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+*** 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 ***