wimbledon Park was
+useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a
+furnace--were 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Massa Boss" 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.
+
+Suddenly Graham hit them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled
+by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the
+gust of its close passage.
+
+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.
+
+"_Two_!" 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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+He drew an immense breath. "They win," he shouted to the empty air; "the
+people win!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and
+went circling up. He saw Ostrog's 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--dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of
+Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing
+resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to 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.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The
+eastward stage, the one on Shooter's 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.
+
+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.
+
+He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the
+air was blowing past him and _upward_. 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.
+
+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's calculated treachery.
+
+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....
+
+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_ be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real.
+She was real. He would wake and meet her.
+
+Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth
+was very near.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12163-8.txt or 12163-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/1/6/12163/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/old/12163-8.zip b/old/old/12163-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03ecbcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/12163-8.zip
diff --git a/old/old/12163.txt b/old/old/12163.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d5c7f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/12163.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9157 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sleeper Awakes
+       A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes
+
+Author: H.G. Wells
+
+Release Date: April 26, 2004 [EBook #12163]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+              A Revised Edition of "When the Sleeper Wakes"
+
+                               H.G. WELLS
+
+                                  1899
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION
+
+_When the Sleeper Wakes_, whose title I have now altered to _The Sleeper
+Awakes_, was first published as a book in 1899 after a serial appearance
+in the _Graphic_ and one or two American and colonial periodicals. It is
+one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I have
+taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of
+excisions and alterations. Like most of my earlier work, it was written
+under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the
+writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story.
+Except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an almost
+unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the writing
+of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic that
+instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely
+interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. I was at
+that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. In addition to
+various necessary journalistic tasks, I had in hand another book, _Love
+and Mr. Lewisham_, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my
+affections than this present story. My circumstances demanded that one or
+other should be finished before I took any rest, and so I wound up the
+Sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to
+revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. But
+fortune was against me. I came back to England from Italy only to fall
+dangerously ill, and I still remember the impotent rage and strain of my
+attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of Mr. Lewisham, with my
+temperature at a hundred and two. I couldn't endure the thought of
+leaving that book a fragment. I did afterwards contrive to save it from
+the consequences of that febrile spurt--_Love and Mr. Lewisham_ is indeed
+one of my most carefully balanced books--but the Sleeper escaped me.
+
+It is twelve years now since the Sleeper was written, and that young man
+of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic
+reconstruction of his work. I have played now merely the part of an
+editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome
+passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy
+sluggish _driven_ pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at the
+end. Except for that, I have done no more than hack here and there at
+clumsy phrases and repetitions. The worst thing in the earlier version,
+and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the
+relations of Helen Wotton and Graham. Haste in art is almost always
+vulgarisation, and I slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what
+the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of Helen. There was
+even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the flying-machine
+to fight, Graham might have given in to Ostrog, and married Helen. I have
+now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities. Not the
+slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have arisen
+between these two. They loved and kissed one another, but as a girl and
+her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. I have found it
+possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that
+objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience
+on the score of this ungainly lapse. I have also, with a few strokes of
+the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that
+the People beat Ostrog. My Graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no
+certainty of either victory or defeat.
+
+Who will win--Ostrog or the People? A thousand years hence that will
+still be just the open question we leave to-day.
+
+H.G. WELLS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+       I. INSOMNIA
+
+      II. THE TRANCE
+
+     III. THE AWAKENING
+
+      IV. THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+       V. THE MOVING WAYS
+
+      VI. THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+     VII. IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+    VIII. THE ROOF SPACES
+
+      IX. THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+       X. THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+      XI. THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+     XII. OSTROG
+
+    XIII. THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+     XIV. FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+      XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+     XVI. THE MONOPLANE
+
+    XVII. THREE DAYS
+
+   XVIII. GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+     XIX. OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+      XX. IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+     XXI. THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+    XXII. THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+   XXIII. GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+    XXIV. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+     XXV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+
+
+THE SLEEPER AWAKES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INSOMNIA
+
+
+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.
+
+He glanced round at Isbister's 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.
+
+"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a
+colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
+
+Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
+conveyed his helpful impulse.
+
+"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
+Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
+have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."
+
+"Had advice?"
+
+"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They are
+all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare not
+take ... sufficiently powerful drugs."
+
+"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
+
+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. "I've never suffered from
+sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
+those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"
+
+"I dare make no experiments."
+
+He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
+men were silent.
+
+"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
+interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.
+
+"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
+day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
+mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
+something--"
+
+He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
+hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.
+
+"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
+have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
+as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
+find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
+myself to do.
+
+"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
+dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
+don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
+exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
+in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
+complacencies--or 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's
+day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
+those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
+rest--black coffee, cocaine--"
+
+"I see," said Isbister.
+
+"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.
+
+"And this is the price?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+For a little while the two remained without speaking.
+
+"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a 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--" He paused. "Towards
+the gulf."
+
+"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
+discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."
+
+"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
+drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
+of this sweet world of sanity--down--"
+
+"But," expostulated Isbister.
+
+The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his
+voice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at 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."
+
+"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the man's hysterical
+gust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that."
+
+"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him.
+
+Isbister looked at him. "It's not a cert, you know," he remarked.
+"There's a cliff like that at Lulworth Cove--as high, anyhow--and a
+little girl fell from top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."
+
+"But those rocks there?"
+
+"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones
+grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"
+
+Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said Isbister with a sense
+of devil-may-careish brilliance. "But a suicide over that cliff (or any
+cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed. "It's
+so damned amateurish."
+
+"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other
+thing. No man can keep sane if night after night--"
+
+"Have you been walking along this coast alone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll 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--eh?"
+
+Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully.
+
+"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of
+gesture. "Look 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--"
+
+He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and
+bloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my
+misery. The whole world ... is the garment of my misery."
+
+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.
+
+He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get a
+night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Take
+my word for it."
+
+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.
+
+His hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only
+in answer to Isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. But he
+made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair.
+
+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. "What can be happening?" he
+asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can be happening? Spin, spin,
+spin, spin. It goes round and round, round and round for evermore."
+
+He stood with his hand circling.
+
+"It's all right, old chap," said Isbister with the air of an old friend.
+"Don't worry yourself. Trust to me,"
+
+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.
+
+"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of
+expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
+oppression, a weight. No--not 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't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on
+it--steadily enough to tell you."
+
+He stopped feebly.
+
+"Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
+any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me,
+you know."
+
+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. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can
+show you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care?"
+
+The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.
+
+Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
+movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said
+Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol.
+If you take alcohol?"
+
+The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer aware of
+his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden path,
+and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--I don't drink. It
+goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"
+
+He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
+who sees nothing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
+unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with ideas of a
+furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but
+passing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe." He repeated this after
+momentary silence.
+
+The seated man made no answer. Isbister stopped, match in hand,
+regarding him.
+
+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. "Perhaps," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"I wonder," ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of
+complacency. "At any rate one must give him a chance." He struck a match
+in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind; he started, and leaning over the
+table, listened. An unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became
+conviction. Astonishment seized him and became--dread!
+
+No sound of breathing came from the seated figure!
+
+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.
+
+Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He started
+violently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces of white.
+
+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. "Are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping, and again, "Are
+you asleep?"
+
+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.
+
+"Please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "There is
+something wrong with my friend."
+
+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. "I must fetch a doctor," he said. "It is either death or a fit. Is
+there a doctor in the village? Where is a doctor to be found?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TRANCE
+
+
+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.
+
+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--neither 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?
+
+"It seems only yesterday," said Isbister. "I remember it all as though it
+happened yesterday--clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The thing gave me a shock," said Isbister. "I 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."
+
+"Have you never seen him since that time?" asked Warming.
+
+"Often wanted to come," said Isbister; "but business nowadays is too
+serious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most of
+the time."
+
+"If I remember rightly," said Warming, "you were an artist?"
+
+"Was. And then I became a married man. I saw it was all up with black and
+white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and I jumped on to process.
+Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people."
+
+"Good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see
+them there."
+
+"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed Isbister with
+satisfaction. "The 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't expect that some day my pigments would
+glorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round again
+to the Lizard. Luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking."
+
+Warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "I just missed seeing
+you, if I recollect aright."
+
+"You came back by the trap that took me to Camelford railway station. It
+was close on the Jubilee, Victoria's Jubilee, because I remember the
+seats and flags in Westminster, and the row with the cabman at Chelsea."
+
+"The Diamond Jubilee, it was," said Warming; "the second one."
+
+"Ah, yes! At the proper Jubilee--the Fifty Year affair--I was down at
+Wookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! My
+landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer
+when he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. And
+the Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G.P. before
+him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights
+and so forth."
+
+"Do you mean--he was stiff and hard?"
+
+"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him on his
+head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of course
+this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is
+quite different. And the little doctor--what was his name?"
+
+"Smithers?"
+
+"Smithers it was--was 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--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly little
+things, not dynamos--"
+
+"Coils."
+
+"Yes. 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_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made
+me dream."
+
+Pause.
+
+"It's a strange state," said Warming.
+
+"It's a sort of complete absence," said Isbister. "Here's the body,
+empty. Not dead a bit, and yet not alive. It's like a seat vacant and
+marked 'engaged.' No feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not
+a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. In
+a sense it's 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--"
+
+"I know," said Warming, with a flash of pain in his expression.
+
+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--but 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.
+
+"And while he has been lying here," said Isbister, with the zest of a
+life freely spent, "I have changed my plans in life; married, raised a
+family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an
+American citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There's 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's curious to think of."
+
+Warming turned. "And 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_ a young man nevertheless."
+
+"And there's been the War," said Isbister.
+
+"From beginning to end."
+
+"And these Martians."
+
+"I've understood," said Isbister after a pause, "that he had some
+moderate property of his own?"
+
+"That is so," said Warming. He coughed primly. "As it happens--I have
+charge of it."
+
+"Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here is
+not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"
+
+"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when
+he slept."
+
+"As a business man," said Isbister, "that 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--"
+
+"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said Warming. "He was
+not a far-sighted man. In fact--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"We 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--. 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?"
+
+"It will be a pity to lose his surprise. There's been a lot of change
+these twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real."
+
+"There has been a lot of change certainly," said Warming. "And, among
+other changes, I have changed. I am an old man."
+
+Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn't
+have thought it."
+
+"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his
+bankers--sent on to me."
+
+"I got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said Isbister.
+
+"Well, the addition is not difficult," said Warming.
+
+There was another pause, and then Isbister gave way to an unavoidable
+curiosity. "He may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of
+hesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fall
+some day into the hands of--someone else, you know."
+
+"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems most
+constantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, there
+are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. It is a grotesque and
+unprecedented position."
+
+"Rather," said Isbister.
+
+"It seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically
+undying guardian. If he really is going on living--as 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."
+
+"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the
+British Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds a bit
+odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd."
+
+"The difficulty is to induce them to take him."
+
+"Red tape, I suppose?"
+
+"Partly."
+
+Pause. "It's a curious business, certainly," said Isbister. "And compound
+interest has a way of mounting up."
+
+"It has," said Warming. "And now the gold supplies are running short
+there is a tendency towards ... appreciation."
+
+"I've felt that," said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it better
+for _him_."
+
+"_If_ he wakes."
+
+"If he wakes," echoed Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-in look of his
+nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?"
+
+Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt if he will wake," he
+said at last.
+
+"I never properly understood," said Isbister, "what it was brought this
+on. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious."
+
+"He 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--a Socialist--or typical
+Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school.
+Energetic--flighty--undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this
+for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote--a 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."
+
+"I'd give anything to be there," said Isbister, "just to hear what he
+would say to it all."
+
+"So would I," said Warming. "Aye! so would I," with an old man's sudden
+turn to self pity. "But I shall never see him wake."
+
+He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "He will never awake,"
+he said at last. He sighed. "He will never awake again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Warming was wrong in that. An awakening came.
+
+What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity--the 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's 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.
+
+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--he could not tell what name--that 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....
+
+Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some
+unfamiliar thing.
+
+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.
+
+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--but 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....
+
+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--and amazed.
+
+He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his
+mind was quite clear--evidently 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--and he saw
+with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--a
+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--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of
+the armchairs.
+
+When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
+bottle and drank--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+What was this place?--this 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. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
+own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
+shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "When
+the Sleeper wakes--_When_!"
+
+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.
+
+Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
+collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
+
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
+"Where am I?"
+
+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.
+
+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's ears.
+"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell asleep.
+It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a trance."
+
+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.
+
+"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's 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.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"You 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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "E. Warming, 27, Chancery Lane?"
+
+They were all assiduous to hear. But he had to repeat it. "What an odd
+_blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "Wire, sir?" said
+the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled.
+
+"He means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a
+pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gave a
+cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everything shall
+be done, sir," he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would be difficult
+to--_wire_ to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don't trouble
+about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the
+important thing is to get over that, sir." (Graham concluded the word was
+sir, but this man pronounced it "_Sire_.")
+
+"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet.
+
+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't 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.
+
+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.
+
+They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty
+taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew.
+
+"That--that makes me feel better," 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.
+
+He pressed his throat and tried a third time. "How long?" he asked in a
+level voice. "How long have I been asleep?"
+
+"Some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly
+at the others.
+
+"How long?"
+
+"A very long time."
+
+"Yes--yes," said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--some
+years? Many years? There was something--I forget what. I feel--confused.
+But you--" He sobbed. "You need not fence with me. How long--?"
+
+He stopped, breathing irregularly. He squeezed his eyes with his knuckles
+and sat waiting for an answer.
+
+They spoke in undertones.
+
+"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"
+
+"Very much more than that."
+
+"More!"
+
+"More."
+
+He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles
+of his face. He looked his question.
+
+"Many years," said the man with the red beard.
+
+Graham struggled into a sitting position. He wiped a rheumy tear from
+his face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyes
+tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing
+to another.
+
+"How many years?" he asked.
+
+"You must be prepared to be surprised."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"More than a gross of years."
+
+He was irritated at the strange word. "More than a _what_?"
+
+Two of them spoke together. Some quick remarks that were made about
+"decimal" he did not catch.
+
+"How long did you say?" asked Graham. "How long? Don't look like
+that. Tell me."
+
+Among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "More than a
+couple of centuries."
+
+"_What_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Who
+says--? What was that? A couple of _centuries_!"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the red beard. "Two hundred years."
+
+Graham repeated the words. He had been prepared to hear of a vast repose,
+and yet these concrete centuries defeated him.
+
+"Two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf
+opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "Oh, but--!"
+
+They said nothing.
+
+"You--did you say--?"
+
+"Two hundred years. Two centuries of years," said the man with the
+red beard.
+
+There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had
+heard was indeed true.
+
+"But it can't be," he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances--trances
+don't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me!
+Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast of
+Cornwall--?"
+
+His voice failed him.
+
+The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong in history,
+sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others.
+
+"That was it, sir," said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy of
+Cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. There
+is a house there still. I have been there."
+
+"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That was
+it--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don't
+exactly remember. I don't exactly remember."
+
+He pressed his brows and whispered, "More than _two hundred years_!"
+
+He began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was
+cold within him. "But if it _is_ 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."
+
+They did not answer him.
+
+"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, Church and State. High
+and low, rich and poor, one with another ... Is there England still?"
+
+"That's a comfort! Is there London?"
+
+"This _is_ London, eh? And you are my assistant-custodian;
+assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh? Assistant-custodians too!"
+
+He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don't
+talk. Be quiet. Let me--"
+
+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.
+
+Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a
+little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimaced
+hysterically and covered his face again.
+
+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. "What 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?"
+
+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. "These others," he said in a voice of extreme
+irritation. "You had better go."
+
+"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
+
+"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
+
+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.
+
+For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
+proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---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.
+
+"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again
+and again. "You must not confuse his mind."
+
+His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper
+with an ambiguous expression.
+
+"Feel queer?" he asked.
+
+"Very."
+
+"The world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?"
+
+"I suppose I have to live in it, strange as it seems."
+
+"I suppose so, now."
+
+"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes?"
+
+"They--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man
+met his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said
+the thickset man.
+
+"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" asked Graham.
+
+"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a
+matter of fact."
+
+Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
+mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a
+mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
+changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.
+
+"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
+understand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed." He
+spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
+trying to decide in an emergency. "We 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."
+
+Graham rubbed his chin.
+
+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.
+
+Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
+time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
+Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
+
+The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
+
+"Wild!" he cried. "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
+
+There was perhaps an answer.
+
+"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But shout
+from the balcony."
+
+There was an inaudible reply.
+
+"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you."
+
+He came hurrying back to Graham. "You must have clothes at once," he
+said. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"
+
+He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In a
+moment he was back.
+
+"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. In a
+moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And then I can
+take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soon enough."
+
+"But those voices. They were shouting--?"
+
+"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. I
+don't know what it is. I know nothing."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture.
+"It 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?" he
+said to the tailor.
+
+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. "You will
+find the fashions altered, Sire," he said. He glanced from under his
+brows at the thickset man.
+
+He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant
+fabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a period
+essentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to the hemisphere
+in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out a little appliance
+the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and
+behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the
+dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white
+satin. "That is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said.
+
+The thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of Graham.
+
+"We have very little time," he said.
+
+"Trust me," said the tailor. "My machine follows. What do you
+think of this?"
+
+"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century.
+
+"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but
+this is our modern development. See here." The little figure repeated its
+evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass to the
+busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Is
+that--some sort of force--laid on?"
+
+"Yes," said the man with the flaxen beard.
+
+"Who is _that_?" He indicated the archway behind him.
+
+The man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in
+an undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire--it's
+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--if you don't mind, I will
+leave him to explain."
+
+"Odd!" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the
+new comer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man _glaring_ at me? Is
+he a mesmerist?"
+
+"Mesmerist! He is a capillotomist."
+
+"Capillotomist!"
+
+"Yes--one of the chief. His yearly fee is sixdoz lions."
+
+It sounded sheer nonsense. Graham snatched at the last phrase with an
+unsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They are
+our monetary units."
+
+"But what was that you said--sixdoz?"
+
+"Yes. Six dozen, Sire. Of course things, even these little things, have
+altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab
+system--tens, 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?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Graham. "But about this cap--what was it?"
+
+The man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"Here are your clothes!" 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. "You don't mean to say--!"
+
+"Just made," 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.
+
+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.
+
+"I must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass.
+
+"In a moment," said Howard.
+
+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.
+
+"A seat," said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man
+had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please," said Howard.
+
+Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the
+glint of steel.
+
+"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried
+politeness. "He is going to cut your hair."
+
+"Oh!" cried Graham enlightened. "But you called him--"
+
+"A capillotomist--precisely! He is one of the finest artists in
+the world."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. The
+capillotomist came forward, examined Graham's ears and surveyed him, felt
+the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for
+Howard's audible impatience. Forthwith with rapid movements and a
+succession of deftly handled implements he shaved Graham's 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.
+
+Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in the
+corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Work is
+being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE MOVING WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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
+facade 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's 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's 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's 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.
+
+"You must not stop here," shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You must
+come away at once."
+
+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's boy had worn. He became aware of cries of "The Sleeper. What has
+happened to the Sleeper?" 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.
+
+"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
+never the Sleeper," 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.
+
+He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
+And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
+
+He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" 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: "The
+Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and
+cries of "Stop the Ways!" They were also crying another name strange to
+Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower platforms were soon thick
+with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves
+opposite to him.
+
+"Stop the Ways," 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: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It is indeed the
+Sleeper," they testified.
+
+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.
+
+He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They will
+stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."
+
+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.
+
+"Get him away," cried Howard.
+
+"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"
+
+"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face
+and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face, and
+he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,
+compulsion. Someone gripped his arm....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HALL OF THE ATLAS
+
+
+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.
+"I don't understand," he said. "What was the trouble? My mind is in a
+whirl. Why were they shouting? What is the danger?"
+
+"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.
+"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking
+just now, has a sort of connexion--"
+
+He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He
+stopped abruptly.
+
+"I don't understand," said Graham.
+
+"It will be clearer later," said Howard.
+
+He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the
+lift slow.
+
+"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about a
+little," said Graham puzzled. "It will be--it 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."
+
+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.
+
+"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What
+place is it?"
+
+"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and
+so forth."
+
+"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are you
+governed? Have you still a police?"
+
+"Several," said Howard.
+
+"Several?"
+
+"About fourteen."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex
+to you. To tell you the truth, I don't understand it myself very
+clearly. Nobody does. You will, perhaps--bye and bye. We have to go to
+the Council."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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's guardian.
+That was odd.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Go
+on," cried Howard, laying hands on him.
+
+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.
+
+"I want to see more of that," cried Graham, resisting.
+
+"No, no," cried Howard, still gripping his arm. "This way. You must go
+this way." And the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce
+his orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "The Sleeper,"
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"You must remain here," murmured Howard, "for a few moments," and,
+without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.
+
+"But, _why_--?" began Graham.
+
+He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of
+the men in red. "You have to wait here, Sire," said the man in red.
+
+"_Why_?"
+
+"Orders, Sire."
+
+"Whose orders?"
+
+"Our orders, Sire."
+
+Graham looked his exasperation.
+
+"What place is this?" he said presently. "Who are those men?"
+
+"They are the lords of the Council, Sire."
+
+"What Council?"
+
+"_The_ Council."
+
+"Oh!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's 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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+Howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous
+chambers furnished in white and green. "What Council was that?" began
+Graham. "What were they discussing? What have they to do with me?" 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. "Ugh!" he grunted, a man relieved.
+
+Graham stood regarding him.
+
+"You must understand," began Howard abruptly, avoiding Graham's eyes,
+"that our social order is very complex. A half explanation, a bare
+unqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter of
+fact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, and
+the fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you--and certain
+other beginnings--have become very considerable. And in other ways that
+will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of
+significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the
+world's affairs."
+
+He stopped.
+
+"Yes?" said Graham.
+
+"We have grave social troubles."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to
+seclude you here."
+
+"Keep me prisoner!" exclaimed Graham.
+
+"Well--to ask you to keep in seclusion."
+
+Graham turned on him. "This is strange!" he said.
+
+"No harm will be done you."
+
+"No harm!"
+
+"But you must be kept here--"
+
+"While I learn my position, I presume."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"Very well then. Begin. Why _harm_?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It is too long a story, Sire."
+
+"All 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?"
+
+"All in good time, Sire," said Howard. "But not crudely, not crudely.
+This is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. Your
+awakening--no one expected your awakening. The Council is consulting."
+
+"What council?"
+
+"The Council you saw."
+
+Graham made a petulant movement. "This is not right," he said. "I should
+be told what is happening."
+
+"You must wait. Really you must wait."
+
+Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long to
+resume life," he said, "that I must wait a little longer."
+
+"That is better," said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I must
+leave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in the
+Council.... I am sorry."
+
+He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished.
+
+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's mysterious behaviour. There was an
+inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance
+perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity.
+What had he to do? And this room's secluded silence was eloquent of
+imprisonment!
+
+It came into Graham's 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.
+
+Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments
+of the two small rooms in which he found himself.
+
+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.
+
+A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warming
+like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"
+
+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.
+
+The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge facade 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--_strange_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+IN THE SILENT ROOMS
+
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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. "The world has changed indeed," he said.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Thi Man huwdbi Kin" forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King."
+
+"Phonetic spelling," 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. "The Heart of Darkness"
+he had never heard of before nor "The Madonna of the Future"--no doubt if
+they were indeed stories, they were by post-Victorian authors.
+
+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.
+
+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. "I have worked," said the man, "but what have you been doing?"
+
+"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair.
+Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard "when the Sleeper
+wakes," 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.
+
+At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the
+apparatus was blank again.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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--black almost, with a dust of
+little stars....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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. "We were making
+the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future
+we were making. And here it is!"
+
+"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midst
+of it all?" 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!
+
+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 "un-English." His mind glanced at
+the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil.
+
+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.
+
+He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said to
+himself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundred
+and thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't
+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. 'Tis a great age! Ha
+ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed
+again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he was behaving
+foolishly. "Steady," he said. "Steady!"
+
+His pacing became more regular. "This new world," he said. "I don't
+understand it. _Why_? ... But it is all _why_!"
+
+"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and
+remember just how it began."
+
+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....
+
+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. "I must sleep," 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....
+
+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.
+
+And in those three days Graham's 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--even 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....
+
+Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's 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. "To explain
+it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half of years,"
+protested Howard.
+
+"The thing is this," said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shall
+do. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator."
+
+"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the 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."
+
+"Nineteenth century," corrected Graham.
+
+"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of every
+feature of our State."
+
+"Am I a fool?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly?"
+
+"You 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--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is too complex. We dare
+not suddenly---while you are still half awake."
+
+"It won't do," said Graham. "Suppose it is as you say--why 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?"
+
+Howard pulled his lip.
+
+"I am beginning to feel--every hour I feel more clearly--a 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?"
+
+"That note of suspicion--" said Howard.
+
+"Ugh!" said Graham. "Now, 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_--"
+
+"_Live_!"
+
+Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an
+easy confidential tone.
+
+"The Council secludes you here for your good. You are restless.
+Naturally--an energetic man! You find it dull here. But we are anxious
+that everything you may desire--every desire--every sort of desire ...
+There may be something. Is there any sort of company?"
+
+He paused meaningly.
+
+"Yes," said Graham thoughtfully. "There is."
+
+"Ah! _Now_! We have treated you neglectfully."
+
+"The crowds in yonder streets of yours."
+
+"That," said Howard, "I am afraid--But--"
+
+Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him.
+The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to Graham.
+Company? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of
+_company_? 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.
+
+"What do you mean by company?"
+
+Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings," he
+said, with a curious smile on his heavy face. "Our social ideas," he
+said, "have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with
+your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this--by 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--discreet--"
+
+Graham stopped dead.
+
+"It would pass the time," said Howard. "It is a thing I should perhaps
+have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much is happening--"
+
+He indicated the exterior world.
+
+Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated
+his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger.
+
+"_No_!" he shouted.
+
+He began striding rapidly up and down the room. "Everything you say,
+everything you do, convinces me--of 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--and 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--. And meanwhile I am here like
+a rabbit in a bag."
+
+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.
+
+"I 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--"
+
+He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He
+stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression.
+
+"I take it this is a message to the Council," said Howard.
+
+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's movement was quick.
+In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man from the
+nineteenth century was alone.
+
+For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then he
+flung them down. "What a fool I have been!" 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--because he was afraid of fear.
+
+Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment
+was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of
+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--humane. Yet
+they had cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as
+well as chastity?
+
+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. "Why should
+anything be done to me?"
+
+"If the worst comes to the worst," he found himself saying at last, "I
+can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they ask
+me for it instead of cooping me up?"
+
+He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possible
+intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's 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?
+
+"How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me?"
+
+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:
+
+"It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ROOF SPACES
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked
+up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.
+
+He remained motionless--his 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.
+
+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. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.
+
+Graham stood under the vane. "Who are you?" he whispered.
+
+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.
+
+For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.
+
+"You were the Sleeper?" said the stranger at last.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "What do you want with me?"
+
+"I come from Ostrog, Sire."
+
+"Ostrog?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Who are you? What do you want?" he said.
+
+"We want to speak to you, Sire," said the intruder. "We want--I
+can't hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to you--these
+three days."
+
+"Is it rescue?" whispered Graham. "Escape?"
+
+"Yes, Sire. If you will."
+
+"You are my party--the party of the Sleeper?"
+
+"Yes, Sire."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Graham.
+
+There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was
+bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Stand
+away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and
+one shoulder at Graham's 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.
+
+"You are indeed the Sleeper," he said. "I saw you asleep. When it was the
+law that anyone might see you."
+
+"I am the man who was in the trance," said Graham. "They have imprisoned
+me here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days."
+
+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. "Mind!"
+cried a voice. "Oh!" The voice came from above.
+
+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.
+
+"I did not see you, Sire," panted the man. He rose and assisted
+Graham to rise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy
+blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face,
+and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat
+upon the floor.
+
+"What is this?" cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator.
+"Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing."
+
+"Stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator
+as another fragment of metal fell heavily.
+
+"We want you to come, Sire," 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.
+"Your people call for you."
+
+"Come where? My people?"
+
+"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have
+spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very
+day--either 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--shouting. The whole city shouts
+against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.
+"Your life here is not worth--"
+
+"But why arms?"
+
+"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.
+
+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--a ladder--was being lowered through the
+opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.
+
+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!
+
+"I do not understand," he said. "I trust. Tell me what to do."
+
+The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. "Clamber up the ladder,"
+he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
+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.
+
+"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them
+and not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."
+
+"Where are the people?" said Graham. "The people you said awaited me?"
+
+The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew
+narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In
+a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" 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.
+
+"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill
+spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided
+an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This way!"
+and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow,
+between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will go
+first," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Come on!" cried his
+guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"
+
+Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.
+
+Over the ridge, following his guide's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of
+terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.
+
+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.
+
+"Get on this," cried Graham's 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's benumbed feet, and a
+faint eddy of steam rose from it.
+
+"Come on!" 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....
+
+In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
+shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
+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.
+
+They cowered panting and stared out.
+
+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.
+
+"They will be chasing us," cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfway
+there yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until it
+snows more thickly again."
+
+His teeth chattered in his head.
+
+"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all
+the people?"
+
+The other made no answer.
+
+"_Look_!" whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.
+
+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.
+
+"_Now_!" cried his companion. "Come!"
+
+He pulled Graham's 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.
+
+"Do as I do," 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. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In
+the dark all the way along. Do as I did."
+
+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's 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.
+
+"This way," 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.
+
+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's. "_Still_!" whispered the latter very softly.
+
+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.
+
+"Keep still; they were just turning."
+
+For awhile both were motionless, then Graham's companion stood up, and
+reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some
+indistinct tackle.
+
+"What is that?" asked Graham.
+
+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.
+
+The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars into
+Graham's 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. "Put the cross between your
+legs," whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. Grip
+tightly, grip!"
+
+Graham did as he was told.
+
+"Jump," said the voice. "In heaven's name, jump!"
+
+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.
+
+"Jump! Jump--in God's name! Or they will have us," cried Graham's guide,
+and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towards him with
+rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then--
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a
+countless multitude. "It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is with us!"
+
+"The Sleeper is with us! The Master--the Owner! The Master is with us.
+He is safe."
+
+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.
+
+He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him
+by one arm. "Let me go into a little room," he said, weeping; "a little
+room," 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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PEOPLE MARCH
+
+
+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.
+
+He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up
+abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person.
+
+"Tell me!" he cried. "Who am I? Who am I?"
+
+The others came nearer to hear his words. "Who am I?" His eyes searched
+their faces.
+
+"They have told him nothing!" cried the girl.
+
+"Tell me, tell me!" cried Graham.
+
+"You are the Master of the Earth. You are owner of the world."
+
+He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. He
+pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "I
+have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is some
+struggle between a number of people in this city--it is London?"
+
+"Yes," said the younger man.
+
+"And 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 don't 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?"
+
+"To keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "To prevent your
+interference."
+
+"But _why_?"
+
+"Because _you_ are the Atlas, Sire," said the man in yellow. "The world
+is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name."
+
+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.
+
+Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had
+just heard. "The Council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a
+name that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said.
+
+"He is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader--in
+your name."
+
+"In my name?--And you? Why is he not here?"
+
+"He--has deputed us. I am his brother--his 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."
+
+"In your name," shouted the younger man. "They have ruled, crushed,
+tyrannised. At last even--"
+
+"In my name! My name! Master?"
+
+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. "No 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."
+
+Again the hall dominated everything.
+
+"Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready--. Even now there is a rumour
+of fighting beginning."
+
+The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. "Ostrog has it
+planned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize the
+flying stages--. Even now he may be doing that. Then--"
+
+"This public theatre," bawled the man in yellow, "is only a contingent.
+We have five myriads of drilled men--"
+
+"We have arms," cried Lincoln. "We have plans. A leader. Their police
+have gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "It is
+now or never. The Council is rocking--They cannot trust even their
+drilled men--"
+
+"Hear the people calling to you!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+The door opened, Lincoln's 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. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" was the
+burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for "Order! Silence!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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--tramp, tramp.
+
+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.
+
+"Wave your arm to them," said Lincoln. "Wave your arm to them."
+
+"This," said a voice on the other side, "he must have this." 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's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the
+stage facing the people.
+
+The hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, 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 "Ostrog." All
+his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
+song. The multitude were beating time with their feet--marking 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 "To
+the Council!" Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the
+roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout "March!" His mouth
+shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the
+archway, shouting "Onward!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's 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--three 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's mind that these also should
+have swarmed with people.
+
+He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--to 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 "The lights!"
+Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!" cried these voices.
+"The lights!" 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.
+
+He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Something
+rapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, "It is all
+right--all right."
+
+Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his
+forehead against Lincoln's and bawled, "What is this darkness?"
+
+"The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We must
+wait--stop. The people will go on. They will--"
+
+His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take care
+of the Sleeper." 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.
+
+A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and receded forthwith beyond
+his questions.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness
+once more, a tumultuous mystery.
+
+He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the
+gallery. Someone was shouting--it 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.
+
+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. "The
+Sleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden,
+everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.
+
+Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery.
+"Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham's
+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 facade 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.
+
+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 facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was
+crowded and bawling and firing at him.
+
+Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leapt
+the writhing body.
+
+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 "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. His
+foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under
+foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" 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's, 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!"
+he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching
+Sleeper's face.
+
+He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and
+shouting, "To hell with the Council!" was about to fire again. Then it
+seemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A drop of
+moisture fell on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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, "They 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!" There were women and children
+in the crowd as well as men.
+
+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.
+
+Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps
+were a series of platforms of the "ways," 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+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 "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city was
+convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do not
+understand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
+accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the 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--so 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--his pace slackened.
+
+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?
+
+And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring
+and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the
+smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a 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.
+
+A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. "What have
+they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and
+before Graham could speak he had hurried on.
+
+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 "Here is Eadhamite," or, "Labour Bureau--Little
+Side"? Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+"It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face upon
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING
+
+
+He was startled by a cough close at hand.
+
+He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a
+couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.
+
+"Have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old
+man.
+
+Graham hesitated. "None," he said.
+
+"I stay here till the lights come again," said the old man. "These blue
+scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere."
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly. "Dark and damnable.
+Turned out of my room among all these dangers."
+
+"That's hard," ventured Graham. "That's hard on you."
+
+"Darkness. An old man lost in the darkness. And all the world gone mad.
+War and fighting. The police beaten and rogues abroad. Why don't they
+bring some negroes to protect us? ... No more dark passages for me. I
+fell over a dead man."
+
+"You're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of
+the right sort," and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came
+towards Graham.
+
+Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as if
+relieved to be no longer alone. "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible
+time! War and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dying
+in the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night."
+
+The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they are
+to-night."
+
+Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance.
+Again the old man's voice ended the pause.
+
+"This Ostrog will win," he said. "He 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're not common people. Though they've 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!"
+
+His wheezy breathing could be heard.
+
+"Ostrog!" said Graham.
+
+"The greatest Boss the world has ever seen," said the voice.
+
+Graham ransacked his mind. "The Council has few friends among the
+people," he hazarded.
+
+"Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! They
+should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. And
+Ostrog--. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can
+stay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of his
+rages at the time--he 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."
+
+He was silent for a little while. "This Sleeper," he said, and stopped.
+
+"Yes," said Graham. "Well?"
+
+The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came
+close. "The real Sleeper--"
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"Died years ago."
+
+"What?" said Graham, sharply.
+
+"Years ago. Died. Years ago."
+
+"You don't say so!" said Graham.
+
+"I do. I do say so. He died. This Sleeper who's woke up--they changed in
+the night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I
+know. I mustn't tell all I know."
+
+For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for
+him. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my
+time--but I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again.
+It was ten to one--wake or kill. Wake or kill. Ostrog's way."
+
+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's 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:
+
+"The first time they rejected him. I've followed it all."
+
+"Rejected whom?" said Graham. "The Sleeper?"
+
+"Sleeper? _No_. Ostrog. He was terrible--terrible! And he was promised
+then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be more
+afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust
+ground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workers
+cut each other's 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't been this gross of years. Eh!--but 'tis ill
+on small folks when the great fall out! It's ill."
+
+"Did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?"
+
+"Eh?" said the old man.
+
+The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat
+this a third time. "Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools
+bawling freedom and the like," said the old man. "Not in all my life has
+there been that. These are like the old days--for sure--when the Paris
+people broke out--three gross of years ago. That's what I mean hasn't
+been. But it's the world's 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."
+
+"You are rather well-informed on these things," said Graham.
+
+"I know what I hear. It isn't all Babble Machine with me."
+
+"No," said Graham, wondering what Babble Machine might be. "And you are
+certain this Ostrog--you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion and
+arranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself--because
+he was not elected to the Council?"
+
+"Everyone knows that, I should think," said the old man. "Except--just
+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't 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's real and woke of his own
+accord--eh?"
+
+"I'm a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful," said Graham. "Lots of
+things that have happened--especially of late years--. If I was the
+Sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn't know less about them."
+
+"Eh!" said the voice. "Old, are you? You don't sound so very old! But
+it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. But these
+notorious things! But you're not so old as me--not nearly so old as me.
+Well! I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I'm young--for
+so old a man. Maybe you're old for so young."
+
+"That's it," said Graham. "And I've 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's interesting to hear you talk of
+these things."
+
+"I know a few things," said the old man. "I know a thing or two.
+But--. Hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "This Sleeper that
+all the fools put their trust in! I've the whole history of it--I was
+always a good one for histories. When I was a boy--I'm that old--I used
+to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seen
+none--they rot and dust so--and 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--they don't seem new-fangled to
+you, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all the
+Sleeper business from the first."
+
+"You will scarcely believe it," said Graham slowly, "I'm so
+ignorant--I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my
+circumstances have been so odd--I know nothing of this Sleeper's history.
+Who was he?"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "I know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and set
+on a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There's the
+old things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--still
+showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a half
+of years."
+
+"Set on a playful woman, poor soul," said Graham softly to himself, and
+then aloud, "Yes--well go on."
+
+"You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without
+children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first
+Eadhamite roads. But surely you've 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--the old things--in two dozen
+years; he bought up and Eadhamited the tracks. And because he didn't 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't 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'-worth or more of property at
+the very beginning."
+
+"What was his name?"
+
+"Graham."
+
+"No--I mean--that American's."
+
+"Isbister."
+
+"Isbister!" cried Graham. "Why, I don't even know the name."
+
+"Of course not," said the old man. "Of course not. People don't 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't 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."
+
+"And how did it grow?"
+
+"Eh!--but you're not up to things. Money attracts money--and 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--they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the
+growing of the Sleeper's 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--the Sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a
+whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister's sons.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "The 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've slipped back. In my young days
+speaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We
+didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all
+that! Or else I've got wiser.
+
+"Men are strange," said the old man. "Here are you, young and
+ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably before
+getting--explaining it all to you short and clear.
+
+"Sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than I
+see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of
+things. Sevendy!
+
+"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember him
+long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Vanes Control.
+I've seen many changes. Eh! I've worn the blue. And at last I've 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!"
+
+His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Ostrog.
+
+Graham thought. "Let me see," he said, "if I have it right."
+
+He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "The Sleeper
+has been asleep--"
+
+"Changed," said the old man.
+
+"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands of
+Twelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of
+the world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have become
+masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--just as the old
+English Parliament used to be--"
+
+"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison.
+You're not so--"
+
+"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the
+Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt
+would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property from the
+Council, after all these years."
+
+The old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "It's strange," he
+said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time
+to-night."
+
+"Aye," said Graham, "it's strange."
+
+"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I've
+longed--" He laughed. "Even now," he said, "I could enjoy a little fun.
+Enjoy seeing things, anyhow." He mumbled a sentence Graham did not
+understand.
+
+"The Sleeper--when did he awake?" said Graham suddenly.
+
+"Three days ago."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Ostrog 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--where 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--everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even
+then! But you're joking! Surely you're pretending. It was to stop the
+shouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering that
+they turned off the electricity--and put this damned darkness upon us.
+Do you mean to say--?"
+
+"I had heard the Sleeper was rescued," said Graham. "But--to come back a
+minute. Are you sure Ostrog has him?"
+
+"He won't let him go," said the old man.
+
+"And the Sleeper. Are you sure he is not genuine? I have never heard--"
+
+"So all the fools think. So they think. As if there wasn't a thousand
+things that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. Did I tell
+you? In a way I'm a sort of relation of Ostrog's. A sort of relation.
+Through my daughter-in-law."
+
+"I suppose--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I suppose there's no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. I suppose
+he's certain to be a puppet--in Ostrog's hands or the Council's, as soon
+as the struggle is over."
+
+"In Ostrog's hands--certainly. Why shouldn't he be a puppet? Look at his
+position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he
+want to assert himself?"
+
+"What are these Pleasure Cities?" said Graham, abruptly.
+
+The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of
+Graham's words, he nudged him violently. "That's _too_ much," said he.
+"You're poking fun at an old man. I've been suspecting you know more than
+you pretend."
+
+"Perhaps I do," said Graham. "But no! why should I go on acting? No, I do
+not know what a Pleasure City is."
+
+The old man laughed in an intimate way.
+
+"What 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."
+
+"Come, come," said the old man, "if you had a glass of drink now, would
+you put it in your ear or your eye?"
+
+"I want you to tell me all these things."
+
+"He, he! Well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun." A
+withered hand caressed Graham's arm for a moment. "Silk. Well, well! But,
+all the same, I wish I was the man who was put up as the Sleeper. He'll
+have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He's a queer looking
+face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've got tickets and
+been. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this
+substitute used to be. Yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's a queer world.
+Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll be sent to Capri.
+It's the best fun for a greener."
+
+His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of
+pleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All my
+life I've been in London, hoping to get my chance."
+
+"But you don't know that the Sleeper died," said Graham, suddenly.
+
+The old man made him repeat his words.
+
+"Men don't live beyond ten dozen. It's not in the order of things," said
+the old man. "I'm not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me."
+
+Graham became angry with the old man's assurance. "Whether you are a fool
+or not," he said, "it happens you are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You are wrong about the Sleeper. I haven't told you before, but I will
+tell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper."
+
+"How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything--not even about
+Pleasure Cities."
+
+Graham paused.
+
+"You don't know," said the old man. "How are you to know? It's very
+few men--"
+
+"I _am_ the Sleeper."
+
+He had to repeat it.
+
+There was a brief pause. "There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll
+excuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this," said
+the old man.
+
+Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion.
+
+"I 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--I who speak to you--who awakened again these four days since."
+
+"Four days since!--the Sleeper! But they've _got_ the Sleeper. They have
+him and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've 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't let him go about alone.
+Trust them. You're a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I see now why
+you have been clipping your words so oddly, but--"
+
+He stopped abruptly, and Graham could see his gesture.
+
+"As if Ostrog would let the Sleeper run about alone! No, you're telling
+that to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What's
+your game? And besides, we've been talking of the Sleeper."
+
+Graham stood up. "Listen," he said. "I am the Sleeper."
+
+"You're an odd man," said the old man, "to sit here in the dark, talking
+clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. But--"
+
+Graham's exasperation fell to laughter. "It is preposterous," he cried.
+"Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am
+I--in this damned twilight--I never knew a dream in twilight before--an
+anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that
+I am myself, and meanwhile--Ugh!"
+
+He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man
+was pursuing him. "Eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "I'm an old
+fool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness."
+
+Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret
+flashed into his mind.
+
+"I didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you," said the old man coming
+near. "It's no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleases
+you. 'Tis a foolish trick--"
+
+Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way.
+
+For a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy
+cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw
+him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+OSTROG
+
+
+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.
+
+Presently a man stopped before him. "Have you heard?" he said.
+
+"No!" said Graham, starting.
+
+"Near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on.
+
+A number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and
+shouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men." "Two dozand of
+men." "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, became
+indistinct.
+
+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 "nigger"
+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's 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.
+
+It was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the
+"wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" 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--knowing no other means of transit--and 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's voice singing, "tralala tralala."
+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.
+
+The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speaking
+excitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not the
+Council!" "They are saying so in the Ways." 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. "Strike
+straight across," said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and in
+a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of
+glass. Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 facade 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.
+
+"Yes," he cried. "It is you. And you are not dead!"
+
+Graham made a brief explanation.
+
+"My brother is waiting," explained Lincoln. "He is alone in the wind-vane
+offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. He doubted--and
+things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them
+_there_--or he would have come to you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "It is
+Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and then
+everything was still again.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it
+and stood before it. Graham's 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.
+
+"You are Ostrog?" said Graham.
+
+"I am Ostrog."
+
+"The Boss?"
+
+"So I am called."
+
+Graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "I have to thank you
+chiefly, I understand, for my safety," he said presently.
+
+"We were afraid you were killed," said Ostrog. "Or sent to sleep
+again--for ever. We have been doing everything to keep our secret--the
+secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? How did you get here?"
+
+Graham told him briefly.
+
+Ostrog listened in silence.
+
+He smiled faintly. "Do you know what I was doing when they came to tell
+me you had come?"
+
+"How can I guess?"
+
+"Preparing your double."
+
+"My double?"
+
+"A 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--something of your
+position?"
+
+"Very little," said Graham.
+
+"It is like this." Ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned.
+"You are absolute owner," he said, "of 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--"
+
+"I have heard the vague outline of these things."
+
+"I wondered."
+
+"I came upon a garrulous old man."
+
+"I see.... Our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, of
+course, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. Just
+as a great number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the
+ruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the
+rule of your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the
+old quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the 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--when your waking came.
+Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more
+opportunely." He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for
+your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you
+and appealing to you, and--Flash!"
+
+He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head to show
+that he understood.
+
+"The Council muddled--quarrelled. They always do. They could not decide
+what to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"
+
+"I see. I see. And now--we win?"
+
+"We 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."
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"That 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--not half of them
+could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed or
+killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.
+
+"Half 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--the 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--So!"
+
+"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearly
+understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where
+is the Council? Where is the fight?"
+
+Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for
+an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"In a moment you will see the fighting," said Ostrog at his elbow. "Those
+fellows in red you notice are prisoners. This is the roof space of
+London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streets and
+public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time have
+disappeared."
+
+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--it 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.
+
+"Now," said Ostrog, "comes the Council House," and slowly a black edge
+crept into view and gathered Graham's 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.
+
+"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And the
+fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the
+buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It
+shattered half the brittle glass in the city."
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+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'etat_. Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.
+
+"Overthrown," said Ostrog.
+
+"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"
+
+"You are Master of the World."
+
+"But that white flag--"
+
+"That is the flag of the Council--the 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."
+
+"But--help. Is this city the world?"
+
+"Practically 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."
+
+"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting
+with them?"
+
+"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with
+us. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would
+not stir against us. We _had_ 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--an 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--for some did--we
+kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the Council
+House. If they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's 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's way. Upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive
+prospect. There's no chance for the Council that way. Its days are done."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "But these things I must explain more
+fully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by the
+moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the 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--thousands 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--"
+
+"But surely--I can't go ..."
+
+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. "There are
+kineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "As you bow to the people here--all
+over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened
+halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--not like this.
+And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall.
+
+"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said Ostrog, "used 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--so that even the furtherest man in the
+remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes."
+
+Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "What is
+the population of London?" he said.
+
+"Eight and twaindy myriads."
+
+"Eight and what?"
+
+"More than thirty-three millions."
+
+These figures went beyond Graham's imagination.
+
+"You will be expected to say something," said Ostrog. "Not what you used
+to call a Speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, six
+or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--'I have awakened
+and my heart is with you.' That is the sort of thing they want."
+
+"What was that?" asked Graham.
+
+"'I am awakened and my heart is with you.' And bow--bow royally. But
+first we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do you mind?
+And then they will disperse to their homes."
+
+Graham hesitated. "I am in your hands," he said.
+
+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.
+
+For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to
+Ostrog's 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's arm and pointed
+to the mirror.
+
+"Even as we turned away," he said.
+
+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.
+
+"Do you mean--?" he began.
+
+"The Council has surrendered. Its rule is at an end for evermore."
+
+"Look!" and Ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks
+up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose.
+
+The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered.
+
+"They are clamorous," he said.
+
+Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm.
+
+"We have raised the people," he said. "We have given them arms. For
+to-day at least their wishes must be law."
+
+Lincoln held the curtain open for Graham and Ostrog to pass through....
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
+
+
+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 "Word" 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's rule.
+
+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's
+eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had
+of it in the oval mirror.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxious
+to see you."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "To
+hell with the Council!" 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--and this as well?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FROM THE CROW'S NEST
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. The rest
+of the world hung in suspense.
+
+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' time a
+representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in
+the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's 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's-eye view of the city from the crow's 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.
+
+Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's 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--minute they looked
+from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the
+specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
+below. St. Paul's 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.
+
+And to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for
+the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines--the 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--an 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--as 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's estate, and the
+place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church--the 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--simply 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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to
+contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture. And when he
+glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the
+Continent, it failed him altogether.
+
+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
+"Pidgin" 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--German, 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 "Pidgin" 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.
+
+And everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered
+"black belt" 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....
+
+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.
+
+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....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+PROMINENT PEOPLE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "amorist," wore his hair in two becoming plaits _a
+la_ 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.
+
+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.
+
+Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln that he
+saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him that the
+attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich
+person's education. The Master's 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.
+
+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's, 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's vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed
+exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurel wreath.
+
+"Who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily.
+
+"The Bishop of London," said Lincoln.
+
+"No--the other, I mean."
+
+"Poet Laureate."
+
+"You still--?"
+
+"He doesn't make poetry, of course. He's a cousin of Wotton--one of the
+Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightful
+club--and they keep up the tradition of these things."
+
+"Asano told me there was a King."
+
+"The King doesn't belong. They had to expel him. It's the Stuart blood, I
+suppose; but really--"
+
+"Too much?"
+
+"Far too much."
+
+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.
+
+His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, with
+the general bearing. He offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of
+loyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's 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 "aerial dog"--he
+used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a
+thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't 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.
+
+"I am glad to see that type endures," said Graham.
+
+"Phonographs and kinematographs," said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "He
+has studied from the life." Graham glanced at the burly form again. It
+was oddly reminiscent.
+
+"As a matter of fact we bought him," said Lincoln. "Partly. And partly he
+was afraid of Ostrog. Everything rested with him."
+
+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_ of a Victorian pattern,
+and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand.
+Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and
+asked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-General
+seemed quietly amused at the Master's 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. "We have conquered Cram," he said,
+"completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in the
+world. Aren't you glad?"
+
+"How do you get the work done?" asked Graham.
+
+"We make it attractive--as attractive as possible. And if it does not
+attract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field."
+
+He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. Graham
+learnt that University Extension still existed in a modified form. "There
+is a certain type of girl, for example," said the Surveyor-General,
+dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for
+severe studies--when they are not too difficult you know. We cater for
+them by the thousand. At this moment," he said with a Napoleonic touch,
+"nearly 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."
+
+"About the public elementary schools," said Graham. "Do you
+control them?"
+
+The Surveyor-General did, "entirely." 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's words. "We try and make the elementary
+schools very pleasant for the little children. They will have to work so
+soon. Just a few simple principles--obedience--industry."
+
+"You teach them very little?"
+
+"Why should we? It only leads to trouble and discontent. We amuse them.
+Even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. Where the labourers get
+the ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialistic
+dreams--anarchy even! Agitators _will_ get to work among them. I take
+it--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against
+popular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"
+
+"I wonder," said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many things
+I want to know."
+
+Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout the
+conversation, intervened. "There are others," he said in an undertone.
+
+The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
+said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
+of these ladies?"
+
+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 "dear old days," 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.
+
+"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
+days. And to you--they 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!"
+
+"Into this," said Graham.
+
+"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."
+
+"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."
+
+She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
+encouragingly. "No?"
+
+"No," said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--We
+thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet I
+see--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back on my
+own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this
+new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find it hard to
+understand how little I know."
+
+"You may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him.
+
+"Then tell me who these people are. I'm still very much in the dark about
+them. It's puzzling. Are there any Generals?"
+
+"Men in hats and feathers?"
+
+"Of course not. No. I suppose they are the men who control the great
+public businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"
+
+"That? He's 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!"
+
+"A myriad myriad. No wonder he looks proud," said Graham. "Pills! What a
+wonderful time it is! That man in purple?"
+
+"He 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_
+something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of all such people.
+
+"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"
+
+"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about
+themselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some of
+them, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful, isn't it? But I think
+Wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. From Capri."
+
+"Capillotomist," said Graham. "Ah! I remember. An artist! Why not?"
+
+"We have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "Our heads are in
+his hands." She smiled.
+
+Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was
+expressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he
+said. "Who are your great painters?"
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment," she said, "I
+thought you meant--" She laughed again. "You 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't
+any. People grew tired of that sort of thing."
+
+"But what did you think I meant?"
+
+She put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion,
+and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "And here," and
+she indicated her eyelid.
+
+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. "I see," 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. "Who is that
+talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes.
+
+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;--the 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--hitherto there had
+been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither 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?"
+
+"And, bye the bye," she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on the
+verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife,"
+apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+The lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and Graham recalled
+himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged.
+
+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.
+
+Where, precisely, had he seen her?...
+
+Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a
+bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the 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.
+
+Ah! Now he remembered!
+
+He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_
+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.
+
+Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of
+this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once
+it had begun, lingered in his mind.
+
+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.
+
+The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in his expression,
+and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care to know that girl,
+Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a niece of Ostrog's. She
+knows a great many serious things. She is one of the most serious persons
+alive. I am sure you will like her."
+
+In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed
+lady had fluttered away.
+
+"I remember you quite well," said Graham. "You were in that little room.
+When all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. Before
+I walked across the Hall."
+
+Her momentary embarrassment passed. She looked up at him, and her face
+was steady. "It was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with a
+sudden effort. "All those people would have died for you, Sire. Countless
+people did die for you that night."
+
+Her face glowed. She glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard
+her words.
+
+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. "Sire," she said
+quickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are very
+unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget the
+people, who faced death--death that you might live."
+
+"I know nothing--" began Graham.
+
+"I cannot tell you now."
+
+Lincoln's face appeared close to them. He bowed an apology to the girl.
+
+"You find the new world amusing, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smiling
+deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one
+comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatly
+changed."
+
+"Wait till you are in the air," said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; even
+now an aeroplane awaits you."
+
+The girl's attitude awaited dismissal.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE MONOPLANE
+
+
+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's 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--the starting
+carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly
+inclined rails to the end of the fabric.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which 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--a 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.
+
+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.
+
+He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into
+the sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb,
+throb--beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and
+saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps a
+little artificially. "A little strange at first," he shouted before he
+recalled his dignity. But he dared not look down again for some time. He
+stared over the aeronaut's 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--beat; suppose some
+trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! 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.
+
+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's crow's 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 facade.
+
+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.
+
+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--innumerable minute oblongs
+of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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--sunlit and
+pleasant--the 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.
+
+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 "trouble in the
+under-ways," 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. "What?" said
+Graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "London aeroplane, Sire," bawled
+the aeronaut, pointing.
+
+They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it came
+and nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of the
+monoplane's 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.
+
+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.
+
+They beat across the Channel, slowly as it seemed now to Graham's
+enlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them.
+
+"Land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of
+the air over the wind-screen.
+
+"Not yet," bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn more
+of this machine."
+
+"I meant--" said the aeronaut.
+
+"I want to learn more of this machine," repeated Graham.
+
+"I'm coming to you," 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.
+
+"I want to have these things explained," said Graham. "What do you do
+when you move that engine forward?"
+
+The aeronaut hesitated. Then he answered, "They are complex, Sire."
+
+"I don't mind," shouted Graham. "I don't mind."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--"
+
+"I know. But I'm the Master, and I mean to know." He laughed, full of
+this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air.
+
+The monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham's
+face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the
+west. The two men looked into each other's eyes.
+
+"Sire, there are rules--"
+
+"Not where I am concerned," said Graham, "You seem to forget."
+
+The aeronaut scrutinised his face "No," he said. "I do not forget, Sire.
+But in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a
+chance. They come as passengers--"
+
+"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue these
+points. Do you know why I have slept two hundred years? To fly!"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if I break the rules--"
+
+Graham waved the penalties aside.
+
+"Then if you will watch me--"
+
+"No," said Graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its
+nose again for an ascent. "That's 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--to 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--. In my past it was my dream to fly.
+Now--keep your balance."
+
+"A dozen spies are watching me, Sire!"
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take your
+hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do we
+turn her nose down to the glide?"
+
+"Sire," said the aeronaut.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"You will protect me?"
+
+"Lord! Yes! If I have to burn London. Now!"
+
+And with that promise Graham bought his first lesson in aerial
+navigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with
+a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and
+well. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"
+
+"Back, Sire! Back!"
+
+"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this
+is living!"
+
+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.
+
+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. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see."
+
+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, "That," and he indicated the white thing still
+fluttering down, "was a swan."
+
+"I never saw it," said Graham.
+
+The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon his
+forehead.
+
+They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger's
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THREE DAYS
+
+
+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. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "I 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."
+
+"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said
+Lincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music that
+may seem novel."
+
+"For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more of
+that. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to
+one's learning."
+
+"There is, I believe," said Lincoln. "But for you--! If you would like to
+occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow."
+
+Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for
+a while. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things
+going on?"
+
+Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that to-morrow,"
+he said. "Everything 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's hands."
+
+"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it,
+forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be at it
+the very first thing to-morrow again...."
+
+"It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.
+Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I 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't think that after you have dined you might
+prefer--?" He paused.
+
+"Yes," said Graham.
+
+"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the
+Capri theatre."
+
+"I hate ballets," said Graham, shortly. "Always did. That other--. That's
+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--"
+
+"True," said Lincoln. "Though our dancers--"
+
+"They can afford to wait," said Graham; "they can afford to wait. I know.
+I'm not a Latin. There's questions I want to ask some expert--about your
+machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."
+
+"You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want
+is yours."
+
+Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned
+through the city streets to Graham's 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's answers to the endless questions Graham's 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.
+
+Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in search of
+kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincoln despatched
+Graham's 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 bayadere. "We were
+savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. We were in the stone
+age--compared with this.... And what else have you?"
+
+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 "calculating boys," 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--a 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he could
+say, "I 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."
+
+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; "a little
+trouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" 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's nest slumbered in his mind.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+GRAHAM REMEMBERS
+
+
+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.
+
+He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you," he
+said. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted to tell
+me of the people. What was it you had to tell me?"
+
+She looked at him with troubled eyes.
+
+"You said the people were unhappy?"
+
+For a moment she was silent still.
+
+"It must have seemed strange to you," she said abruptly.
+
+"It did. And yet--"
+
+"It was an impulse."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"That is all."
+
+She looked at him with a face of hesitation. She spoke with an effort.
+"You forget," she said, drawing a deep breath.
+
+"What?"
+
+"The people--"
+
+"Do you mean--?"
+
+"You forget the people."
+
+He looked interrogative.
+
+"Yes. I know you are surprised. For you do not understand what you are.
+You do not know the things that are happening."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"Not clearly, perhaps. But--tell me."
+
+She turned to him with sudden resolution. "It is so hard to explain. I
+have meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready with
+words. But about you--there is something. It is wonder. Your sleep--your
+awakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and 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."
+
+"Master of the earth," he said. "So they tell me. But try and imagine how
+little I know of it."
+
+"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Department--"
+
+"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I have
+heard them shout. I know. I am Master. King, if you wish. With Ostrog,
+the Boss--"
+
+He paused.
+
+She turned upon him and surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny.
+"Well?"
+
+He smiled. "To take the responsibility."
+
+"That is what we have begun to fear." For a moment she said no more.
+"No," she said slowly. "_You_ will take the responsibility. You will take
+the responsibility. The people look to you."
+
+She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--in
+every generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greater
+multitudes of people, have prayed that you might awake--_prayed_."
+
+Graham moved to speak and did not.
+
+She hesitated, and a faint colour crept back to her cheek. "Do you know
+that you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King who
+would come in his own good time and put the world right for them?"
+
+"I suppose the imagination of the people--"
+
+"Have you not heard our proverb, 'When the Sleeper wakes'? While you lay
+insensible and motionless there--thousands 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."
+
+She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted
+wall before her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to
+look at your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the
+patience of God."
+
+"That is what we thought of you," she said. "That is how you
+seemed to us."
+
+She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In the
+city, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to see what
+you will do, full of strange incredible expectations."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Ostrog--no one--can take that responsibility."
+
+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.
+
+"Do you think," she said, "that 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--do 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?"
+
+"I know how great this kingship of mine is," he said haltingly. "I know
+how great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is it
+real, or is it only a great delusion?"
+
+"It is real," she said; "if you dare."
+
+"After all, like all kingship, my kingship is Belief. It is an illusion
+in the minds of men."
+
+"If you dare!" she said.
+
+"But--"
+
+"Countless men," she said, "and while it is in their minds--they
+will obey."
+
+"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. And
+these others--the 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--"
+
+He stopped blankly.
+
+"I am still hardly more than a girl," she said. "But 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--and robbed
+life of--everything worth having."
+
+She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were the
+days of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for my
+life--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no better
+than the men of your time. That is not all. This city--is 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--for 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--they know they suffer. These
+countless multitudes who faced death for you two nights since--! You owe
+your life to them."
+
+"Yes," said Graham, slowly. "Yes. I owe my life to them."
+
+"You come," she said, "from the days when this new tyranny of the cities
+was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a 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--there was nobility! Common men led lives of
+love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--you come
+from that time."
+
+"It was not--. But never mind. How is it now--?"
+
+"Gain and the Pleasure Cities! Or slavery--unthanked, unhonoured,
+slavery."
+
+"Slavery!" he said.
+
+"Slavery."
+
+"You don't mean to say that human beings are chattels."
+
+"Worse. 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?"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"Speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak."
+
+"I have heard it."
+
+"They are the slaves--your slaves. They are the slaves of the Labour
+Department you own."
+
+"The Labour Department! In some way--that 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--?"
+
+"Yes. How can I explain it to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you.
+Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. This
+Labour Department has grown imperceptibly."
+
+"What _is_ this Labour Department?" asked Graham.
+
+"In the old times, how did you manage with starving people?"
+
+"There was the workhouse--which the parishes maintained."
+
+"Workhouse! Yes--there was something. In our history lessons. I remember
+now. The Labour Department ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--out of
+something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religious
+organisation called the Salvation Army--that 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."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Nowadays 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--or seek
+some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--for 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--that is the first
+condition of the Department's incorporation--and in return for a day's
+shelter the Department extracts a day's work, and then returns the
+visitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your time men starved
+in your streets. That was bad. But they died--_men_. These people in
+blue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever.' The Department
+trades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of the
+supply. People come to it starving and helpless--they 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--enough 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--brought 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's care. The mother owes them a month thereafter--the
+children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
+two years' service. You may be sure these children are educated for the
+blue canvas. And so it is the Department works."
+
+"And none are destitute in the city?"
+
+"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. We have abolished
+destitution. It is engraved upon the Department's checks."
+
+"If they will not work?"
+
+"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Department has powers.
+There are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a
+man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking
+system in the Department's 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--dark and miserable--out of sight
+below. There are prisons now for many things."
+
+"And a third of the people wear this blue canvas?"
+
+"More 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's 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."
+
+For a space Graham sat downcast.
+
+"But there has been a revolution," he said. "All these things will be
+changed. Ostrog--"
+
+"That 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--you who come from a happier age--it is to
+you the people look. To you."
+
+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.
+
+"But what am I to do?" he said with his eyes upon her.
+
+"Rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone.
+"Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of
+men. For you might rule it--you could rule it.
+
+"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. It
+wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Even
+the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy.
+
+"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people will
+not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog has
+awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes."
+
+His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weigh
+considerations.
+
+"They only want their leader," she said.
+
+"And then?"
+
+"You could do what you would;--the world is yours."
+
+He sat, no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke. "The old dreams, and
+the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness. Are they dreams? Could one
+man--_one man_--?" His voice sank and ceased.
+
+"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of
+their hearts."
+
+He shook his head, and for a time there was silence.
+
+He looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "I have not your faith," he
+said, "I have not your youth. I am here with power that mocks me. No--let
+me speak. I want to do--not right--I have not the strength for that--but
+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--.... One thing I
+promise you. This Labour slavery shall end."
+
+"And you will rule?"
+
+"Yes. Provided--. There is one thing."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"That you will help me."
+
+"_I_--a girl!"
+
+"Yes. Does it not occur to you I am absolutely alone?"
+
+She started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "Need you ask whether I
+will help you?" she said.
+
+There came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the
+hour. Graham rose.
+
+"Even now," he said, "Ostrog will be waiting." He hesitated, facing her.
+"When I have asked him certain questions--. 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--?"
+
+"I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again."
+
+They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
+from her towards the Wind-Vane office.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+OSTROG'S POINT OF VIEW
+
+
+Graham found Ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day's
+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. "After all these years," said Ostrog, when
+Graham pressed enquiries; "the Commune has lifted its head again. That is
+the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." 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. "A
+little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division
+of our African agricultural police--the Consolidated African Companies
+have a very well drilled police--was 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."
+
+"Why should you expect trouble?" asked Graham abruptly.
+
+"There is a lot of discontent--social discontent."
+
+"The Labour Department?"
+
+"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is
+chiefly the discontent with the Labour Department. It was that discontent
+supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+Ostrog smiled. He became explicit. "We had to stir up their discontent,
+we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men
+equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that
+have slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revive
+these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council.
+And now--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, and
+people whom we have stirred up--remain 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--we have had to call in a little external help."
+
+"And here?"
+
+"There 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."
+
+Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spoke
+with restraint.
+
+"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said.
+
+"They are useful," said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with no wash
+of ideas in their heads--such 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--only 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--that may happen. But it
+won't interrupt your aeronautics. The days when the People could make
+revolutions are past."
+
+"I suppose they are," said Graham. "I suppose they are." He mused. "This
+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."
+
+Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he
+said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, 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--it 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--a multiplex, silly one--the
+man in the Crowd."
+
+Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombre
+preoccupations.
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "The 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--tempered. 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."
+
+"Yet," said Graham, "there is something resists, something you are
+holding down--something that stirs and presses."
+
+"You will see," said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these
+difficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroy
+myself--trust me."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham.
+
+Ostrog stared.
+
+"_Must_ the world go this way?" said Graham with his emotions at the
+speaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes
+been vain?"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"
+
+"I come from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"
+
+"Well,--but you are the chief tyrant."
+
+Graham shook his head.
+
+"Well," said Ostrog, "take the general question. It is the way that
+change has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the
+suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things."
+
+"But aristocracy! those people I met--"
+
+"Oh! not _those_!" said Ostrog. "But 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!"
+
+"Pleasant extinction," said Graham. "Yet--." He thought for an instant.
+"There is that other thing--the 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--"
+
+Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly
+than before.
+
+"Don't trouble about these things," he said. "Everything 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_ 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--they are already murmuring against those
+who have overthrown the Council."
+
+"No, no," said Graham. "They shouted because their lives were dreary,
+without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped."
+
+"And 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--what 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--it's a fine duty too!--is 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."
+
+Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I can imagine
+how this great world state of ours seems to a Victorian Englishman. You
+regret all the old forms of representative government--their 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,--had I not been busy. But you will
+learn better. The people are mad with envy--they 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." He
+smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "You 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--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is
+impossible--that 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' delay. The coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured.
+The end will be the Over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. Let
+them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. Others will
+arise--other masters. The end will be the same."
+
+"I wonder," said Graham doggedly.
+
+For a moment he stood downcast.
+
+"But I must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a
+tone of confident mastery. "Only 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--and 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--the labour people
+more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"
+
+"You get that from our realistic novelists," suggested Ostrog, suddenly
+preoccupied.
+
+"I want reality," said Graham.
+
+"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought. "On the whole--"
+
+"I did not expect--"
+
+"I had thought--. And yet perhaps--. You say you want to go through the
+ways of the city and see the common people."
+
+Suddenly he came to some conclusion. "You would need to go disguised," he
+said. "The 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--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think the thing over, it
+seems to me not altogether--. 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."
+
+"You will not want to consult me in any matter?" asked Graham suddenly,
+struck by an odd suspicion.
+
+"Oh, dear no! No! I think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any
+rate," said Ostrog, smiling. "Even if we differ--"
+
+Graham glanced at him sharply.
+
+"There is no fighting likely to happen soon?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have been thinking about these negroes. I don't 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--"
+
+Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "I am not
+bringing negroes to London," he said slowly. "But if--"
+
+"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens," said
+Graham. "In that matter I am quite decided."
+
+Ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+IN THE CITY WAYS
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_.
+They carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "No
+disarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed
+letters and with variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No
+disarming." "No disarming." 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. "They all ought to be at work," said
+Asano. "They have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it."
+
+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's harvest of the first revolt.
+
+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.
+
+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--and his attention was vividly
+arrested by the facade of one of the Christian sects.
+
+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 "Salvation on
+the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker."
+"The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What
+Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a
+Christian--without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the
+Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk
+Blessings for Busy Business Men."
+
+"But this is appalling!" said Graham, as that deafening scream of
+mercantile piety towered above them.
+
+"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly
+for anything unusual in this shrieking enamel.
+
+"_This_! Surely the essence of religion is reverence."
+
+"Oh _that_!" Asano looked at Graham. "Does it shock you?" he said in the
+tone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I had
+forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people
+simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they
+used to do." He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the
+countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"
+
+"But _that_," said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue and white.
+"That is surely not the only--"
+
+"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn't
+_tell_ it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are high
+class sects with quieter ways--costly 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--to you, I
+should say."
+
+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's signature, his first encounter with the curves and
+turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Home," 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Graham's attention was immediately arrested by a violent, loud hoot,
+followed by a vast leathery voice. "The Master is sleeping peacefully,"
+it vociferated. "He 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--all
+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."
+
+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 "Galloop, Galloop," and broke out again.
+
+"Paris 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--don't 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!"
+
+The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among the
+crowd. "Damned niggers." A man began to harangue near them. "Is this the
+Master's doing, brothers? Is this the Master's doing?"
+
+"Black police!" said Graham. "What is that? You don't mean--"
+
+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. "Yahaha, 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!" The nearer Babble Machine hooted
+stupendously, "Galloop, Galloop," drowned the end of the sentence, and
+proceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments on the
+horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained," said the nearer
+Babble Machine.
+
+"But," began Graham.
+
+"Don't ask questions here," said Asano, "or you will be involved in an
+argument."
+
+"Then let us go on," said Graham, "for I want to know more of this."
+
+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.
+
+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 "Lynched policemen," "Women burnt
+alive," "Fuzzy Wuzzy." "But does the Master allow such things?" asked a
+man near him. "Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule?"
+
+Is _this_ the beginning of the Master's rule? For a long time after he
+had left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machines
+pursued him; "Galloop, Galloop," "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is _this_
+the beginning of the Master's rule?
+
+Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closely
+on the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What was their
+trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious to reassure
+him that it was "all right."
+
+"But these outrages!"
+
+"You cannot have an omelette," said Asano, "without 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."
+
+"What! the Londoners?"
+
+"No, the Japanese. They have to be kept in order."
+
+"But burning women alive!"
+
+"A Commune!" said Asano. "They 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.
+
+"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--French
+speaking negroes. Senegal regiments, and Niger and Timbuctoo."
+
+"Regiments?" said Graham, "I thought there was only one--"
+
+"No," said Asano, and glanced at him. "There is more than one."
+
+Graham felt unpleasantly helpless.
+
+"I did not think," 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. "I never thought," he said. "Ostrog must have had
+them removed."
+
+Graham stared. "How was I to know?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Perhaps he thought they would annoy you," said Asano.
+
+"They must be replaced directly I return," said Graham after an interval.
+
+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's expedition his ears would pick out from the tumult of
+the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ of Boss Ostrog, "Galloop,
+Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha Yap!--Hear a live paper yelp!" of
+its chief rival.
+
+Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _creches_ 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's 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's manner that his identity was known, and
+proceeded to ask questions on the strange arrangements of the place
+without reserve.
+
+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 _creches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardous
+adventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently called
+Graham's 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.
+
+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
+_creche_ company, the International Creche Syndicate, lost not one-half
+per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. But
+Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures.
+
+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's
+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.
+
+Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans," he
+said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that
+they were not orphans.
+
+So soon as they had left the _creche_ he began to speak of the horror the
+babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhood gone?" he
+said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems so
+unnatural--abominable almost."
+
+"Along here we shall come to the dancing place," said Asano by way of
+reply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrest it
+will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--except a
+few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women in London
+are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing to have
+one child--a 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."
+
+"Then do you mean that the population of the World--?"
+
+"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Department. In
+spite of scientific discipline they are reckless--"
+
+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.
+
+"You will see," said Asano with a faint smile. "The 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."
+
+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.
+
+"Here," said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little
+ones you saw."
+
+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. "Look at them," said the little officer,
+"see how much they show of motherhood."
+
+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 "The Festival of the
+Awakening" was in progress.
+
+"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite
+apart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said Asano. "These
+people are always ready for holidays."
+
+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.
+
+"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Workers--prosperous 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."
+
+"But--the women?"
+
+"The same. There's 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--there are a
+number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and
+enables them to enjoy themselves."
+
+"I see," said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl
+of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.
+"And these are--mothers."
+
+"Most of them."
+
+"The 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."
+
+In a little while he spoke again:
+
+"These are mothers. Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way
+of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits
+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--all 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--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and
+serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a
+sort of worship--"
+
+He stopped and repeated, "A sort of worship."
+
+"Ideals change," said the little man, "as needs change."
+
+Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.
+Graham's mind returned to the thing at hand.
+
+"Of 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's tribute to
+unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical
+purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black
+police--and life is joyous."
+
+He looked at the dancers again. "Joyous," he said.
+
+"There are weary moments," said the little officer, reflectively.
+
+"They all look young. Down there I should be visibly the oldest man. And
+in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged."
+
+"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the
+work cities."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Old people's 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."
+
+"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"
+
+"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does it
+well. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go
+off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary."
+
+"There is a lot left for me to understand," said Graham after a pause.
+"Yet 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--for
+well-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have been
+asleep two hundred years."
+
+For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate
+evolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful.
+
+"Before God," said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a wounded
+sentinel freezing in the snow than one of these painted fools!"
+
+"In the snow," said Asano, "one might think differently."
+
+"I am uncivilised," said Graham, not heeding him. "That is the trouble. I
+am primitive--Paleolithic. _Their_ 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--men are dying in Paris to keep the
+world--that they may dance."
+
+Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London," he
+said.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Where do these sleep?" asked Graham.
+
+"Above and below--an intricate warren."
+
+"And where do they work? This is--the domestic life."
+
+"You 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."
+
+For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "I want
+to see the workers. I have seen enough of these," he said.
+
+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.
+
+Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went back to
+it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire," he said, "is
+something--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will not
+tell you. Come!"
+
+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--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which they
+went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost
+vertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed.
+
+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's. 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+For a long time he was silent. "This," he said at last, smiling in the
+shadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of St.
+Paul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"
+
+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. "Skin your eyes and slide," "Gewhoop,
+Bonanza," "Gollipers come and hark!"
+
+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.
+
+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 "WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R. WE ASSURE THE PROPRAIET'R."
+
+"Who's the proprietor?" he asked.
+
+"You."
+
+"But what do they assure me?" he asked. "What do they assure me?"
+
+"Didn't you have assurance?"
+
+Graham thought. "Insurance?"
+
+"Yes--Insurance. 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!"
+
+A crowd of people surged and roared, and Graham saw a vast black screen
+suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anuetes
+on the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G." 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.
+
+Asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "Seventeen 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."
+
+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 "X 5 pr. G."
+
+"I want to get out of this," said Graham to Asano. "This is not what I
+came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These
+parasitic lunatics--"
+
+He found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE UNDER-SIDE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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's 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--even
+with a dialect of its own.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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_. 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.
+
+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 _cloisonne_ 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. "This is what I wanted to
+see," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid a
+start at a particularly striking disfigurement.
+
+"She might have done better with herself than that," said Asano.
+
+Graham made some indignant comments.
+
+"But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,"
+said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they were
+nearer the barbaric by two hundred years."
+
+They continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonne_
+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.
+
+A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to
+Graham's 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.
+
+"Stop that!" 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--the 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.
+
+And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many
+painful and grim things. That walk left on Graham's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What has happened now?" 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:
+"Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police are
+coming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police."
+
+Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham's
+face, and told him the thing he already knew. "But how can they know?"
+asked Asano.
+
+Graham heard someone shouting. "Stop all work. Stop all work," and a
+swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down
+the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "This
+is Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." 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, "Ostrog the Knave!"
+
+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. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. His
+heart began to beat fast and strong.
+
+"It has come," he said. "I might have known. The hour has come."
+
+He thought swiftly. "What am I to do?"
+
+"Go back to the Council House," said Asano.
+
+"Why should I not appeal--? The people are here."
+
+"You 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--with them."
+
+"Suppose this is only a rumour?"
+
+"It sounds true," said Asano.
+
+"Let us have the facts," said Graham.
+
+Asano shrugged his shoulders. "We had better get towards the Council
+House," he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins may
+be impassable."
+
+Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.
+
+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.
+
+"What did he say?" asked Graham.
+
+"He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrived
+here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Offices
+learnt. He said a girl."
+
+"A girl? Not--?"
+
+"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from the
+Council House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins."
+
+And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless
+tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the
+street. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man to
+his ward!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE STRUGGLE IN THE COUNCIL HOUSE
+
+
+As Asano and Graham hurried along to the ruins about the Council House,
+they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "To your wards!
+To your wards!" 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.
+
+The cries of "To your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as
+they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts were
+unintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse
+voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's 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.
+
+Graham's 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.
+
+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. "Every man
+to his ward! Every man to his ward!" Here, by Asano's advice, Graham
+revealed his identity.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "To your wards! Every man to his ward!"
+
+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.
+
+"Where is Ostrog?" he demanded. "I must see Ostrog forthwith. He has
+disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands." 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.
+
+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.
+"Wards! Wards! Wards!" 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.
+
+"Ostrog," said Asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there." The
+little man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham's face.
+
+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. "Ostrog," shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voice
+the little party turned astonished.
+
+Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone.
+
+Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What
+is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here--to keep the
+people down?"
+
+"It is none too soon," said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of hand
+more and more, since the revolt. I under-estimated--"
+
+"Do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?"
+
+"On the way. As it is, you have seen the people--outside?"
+
+"No wonder! But--after what was said. You have taken too much on
+yourself, Ostrog."
+
+Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer.
+
+"These negroes must not come to London," said Graham. "I am Master and
+they shall not come."
+
+Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two
+attendants close behind him. "Why not?" asked Ostrog.
+
+"White men must be mastered by white men. Besides--"
+
+"The negroes are only an instrument."
+
+"But that is not the question. I am the Master. I mean to be the Master.
+And I tell you these negroes shall not come."
+
+"The people--"
+
+"I believe in the people."
+
+"Because you are an anachronism. You are a man out of the Past--an
+accident. You are Owner perhaps of the world. Nominally--legally. But you
+are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master."
+
+He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think--I can guess
+something of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warn
+you. You dream of human equality--of some sort of socialistic order--you
+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."
+
+"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it--a sound like the sea. Not
+voices--but a voice. Do _you_ altogether understand?"
+
+"We taught them that," said Ostrog.
+
+"Perhaps. Can you teach them to forget it? But enough of this! These
+negroes must not come."
+
+There was a pause and Ostrog looked him in the eyes.
+
+"They will," he said.
+
+"I forbid it," said Graham.
+
+"They have started."
+
+"I will not have it."
+
+"No," said Ostrog. "Sorry as I am to follow the method of the
+Council--. For your own good--you must not side with--Disorder. And now
+that you are here--. It was kind of you to come here."
+
+Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's 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's cloak.
+
+He turned and struck at Lincoln's 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.
+
+He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg
+and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet.
+
+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's 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's heaving throat.
+
+"You--are--a prisoner," panted Ostrog, exulting. "You--were rather a
+fool--to come back."
+
+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!
+
+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, "Save the Master!" "What are they doing to the Master?" "The
+Master is betrayed!"
+
+And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was distracted, that
+Ostrog's 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's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the
+silk about his neck.
+
+But now men were coming towards them from the dais--men 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.
+
+He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not
+friends--that 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.
+
+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. "They can't
+come down," panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire. It's all right. We'll save
+him from them yet."
+
+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.
+
+The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. He saw Ostrog's 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.
+
+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.
+
+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's shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. Ten
+thousand throats were cheering.
+
+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.
+
+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. "Where has Ostrog gone?" he asked.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "The Master is with us! The Master! The Master!"
+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. "The Master
+is on our side!"
+
+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.
+
+"What has become of Ostrog?" 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 "Ostrog," 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What are they doing? What are
+the people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They
+will lift him--the monoplane will lift him! Ah!"
+
+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's 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.
+
+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.
+
+"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tell
+the people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"
+
+Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating these
+enigmatical orders.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And then it rose.
+
+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.
+
+And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
+upward into the wind-swept sky.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GRAHAM SPEAKS HIS WORD
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. "For a moment," he said, "I must wait. I did not
+think it would be like this. I must think of the thing I have to say."
+
+While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with news
+that the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Madrid.
+
+"What news of the flying stages?" he asked.
+
+"The people of the south-west wards are ready."
+
+"Ready!"
+
+He turned impatiently to the blank circles of the lenses again.
+
+"I 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.
+
+"Oh! what can it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and felt
+the light grow brighter.
+
+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. "Wait," cried someone, and a door opened. Graham turned, and the
+watching lights waned.
+
+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.
+
+"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had done," he said.
+
+She came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to
+interrupt Graham's 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.
+
+"You have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... This is
+very difficult."
+
+He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared upon
+him through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly.
+
+"Men and women of the new age," he said; "you have arisen to do battle
+for the race!... There is no easy victory before us."
+
+He stopped to gather words. He wished passionately for the gift of
+moving speech.
+
+"This night is a beginning," he said. "This 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I come out of the past to you," he said, "with the memory of an age
+that hoped. My age was an age of dreams--of 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?
+
+"Great 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--sorrow 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--. Is there a new faith?
+
+"Charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful
+things--effort and devotion! Give yourselves as I would give myself--as
+Christ gave Himself upon the Cross. It does not matter if you understand.
+It does not matter if you seem to fail. You _know_--in the core of your
+hearts you _know_. There is no promise, there is no security--nothing to
+go upon but Faith. There is no faith but faith--faith which is
+courage...."
+
+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....
+
+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. "Here and now," he cried, "I 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."
+
+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.
+
+"I knew," she whispered. "Oh! Father of the World--_Sire_! I knew you
+would say these things...."
+
+"I have said what I could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to
+her outstretched hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING
+
+
+The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He was
+saying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it so
+soon," he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word to
+help them on their way."
+
+Graham stared at him absent-mindedly. Then with a start he returned to
+his previous preoccupation about the flying stages.
+
+"Yes," he said. "That is good, that is good." He weighed a message. "Tell
+them;--well done South West."
+
+He turned his eyes to Helen Wotton again. His face expressed his struggle
+between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages," he
+explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At all costs we
+must prevent that."
+
+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.
+
+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. "Here I am doing nothing," he said.
+
+"It is impossible," protested the man in yellow. "It is a fight in a
+warren. Your place is here."
+
+He explained elaborately. He motioned towards the room where Graham must
+wait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where you
+are," he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presence
+and decision."
+
+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--and 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's 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.
+
+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's 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.
+
+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!
+
+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.
+
+There came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. The
+girl stood up, speechless, incredulous.
+
+Metallic voices were shouting "Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!"
+
+Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and
+dishevelled with excitement, "Victory," he cried, "victory! The people
+are winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed."
+
+She rose. "Victory?"
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! _What_?"
+
+"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streatham is
+afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. _Ours_!--and we have
+taken the monoplane that lay thereon."
+
+A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of
+the Ward Leaders. "It is all over," he cried.
+
+"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have been
+sighted at Boulogne!"
+
+"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly.
+"Half an hour."
+
+"They still have three of the flying stages," said the old man.
+
+"Those guns?" cried Graham.
+
+"We cannot mount them--in half an hour."
+
+"Do you mean they are found?"
+
+"Too late," said the old man.
+
+"If we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"Nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "They have near a hundred
+aeroplanes in the first fleet."
+
+"Another hour?" asked Graham.
+
+"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found
+those guns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the
+roof spaces."
+
+"How long would that take?" asked Graham suddenly.
+
+"An hour--certainly."
+
+"Too late," cried the Ward Leader, "too late."
+
+"_Is_ it too late?" said Graham. "Even now--. An hour!"
+
+He had suddenly perceived a possibility. He tried to speak calmly, but
+his face was white. "There is are chance. You said there was a
+monoplane--?"
+
+"On the Roehampton stage, Sire."
+
+"Smashed?"
+
+"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon the
+guides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--."
+
+Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a long
+pause. "_We_ have no aeronauts?"
+
+"None."
+
+He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+"Go to this flying stage--to this machine."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached me
+were not altogether wasted."
+
+He turned to the old man in yellow. "Tell them to put it upon the
+guides."
+
+The man in yellow hesitated.
+
+"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen.
+
+"This monoplane--it is a chance--."
+
+"You don't mean--?"
+
+"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. A big
+aeroplane is a clumsy thing. A resolute man--!"
+
+"But--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow.
+
+"There has been no need. But now the time has come. Tell them now--send
+them my message--to put it upon the guides. I see now something to do. I
+see now why I am here!"
+
+The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and
+hurried out.
+
+Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But, Sire!--How
+can one fight? You will be killed."
+
+"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let some one else attempt it--."
+
+"You will be killed," she repeated.
+
+"I've said my word. Do you not see? It may save--London!"
+
+He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a
+gesture, and they stood looking at one another.
+
+They were both clear that he must go. There was no step back from these
+towering heroisms.
+
+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.
+
+"To wake," she cried, "for this!"
+
+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.
+
+He could not speak. The gesture of his arm said "Onward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES
+
+
+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. "He's down
+there still," said the marksman. "See that little patch. Yes. Between
+those bars."
+
+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.
+
+"I can't see him _now_," said the second man in a tone of provocation.
+
+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.
+
+"What's going on now?" 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.
+
+"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up and
+spoil shots. What are they after?"
+
+"Ssh!--they're shouting something."
+
+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. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's what
+they're after."
+
+He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his
+friend. "We've got no aeronauts."
+
+"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at the
+struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. "Mind these,
+mate," 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.
+
+"He who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden,
+that man is King," 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. "The Master is coming," shouted voices, "the Master is
+coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began to
+thrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "The
+Sleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the voices.
+
+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....
+
+For all his days that man remembered the passing of Graham's 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 "Clear for the start, you fools!" The bell that
+cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging.
+
+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's 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--presently--the 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--throb, 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.
+
+Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face into
+an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upward beneath
+the nearer wing.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+"Where was the other?" he thought. "They too--." 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....
+
+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--for Wimbledon Park was
+useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was a
+furnace--were 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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 "Massa Boss" 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.
+
+Suddenly Graham hit them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled
+by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the
+gust of its close passage.
+
+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.
+
+"_Two_!" 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.
+
+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's 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's 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.
+
+He drew an immense breath. "They win," he shouted to the empty air; "the
+people win!" 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft and
+went circling up. He saw Ostrog's 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--dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face of
+Ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincing
+resolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to 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.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. The
+eastward stage, the one on Shooter's 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.
+
+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.
+
+He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the
+air was blowing past him and _upward_. 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.
+
+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's calculated treachery.
+
+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....
+
+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_ be a dream! Yet surely he would meet her. She at least was real.
+She was real. He would wake and meet her.
+
+Although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth
+was very near.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sleeper Awakes, by H.G. Wells
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SLEEPER AWAKES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 12163.txt or 12163.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/1/6/12163/
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+     https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL
+
+
diff --git a/old/old/12163.zip b/old/old/12163.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b0b616
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/12163.zip