WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES

By Herbert George Wells

CHAPTER I. INSOMNIA

One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging atBoscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitouspath to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in anattitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. Thehands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red andstaring 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 hisinvoluntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, thatthe weather was hot for the time of year. 

"Very, " answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added ina colourless tone, "I can't sleep. "

Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearingconveyed his helpful impulse. 

"It may sound incredible, " said the stranger, turning weary eyes toIsbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but Ihave had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights. "

"Had advice?"

"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... Theyare all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I darenot take... Sufficiently powerful drugs. "

"That makes it difficult, " said Isbister. 

He stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. Clearlythe man wanted to talk. An idea natural enough under the circumstances, prompted him to keep the conversation going. "I've never suffered fromsleeplessness myself, " he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but inthose 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 bothmen were silent. 

"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from hisinterlocutor'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 tothe mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There wassomething--"

He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a leanhand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself. 

"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in whichI have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of thechildless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, Ichildless--I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. Onething at last I set myself to do. 

"I said, I will do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of thisdull 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, itsexasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We onlylive in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestivecomplacencies--or irritations. We have to take the air or else ourthoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. Athousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comesdrowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man'sday is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and killrest--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 andthirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been awhirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughtsleading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--"

He paused. "Towards the gulf. "

"You must sleep, " said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedydiscovered. "Certainly you must sleep. "

"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I amdrawing towards the vortex. Presently--"

"Yes?"

"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, outof this sweet world of sanity--down--"

"But, " expostulated Isbister. 

The man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and hisvoice suddenly high. "I shall kill myself. If in no other way--at thefoot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and thewhite surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water tremblesdown. There at any rate is ... Sleep. "

"That's unreasonable, " said Isbister, startled at the man's hystericalgust of emotion. "Drugs are better than that. "

"There at any rate is sleep, " repeated the stranger, not heeding him. 

Isbister looked at him and wondered transitorily if some complexProvidence had indeed brought them together that afternoon. "It's nota cert, you know, " he remarked. "There's a cliff like that at LulworthCove--as high, anyhow--and a little girl fell from top to bottom. Andlives to-day--sound and well. "

"But those rocks there?"

"One might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, brokenbones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. Eh?"

Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals, " said Isbister with a senseof 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 otherthing. 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! Asyou 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 daylong, 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 ofgesture. "Look at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever!See the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And thisblue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. It isyour world. You accept it, you rejoice in it. It warms and supports anddelights you. And for me--"

He turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes andbloodless lips. He spoke almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of mymisery. The whole world... Is the garment of my misery. "

Isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about themand back to that face of despair For a moment he was silent. 

He started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "You get anight's sleep, " he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. Takemy word for it. "

He was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. Only halfan hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. Here was employment thebare thought of which was righteous self-applause. He took possessionforthwith. It seemed to him that the first need of this exhausted beingwas companionship He flung himself down on the steeply sloping turfbeside the motionless seated figure, and deployed forthwith into askirmishing line of gossip. 

His hearer seemed to have lapsed into apathy; he stared dismallyseaward, and spoke only in answer to Isbister's direct questions--andnot to all of those But he made no sign of objection to this benevolentintrusion upon his despair. 

In a helpless way he seemed even grateful, and when presently Isbister, feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that theyshould reascend the steep and return towards Boscastle, alleging theview into Blackapit, he submitted quietly. Halfway up he began talkingto himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. "What canbe happening?" he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "What can behappening? Spin, spin, spin, spin. It goes round and round, round andround 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 insingle file and to the headland beyond Penally, with the sleepless mangesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerninghis whirling brain. At the headland they stood for a space by the seatthat looks into the dark mysteries of Blackapit, and then he sat down. Isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficientlyfor them to walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficultyof making Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quiteirrelevantly his companion interrupted him again. 

"My head is not like what it was, " he said, gesticulating for wantof expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort ofoppression, a weight. No--not drowsiness, would God it were! It is likea shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across somethingbusy. 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 onit--steadily enough to tell you. "

He stopped feebly. 

"Don't trouble, old chap, " said Isbister. "I think I can understand. Atany 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 hada fresh idea. "Come down to my room, " he said, "and try a pipe. I canshow 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 hismovements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me, " said Isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you takealcohol?"

The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer clearlyaware of his actions. "I don't drink, " he said slowly, coming up thegarden path, and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No--Idon't drink. It goes round. Spin, it goes--spin--"

He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of onewho sees nothing. 

Then he sat down abruptly and heavily in the easy chair, seemed almostto fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and becamemotionless. 

Presently he made a faint sound in his throat. Isbister moved aboutthe room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making littleremarks that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to hisportfolio, 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 anunlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with a design ofthe furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, butpassing sweet. Welsh. And a tart, I believe. " He repeated this aftermomentary 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 downunlit. The man was certainly very still. Isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "Perhaps, " hewhispered doubtfully. Presently he glanced at the door and back tothe figure. Then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at hiscompanion after each elaborate pace. 

He closed the door noiselessly. The house door was standing open, andhe went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose atthe corner of the garden bed. From this point he could see the strangerthrough the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. He had notmoved. 

A number of children going along the road stopped and regarded theartist curiously. A boatman exchanged civilities with him. He feltthat possibly his circumspect attitude and position seemed peculiar andunaccountable. Smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. He drew pipeand pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly. 

"I wonder, "... He said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. "At any rate we must give him a chance. " He struck a match in the virileway, and proceeded to light his pipe. 

Presently he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp litfrom the kitchen. He turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stoppedher at the door of his sitting-room. He had some difficulty inexplaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had avisitor. She retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified tojudge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of theporch, flushed and less at his ease. 

Long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, his curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back intohis darkling sitting-room. He paused in the doorway. The strangerwas still in the same attitude, dark against the window. Save for thesinging of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying shipsin the harbour, the evening was very still. Outside, the spikes ofmonkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadowof the hillside. Something flashed into Isbister's mind; he started, andleaning 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 tolisten. At last he could lay his hand on the back of the armchair. Hebent down until the two heads were ear to ear. 

Then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. He startedviolently and uttered an exclamation. The eyes were void spaces ofwhite. 

He looked again and saw that they were open and with the pupils rolledunder the lids. He was suddenly afraid. Overcome by the strangeness ofthe man's condition, he took him by the shoulder and shook him. "Are youasleep?" he said, with his voice jumping into alto, and again, "Are youasleep?"

A conviction took possession of his mind that this man was dead. Hesuddenly became active and noisy, strode across the room, blunderingagainst the table as he did so, and rang the bell. 

"Please bring a light at once, " he said in the passage. "There issomething wrong with my friend. "

Then he returned to the motionless seated figure, grasped the shoulder, shook it, and shouted. The room was flooded with yellow glare as hisastonished landlady entered with the light. His face was white as heturned blinking towards her. "I must fetch a doctor at once, " he said. "It is either death or a fit. Is there a doctor in the village? Where isa doctor to be found?"

CHAPTER II. THE TRANCE

The state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lastedfor an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to theflaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. Then itwas his eyes could be closed. 

He was removed from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from thesurgery, after some weeks, to London. But he still resisted everyattempt at reanimation. After a time, for reasons that will appearlater, these attempts were discontinued. For a great space he lay inthat strange condition, inert and still neither dead nor living but, asit were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence. His was a darkness unbroken by a ray of thought or sensation, adreamless inanition, a vast space of peace. The tumult of his mind hadswelled 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 asthough it happened yesterday--clearer perhaps, than if it had happenedyesterday. "

It was the Isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer ayoung man. The hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of thefashionable length, was iron grey and clipped close, and the face thathad been pink and white was buff and ruddy. He had a pointed beard shotwith 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 Londonsolicitor and next of kin to Graham, the man who had fallen into thetrance. And the two men stood side by side in a room in a house inLondon regarding his recumbent figure. 

It was a yellow figure lying lax upon a water-bed and clad in a flowingshirt, a figure with a shrunken face and a stubby beard, lean limbs andlank nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. This glass seemedto mark off the sleeper from the reality of life about him, he was athing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality. The two men stood close tothe glass, peering in. 

"The thing gave me a shock, " said Isbister "I feel a queer sort ofsurprise even now when I think of his white eyes. They were white, youknow, 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 tooserious a thing for much holiday keeping. I've been in America most ofthe 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 blackand white, very soon--at least for a mediocre man, and I jumped on toprocess. Those posters on the Cliffs at Dover are by my people. "

"Good posters, " admitted the solicitor, "though I was sorry to see themthere. "

"Last as long as the cliffs, if necessary, " exclaimed Isbister withsatisfaction. "The world changes. When he fell asleep, twenty yearsago, 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 wouldglorify the whole blessed coast of England, from Land's End round againto 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 seeingyou, 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 theseats 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 atWookey--a boy. I missed all that.... What a fuss we had with him! Mylandlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queerwhen he was rigid. We had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. Andthe Boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the G. P. Beforehim--was at him until nearly two, with, me and the landlord holdinglights and so forth. "

"It was a cataleptic rigour at first, wasn't it?"

"Stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. You might have stood him onhis head and he'd have stopped. I never saw such stiffness. Of coursethis"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"isquite different. And, of course, 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 feelall--ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly littlethings, not dynamos--"

"Induction coils. "

"Yes. You could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. There was just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows wereshivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, andhim--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. Well, it made medream. "

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 aseat vacant and marked 'engaged. ' No feeling, no digestion, no beatingof the heart--not a flutter. _That_ doesn't make me feel as if there wasa man present. In a sense it's more dead than death, for these doctorstell me that even the hair has stopped growing. Now with the properdead, 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 strangestate, in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance unprecedented inmedical history. Trances had lasted for as much as a year before--but atthe end of that time it had ever been waking or a death; sometimes firstone and then the other. Isbister noted the marks the physicians hadmade in injecting nourishment, for that device had been resorted to topostpone collapse; he pointed them out to Warming, who had been tryingnot to see them. 

"And while he has been lying here, " said Isbister, with the zest of alife freely spent, "I have changed my plans in life; married, raiseda family, my eldest lad--I hadn't begun to think of sons then--is anAmerican citizen, and looking forward to leaving Harvard. There'sa 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 himwhen I was still only a lad. And he looks a young man still. Yellowperhaps. 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 somemoderate property of his own?"

"That is so, " said Warming. He coughed primly. "As it happens--havecharge of it. "

"Ah!" Isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "No doubt--his keep here isnot expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?"

"It has. He will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when heslept. "

"As a business man, " said Isbister, "that thought has naturally been inmy mind. I have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. That he knowswhat he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. If he hadlived straight on--"

"I doubt if he would have premeditated as much, " said Warming. "He wasnot a far-sighted man. In fact--"

"Yes?"

"We differed on that point. I stood to him somewhat in the relation ofa guardian. You have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise thatoccasionally a certain friction--. But even if that was the case, thereis a doubt whether he will ever wake. This sleep exhausts slowly, butit 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 changethese twenty years. It's Rip Van Winkle come real. "

"It's Bellamy, " said Warming. "There has been a lot of change certainly. And, among other changes, I have changed. I am an old man. "

Isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "I shouldn'thave thought it. "

"I was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to hisbankers--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 unavoidablecuriosity. "He may go on for years yet, " he said, and had a moment ofhesitation. "We have to consider that. His affairs, you know, may fallsome day into the hands of--someone else, you know. "

"That, if you will believe me, Mr. Isbister, is one of the problems mostconstantly before my mind. We happen to be--as a matter of fact, thereare no very trustworthy connections of ours. It is a grotesque andunprecedented position. "

"It is, " said Isbister. "As a matter of fact, it's a case for a publictrustee, if only we had such a functionary. "

"It seems to me it's a case for some public body, some practicallyundying guardian. If he really is going on living--as the doctors, someof them, think. As a matter of fact, I have gone to one or two publicmen about it. But, so far, nothing has been done. "

"It wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--theBritish Museum Trustees, or the Royal College of Physicians. Sounds abit 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. "Andcompound interest has a way of mounting up. "

"It has, " said Warming. "And now the gold supplies are running shortthere is a tendency towards ... Appreciation. "

"I've felt that, " said Isbister with a grimace. "But it makes it betterfor him. "

"If he wakes. "

"If he wakes, " echoed Isbister. "Do you notice the pinched-ill look ofhis nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?"

Warming looked and thought for a space. "I doubt if he will wake, " hesaid at last. 

"I never properly understood, " said Isbister, "what it was brought thison. He told me something about overstudy. I've often been curious. "

"He was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. He hadgrave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as arelief 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 thisfor him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote--a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them arealready exploded, some of them are established facts. But for themost part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is ofunanticipated things. He will have much to learn, much to unlearn, whenhe wakes. If ever a waking comes. "

"I'd give anything to be there, " said Isbister, "just to hear what hewould say to it all. "

"So would I, " said Warming. "Aye! so would I, " with an old man's suddenturn to self pity. "But I shall never see him wake. "

He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "He will never wake, "he said at last. He sighed "He will never wake 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, theflux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis ofthe unconscious to the subconscious, the sub-conscious to dawningconsciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as ithappens to most of us after the night's sleep, so it was with Graham atthe end of his vast slumber. A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, acloudy 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 thetime, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strangescenery, as if from another planet. There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name--he could not tell whatname--that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgottensensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, theeffort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama ofdazzling unstable confluent scenes. 

Graham became aware his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliarthing. 

It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. Hemoved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went upbeyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did itmatter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a darkdepression. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towardsthe hour of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and footstepshastily receding. 

The movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physicalweakness. He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in thevalley--but he could not recall that white edge. He must have slept. Heremembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He recalled the cliff andwaterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to apasser-by. 

How long had he slept? What was that sound of pattering feet? And thatrise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out alanguid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habitto place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. This wasso unexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolledover, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. Theeffort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak--andamazed. 

He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but hismind was quite clear--evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was notin a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a verysoft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattresswas partly transparent, a fact he observed with a strange sense ofinsecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. Abouthis arm--and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry andyellow--was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly thatit seemed to pass into his skin above and below. And this strange bedwas placed in a case of greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), abar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately madeapparatus, for the most part quite strange appliances, though a maximumand minimum thermometer was recognisable. 

The slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surroundedhim on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was avast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and simplewhite archway facing him. Close to the walls of the cage were articlesof furniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like theside of a fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a numberof dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. Herealised that he was intensely hungry. 

He could see no human being, and after a period of hesitation scrambledoff the translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floorof his little apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however, and staggered and put his hand against the glasslike pane before him tosteady himself. For a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward likea distended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished--apricked bubble. He reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatly astonished. He caught at the table to save himself, knocking oneof the glasses to the floor--it rang but did not break--and sat down inone of the armchairs. 

When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from thebottle and drank--a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with apleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support andstimulus. He put down the vessel and looked about him. 

The apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that thegreenish transparency that had intervened was removed. The archway hesaw led to a flight of steps, going downward without the intermediationof a door, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage ran betweenpolished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements and voices and a deepundeviating 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 himfor covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs besidehim. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling. 

His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and hadbeen removed in his sleep. But here? And who were those people, thedistant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out andpartially drank another glass of the colourless fluid. 

What was this place?--this place that to his senses seemed subtlyquivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean andbeautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that theroof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, ashe looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and cameagain and passed. "Beat, beat, " that sweeping shadow had a note of itsown 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 hisway towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on thecorner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and savedhimself by catching at one of the blue pillars. 

The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple, and ended remotelyin a railed space like a balcony, brightly lit and projecting into aspace of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. Beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural forms. The tumult ofvoices rose now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backsto him, gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, werethree figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright softcolourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over thebalcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once somebrightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into theair perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded likeEnglish, there was a reiteration of "Wake!" He heard some indistinctshrill cry, and abruptly the 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 facechanged, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turnedswiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed anexpression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe. 

Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillarcollapsed 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 a clamorous ringing ofbells. He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between lifeand 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 warmthat heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removedfrom his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still abouthim, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it wasaltogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had beenon the balcony, was looking keenly into his face. 

Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, thatsuggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shoutingtogether. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenlyclosed. 

Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly. "Wheream I?"

He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voiceseemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled. 

The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with aslightly 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 phialwas handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mistplayed over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshmentincreased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction. 

"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's eyes reopened. He was apleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, anda 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 youeverything 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 wereregarding 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 atBoscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. Hecleared 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?" saidthe young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled. 

"He means send an electric telegram, " volunteered the third, apleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. The flaxen-bearded man gavea cry of comprehension. "How stupid of me! You may be sure everythingshall be done, sir, " he said to Graham. "I am afraid it would bedifficult to--wire to your cousin. He is not in London now. But don'ttrouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long timeand the important thing is to get over that, sir. " (Graham concluded theword was sir, but this man pronounced it "Sire. ")

"Oh!" said Graham, and became quiet. 

It was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliardress 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 flashof suspicion. Surely this wasn't some hall of public exhibition! If itwas he would give Warming a piece of his mind. But it scarcely hadthat character. And in a place of public exhibition he would not havediscovered himself naked. 

Then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. There wasno perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. Abruptlyhe knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by someprocesses of thought reading he interpreted the awe in the faces thatpeered 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 themoment of his discovery. He looked at his bare feet, regarding thensilently. His impulse to speak passed. He was trembling exceedingly. 

They gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meatytaste, and the assurance of returning strength grew. 

"That--that makes me feel better, " he said hoarsely, and there weremurmurs of respectful approval. He knew now quite clearly. He made tospeak 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 quicklyat the others. 

"How long?"

"A very long time. "

"Yes--yes, " said Graham, suddenly testy. "But I want--Is it--it is--someyears? 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 hisknuckles and sat waiting for an answer. 

They spoke in undertones. 

"Five or six?" he asked faintly. "More?"

"Very much more than that. "

"Morel"

"More. "

He looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching themuscles 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 fromhis face with a lean hand. "Many years!" he repeated. He shut his eyestight, opened them, and sat looking about him, from one unfamiliar thingto 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 thana couple of centuries. "

_"What?"_ he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "Whosays--? 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 vastrepose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him. 

"Two hundred years, " he said again, with the figure of a great gulfopening 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 redbeard. 

There was a pause. Graham looked at their faces and saw that what he hadheard was indeed true. 

"But it can't be, " he said querulously. "I am dreaming. Trances. Trancesdon't last. That is not right--this is a joke you have played uponme! Tell me--some days ago, perhaps, I was walking along the coast ofCornwall--?"

His voice failed him. 

The man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "I'm not very strong inhistory, sir, " he said weakly, and glanced at the others. 

"That was it, sir, " said the youngster. "Boscastle, in the old Duchy ofCornwall--it's in the southwest country beyond the dairy meadows. Thereis a house there still. I have been there. "

"Boscastle!" Graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "That wasit--Boscastle. Little Boscastle. I fell asleep--somewhere there. I don'texactly 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 coldwithin him. "But if it is two hundred years, every soul I know, everyhuman being that ever I saw or spoke to before I went to sleep, must bedead. "

They did not answer him. 

"The Queen and the Royal Family, her Ministers, of Church and State. High and low, rich and poor, one with another--"

"Is there England still?"

"That's a comfort! Is there London?" E "This _is_ London, eh? And youare my assistant--custodian; assistant-custodian. And these--? Eh?Assistant-custodians to?"

He sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "But why am I here? No! Don'ttalk. Be quiet. Let me--"

He sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found anotherlittle glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. He took the dose. It wasalmost immediately sustaining. Directly he had taken it he began to weepnaturally and refreshingly. 

Presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a little foolishly. "But--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. He grimacedhysterically and covered up his face again. 

After a space he grew calm. He sat up, his hands hanging over his kneesin almost precisely the same attitude in which Isbister had found himon the cliff at Pentargen. His attention was attracted by a thickdomineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. "What areyou doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone willsuffer 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 Grahamlooking over his shoulder saw approaching a very short, fat, andthickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Verythick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over hisnose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidableexpression. He scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regardreturned to the man with the flaxen beard. "These others, " he said in avoice 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 atGraham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walkedstraight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. Andthen came a strange thing; a long strip of this apparently solid wallrolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with the new comer and the purple-robedman 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--uponthe treatment of their charge. He spoke clearly, but in phrases onlypartially intelligible to Graham. The awakening seemed not only a matterof surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. He was evidentlyprofoundly excited. 

"You must not confuse his mind by telling him things, " he repeated againand again. "You must not confuse his mind. "

His questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeperwith 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 manmet his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes, " saidthe thickset man. 

"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred--?" askedGraham. 

"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matterof fact. "

Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressedmouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is therea mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things havechanged tremendously, I suppose?" he said. 

"What is that shouting?" he asked abruptly. 

"Nothing, " said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'llunderstand better later--perhaps. As you say, things have changed. " Hespoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a mantrying to decide in an emergency. "We must get you clothes and so forth, at any rate. Better wait here until some can come. No one will come nearyou. 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 hurriedoff through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shoutinggrew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursedsuddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with anunfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising andfalling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows andsharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from thewoven tumult. 

Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For atime he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us theSleeper! 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. Butshout 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, " hesaid. "You cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--"

He rushed away, Graham shouting unanswered questions after him. In amoment he was back. 

"I can't tell you what is happening. It is too complex to explain. Ina moment you shall have your clothes made. Yes--in a moment. And thenI can take you away from here. You will find out our troubles soonenough. "

"But those voices. They were shouting--?"

"Something about the Sleeper--that's you. They have some twisted idea. Idon't know what it is. I know nothing. "

A shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remotenoises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliancesin the corner of the room. He listened for a moment, regarding a ball ofcrystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to thewall through which the two men had vanished. It rolled up again like acurtain, and he stood waiting. 

Graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength therestoratives had given him. He thrust one leg over the side of the couchand then the other. His head no longer swam. He could scarcely credithis rapid recovery. He sat feeling his limbs. 

The man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he didso the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thicksetman, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing atightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein. 

"This is the tailor, " said the thickset man with an introductorygesture. "It will never do for you to wear that black. I cannotunderstand how it got here. But I shall. I shall. You will be as rapidas possible?" he said to the tailor. 

The man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by Graham on thebed. His manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "You willfind the fashions altered, Sire, " he said. He glanced from under hisbrows at the thickset man. 

He opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliantfabrics poured out over his knees. "You lived, Sire, in a periodessentially cylindrical--the Victorian. With a tendency to thehemisphere in hats. Circular curves always. Now--" He flicked out alittle appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled theknob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashionon the dial, walking and turning. The tailor caught up a pattern ofbluish 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 ofthis?"

"What is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century. 

"In your days they showed you a fashion-plate, " said the tailor, "butthis is our modern development See here. " The little figure repeatedits evolutions, but in a different costume. "Or this, " and with a clickanother small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on tothe dial. The tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twicetowards the lift as he did these things. 

It rumbled again, and a crop-haired anaemic lad with features of theChinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with acomplicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors intothe room. Incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, Graham wasinvited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered someinstructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones andwith words Graham did not recognise. The boy then went to conduct anincomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out anumber of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them outuntil the discs were flat against the body of Graham, one at eachshoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so thatat 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 afaint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in anothermoment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailorreplaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard profferedhim a little glass of some refreshing fluid. Graham saw over the rim ofthe glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity. 

The thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned andwent through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise ofa distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. The cropheaded ladhanded the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixingthis in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in anineteenth century printing machine. Then they ran the entire thing onits easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner wherea twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. They made someconnexion and the machine became energetic and swift. 

"What is that doing?" asked Graham, pointing with the empty glass tothe busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "Isthat--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 inan undertone, "He is Howard, your chief guardian. You see, Sire, --it'sa little difficult to explain. The Council appoints a guardian andassistants. This hall has under certain restrictions been public. Inorder that people might satisfy themselves. We have barred the doorwaysfor the first time. But I think--if you don't mind, I will leave him toexplain. "

"Odd" said Graham. "Guardian? Council?" Then turning his back on the newcomer, he asked in an undertone, "Why is this man glaring at me? Is he amesmerist?"

"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 anunsteady mind. "Sixdoz lions?" he said. 

"Didn't you have lions? I suppose not. You had the old pounds? They areour 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 Arabsystem--tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numeralsnow. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures fora dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, adozen 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 sawthe tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably newgarments over his arm. The crop-headed boy, by means of one finger, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he hadarrived. Graham stared at the completed suit. "You don't mean to say--!"

"Just made, " said the tailor. He dropped the garments at the feet ofGraham, walked to the bed on which Graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking glass. Ashe did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. Theman with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out bythe archway. 

The tailor was assisting Graham into a dark purple combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back fromthe corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from thebalcony. They began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing hadan unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came aI complex but graceful garment of bluish white, and I Graham was clothedin the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven andshaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinableunprecedented 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, reopenedthem, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on Graham. Then hestopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him. 

"A seat, " said Howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-beardedman had a chair behind Graham. "Sit down, please, " said Howard. 

Graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wildeyed man he saw theglint of steel. 

"Don't you understand, Sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurriedpoliteness. "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 theworld. "

Graham sat down abruptly. The flaxen-bearded man disappeared. Thecapillotomist came forward with graceful gestures, examined Graham'sears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have satdown again to regard him but for Howard's audible impatience. Forthwithwith rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements heshaved Graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged hishair. All this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air ofa poet inspired. And as soon as he had finished Graham was handed a pairof shoes. 

Suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery inthe corner--"At once--at once. The people know all over the city. Workis being stopped. Work is being stopped. Wait for nothing, but come. "

This shout appeared to perturb Howard exceedingly. By his gestures itseemed to Graham that he hesitated between two directions. Abruptlyhe went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the littlecrystal ball. As he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from thearchway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mightysound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if recedingswiftly. It drew Graham after it with an irresistible attraction. Heglanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. In two strideshe was down the steps and in the passage, and, in a score he was outupon 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 exclamationof surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of peoplecame from the spacious area below. 

His first impression was of overwhelming architecture. The place intowhich he looked was an aisle of Titanic buildings, curving spaciously ineither direction. Overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across thehuge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut outthe sky. Gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeamsthat filtered down through the girders and wires. Here and there agossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across thechasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. A cliff of edificehung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the oppositefacade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circularperforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vastwindows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. Athwart theseran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. Here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness werefastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on theopposite side of the space, and even as Graham noted these a remoteand tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higherfastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledgeof masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent fromthe line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart into hismouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a roundopening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as hecame out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed tohim 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 theonly roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostlingrivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. But this roadway was threehundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle, the lowest part. For a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. Then heunderstood. 

Under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to Graham'sright, an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth centuryexpress train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlappingslats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvaturesof 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. Fromthis nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to thecentre of the space. Each moved to the right, each perceptibly slowerthan the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough topermit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walkuninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. Beyondthis middle way was another series of endless platforms rushing withvarying pace to Graham's left. And seated in crowds upon the two widestand swiftest platforms, or stepping from one to another down the steps, or swarming over the central space, was an innumerable and wonderfullydiversified multitude of people. 

"You must not stop here, " shouted Howard suddenly at his side. "You mustcome away at once. "

Graham made no answer. He heard without hearing. The platforms ran witha roar and the people were shouting. He perceived women and girlswith flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between thebreasts. These first came out of the confusion. Then he perceived thatthe dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue thatthe 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 rushingplatforms before him were suddenly spattered with the pale buff ofhuman faces, and then still more thickly. He saw pointing fingers. Heperceived that the motionless central area of this huge arcade justopposite to the balcony was densely crowded with blue-clad people. Somesort of struggle had sprung into life. People seemed to be pushed up therunning platforms on either side, and carried away against their will. They would spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of theconfusion, and run back towards the conflict. 

"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper, " shouted voices. "That isnever the Sleeper, " shouted others. More and more faces were turned tohim. At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings, pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with peopleascending out of them and descending into them. The struggle it seemedcentred about the one of these nearest to him. People were runningdown the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform toplatform. The clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to dividetheir interest between this point and the balcony. A number of sturdylittle figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodicallytogether, were employed it seemed in preventing access to thisdescending staircase. About them a crowd was rapidly accumulating. Their brilliant colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of theirantagonists, 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 thatthe people on the nearer platform were standing up. The nearer swifterplatform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across thespace the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowdedand passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd hadgathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying massof people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminousincessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, awaving of garments and cries of "Stop the ways!" They were also cryinganother name strange to Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog. " The slowerplatforms were soon thick with active people, running against themovement so as to keep themselves opposite to him. 

"Stop the ways, " they cried. Agile figures ran up swiftly from thecentre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him, shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to thecentral way. One thing he distinguished: "It is indeed the Sleeper. Itis indeed the Sleeper, " they testified. 

For a space Graham stood without a movement. Then he became vividlyaware that all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderfulpopularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved hisarm. He was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. Thetumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. Hebecame aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of menin trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behindhim, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; hesuddenly perceived that his guardian Howard was back again and grippinghis arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear. 

He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back, " he heard. "Theywill stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion. "

He perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillarsbehind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tallman in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, andall 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 faceand 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. Some one gripped his arm.... He was being dragged away. Itseemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shoutsthat had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into thepassages 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 alonewith 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 momentwhen Graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely fiveminutes. And as yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung abouthim, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all inthis remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of theirrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He wasstill detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved inlife. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framedin the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thingwitnessed 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 wakingjust now, has a sort of connexion--"

He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stoppedabruptly. 

"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 liftslow. 

"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way abouta little, " said Graham puzzled. "It. Will be--it is bound to beperplexing. At present it is all so strange. Anything seems possible. Anything In the details even. Your counting, I understand, isdifferent. "

The lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very longpassage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number oftubes and big cables. 

"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? Whatplace is it?"

"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and soforth. "

"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are yougoverned? 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 toyou. 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 theCouncil. "

Graham's attention was divided between the urgent necessity of hisinquiries and the people in the passages and halls they were traversing. For a moment his mind would be concentrated upon Howard and the haltinganswers he made, and then he would lose the thread in response to somevivid unexpected impression. Along the passages, in the halls, half thepeople seemed to be men in the red uniform. The pale blue canvasthat 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 theypassed. 

He had a clear vision of entering a long corridor, and there were anumber of girls sitting on low seats and as though in a class. He sawno teacher, but only a novel apparatus from which he fancied a voiceproceeded. The girls regarded him and his conductor, he thought, withcuriosity and astonishment. But he was hurried on before he could form aclear 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 personof importance. But then he was also merely Graham's guardian. That wasodd. 

There came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hungso that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and frothereon, but no more of them. Then vague impressions of galleries andof casual astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two ofthem with their red-clad guard. 

The stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. He wasspeedily fatigued by this excessive haste. He asked Howard to slackenhis speed. Presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the greatstreet space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were toohigh for him to see the moving platforms below. But he saw people goingto and fro along cables and along strange, frail-looking ridges. 

And 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 clearthat it made him giddy even to remember it. The floor of it also was ofglass. From his memory of the cliffs between New Quay and Boscastle, soremote in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him thatthey 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 fore-shortened, struggling and gesticulating still towardsthe little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where hehad so recently been standing. A thin haze and the glare of the mightyglobes of light obscured everything. A man seated in a little open-workcradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrowbridge, rushing down a cable as swiftly almost as if he were falling. Graham stopped involuntarily to watch this strange passenger vanish ina great circular opening below, and then his eyes went back to thetumultuous struggle. 

Along one of the swifter ways rushed a thick crowd of red spots. Thisbroke up into individuals as it approached the balcony, and went pouringdown the slower ways towards the dense struggling crowd on the centralarea. These men in red appeared to be armed with sticks or truncheons;they seemed to be striking and thrusting. A great shouting, cries ofwrath, screaming, burst out and came up to Graham, faint and thin. "Goon, " cried Howard, laying hands on him. 

Another man rushed down a cable. Graham suddenly glanced up to seewhence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network ofcables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vans ofwindmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. ThenHoward had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a littlenarrow 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 themseemed ready to enforce his orders. 

Some negroes in a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeareddown the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter thathad seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham foundhimself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. Theattendant in black and yellow crossed this, thrust up a second shutterand stood waiting. 

This place had the appearance of an ante-room. He saw a number of peoplein the central space, and at the opposite end a large and imposingdoorway at the top of a flight of steps, heavily curtained but giving aglimpse of some still larger hall beyond. He perceived white men inred and other negroes in black and yellow standing stiffly about thoseportals. 

As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "TheSleeper, " 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 thatpassed round the side of the great hall he had already seen through thecurtains. He entered the place at the corner, so that he receivedthe fullest impression of its huge proportions. The black in the waspuniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valvebehind him. 

Compared with any of the places Graham had see thus far, this secondhall appeared to be decorate with extreme richness. On a pedestal atthe remote end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was agigantic white figure of Atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon hisbowed shoulders. It was the first thing to strike his attention, it wasso vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. Save forthis figure and for a dais in the centre, the wide floor of the placewas 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 groupof seven men who stood about a table on it, and gave an inkling of itsproportions. They were all dressed in white robes, they seemed to havearisen that moment from their seats, and they were regarding Grahamsteadfastly. At the end of the table he perceived the glitter of somemechanical appliances. 

Howard led him along the end gallery until they were opposite thismighty labouring figure. Then he stopped. The two men in red who hadfollowed 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 ofthe 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 otherman, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, whostood watching him and whispering together. 

The Council? He perceived there were now eight, though how the newcomerhad arrived he had not observed. They made no gestures of greeting; theystood regarding him as in the nineteenth century a group of men mighthave stood in the street regarding a distant balloon that had suddenlyfloated into view. What council could it be that gathered there, thatlittle body of men beneath the significant white Atlas, secluded fromevery eavesdropper in this impressive spaciousness? And why should hebe brought to them, and be looked at strangely and spoken of inaudibly?Howard appeared beneath, walking quickly across the polished floortowards them. As he drew near he bowed and performed certain peculiarmovements, apparently of a ceremonious nature. Then he ascended thesteps of the dais, and stood by the apparatus at the end of the table. 

Graham watched that visible inaudible conversation. Occasionally, oneof the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his earsin vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. Heglanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When helooked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head likea man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of thewhite-robed men rapping the table. 

The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's sense. Hiseyes rose to the still giant at whose feet the Council sat. Thence theywandered at last to the walls of the hall. It was decorated in longpainted panels of a quasi-Japanese type, many of them very beautiful. These panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of darkmetal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, andthe great structural lines of the interior. The facile grace of thesepanels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centreof the scheme. Graham's eyes came back to the Council, and Howardwas descending the steps. As he drew nearer his features could bedistinguished, and Graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out hischeeks. His countenance was still disturbed when presently he reappearedalong the gallery. 

"This way, " he said concisely, and they went on in silence to a littledoor that opened at their approach. The two men in red stopped on eitherside of this door. Howard and Graham passed in, and Graham, glancingback, saw the white-robed Council still standing in a close group andlooking at him. Then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, andfor 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 contiguouschambers furnished in white and green. "What Council was that?" beganGraham. "What were they discussing? What have they to do with me?"Howard closed the door carefully, heaved a huge sigh, and said somethingin an undertone. He walked slanting ways 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 bareunqualified statement would give you false impressions. As a matter offact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, andthe fortune of your cousin Warming which was left to you--and certainother beginnings--have become very considerable. And in other waysthat will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person ofsignificance--of very considerable significance--involved in the world'saffairs. "

He stopped. 

"Yes?" said Graham. 

"We have grave social troubles. "

"Yes?"

"Things have come to such a pass that, in fact, is advisable to secludeyou 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 ofimportance. What was that shouting I heard? Why is a great multitudeshouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men inwhite 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. Yourawakening. 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 shouldbe told what is happening. 

"You must wait. Really you must wait. "

Graham sat down abruptly. "I suppose since I have waited so long toresume life, " he said, "that I must wait a little longer. "

"That is better, " said Howard. "Yes, that is much better. And I mustleave you alone. For a space. While I attend the discussion in theCouncil. I am sorry. "

He went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished. 

Graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened insome way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the roomrestlessly, made the circuit of the room, and sat down. He remainedsitting for some time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting hisfinger nails and trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressionsof this first hour of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, theendless series of chambers and passages, the great struggle that roaredand splashed through these strange ways, the little group of remoteunsympathetic men beneath the colossal Atlas, Howard's mysteriousbehaviour. There was an inkling of some vast inheritance already inhis mind--a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedentedimportance and opportunity. What had he to do? And this room's secludedsilence was eloquent of imprisonment!

It came into Graham's mind with irresistible conviction that this seriesof magnificent impressions was a dream. He tried to shut his eyes andsucceeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening. 

Presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointmentsof the two small rooms in which he found himself. 

In a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. Hewas clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a littlegreyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streakednow with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar butgraceful manner. He seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. For a momenthe did not perceive this was himself. 

A flash of laughter came with the recognition. "To call on old Warminglike this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!"

Then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the fewfamiliar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of hisamusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had diedmany score of years ago. The thought smote him abruptly and keenly;he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a whiteconsternation. 

The tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge facade ofthat wonderful street reasserted itself. The shouting multitudes cameback clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councilorsin 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. Curiositykept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room, he perceived, was high, and its ceiling dome shaped', with an oblong aperture in thecentre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vans seemed tobe rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint hummingnote of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. Asthese vans sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transientglimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star. 

This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of theserooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about thecornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that alongall the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard he hadobserved no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windowson the street indeed, but were they for light? Or was the whole city litday and night for evermore, so that there was no night there?

And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in eitherroom. Was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, orwas the whole City uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested inthese questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, thesimply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labourof bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was acurious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form andcolour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several verycomfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying severalbottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substancelike jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, nowriting materials. "The world has changed indeed, " he said. 

He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows ofpeculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white thatharmonized With the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre ofthis side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having awhite smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitoryidea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute forbooks, but at first it did not seem so. 

The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemedlike Russian. Then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English aboutcertain of the words. 

 "oi Man huwdbi Kin"

forced itself on him as "The Man who would be King. " "Phoneticspelling, " he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, thenhe recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. Butthis thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled outthe titles of two adjacent cylinders. 'The Heart of Darkness, ' he hadnever heard of before nor 'The Madonna of the Future'--no doubt if theywere 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 asort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on theupper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. He pressedthis and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voicesand music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. Hesuddenly 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, butthey were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like realityviewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented aman pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty butpetulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed sostrange to Graham. "I have worked, " said the man, "but what have youbeen doing?"

"Ah!" said Graham. He forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself named, heard "when the Sleeperwakes, " used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passedhimself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knewthose two people like intimate friends. 

At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of theapparatus 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 direeconomic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidentsthat conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes ofdubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in hisfirst impression of the city ways appeared again and again asthe costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story wascontemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. And the end hadbeen a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness. 

He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in thelatter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little greenand white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his firstawakening. 

He stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. Theclearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vastplace of streets, the ambiguous Council, the swift phases of his wakinghour, came back. These people had spoken of the Council with suggestionsof a vague universality of power. And they had spoken of the Sleeper; ithad 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 ofthe revolving fan. As the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noiseof machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. 

Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceivedthe 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 openingthe padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. His feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious forinformation. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presentlyhe became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for freshsensations. 

He went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzledout the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, itcame into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed thelanguage so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundredyears. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musicalfantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. Hepresently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version ofthe story of Tannhauser. The music was unfamiliar. But the rendering wasrealistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tannhauser did notgo to a Venusberg, but to a Pleasure City. What was a Pleasure City? Adream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer. 

He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavour ofstrangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He likedit 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-secondcentury Venusberg. He forgot the part played by the model in nineteenthcentury art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry andhalf ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. Hepulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a meansof stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark stung andconvulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next dayto replace these Tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found theapparatus broken.... 

He struck out a path oblique to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable vast impressions. The things he had derivedfrom 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 yearsof 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 tothink what future we were making. And here it is!"

"What have they got to, what has been done? How do I come into the midstof it all?" The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people. But conflicts in the city ways! And thesystematised sensuality of a class of rich men!

He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose Socialistic Utopia had sooddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia, no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that theancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand andabject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of theessential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not onlywere the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the streetgigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness ofHoward, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent. What countrywas he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely "un-English. " Hismind glanced at the rest of the world, and saw only an enigmatical veil. 

He prowled about his apartment, examining everything as a caged animalmight do. He felt very tired, felt that feverish exhaustion that doesnot admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator tocatch some distant echo of the tumults he felt must be proceeding in thecity. 

He began to talk to himself. "Two hundred and three years!" he said tohimself over and over again, laughing stupidly. "Then I am two hundredand thirty-three years old! The oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven'treversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of theoldest. My claims are indisputable. Mumble, mumble. I remember theBulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. 'Tis a great age!Ha ha!" He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and thenlaughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realised that he wasbehaving foolishly. "Steady, " he said. "Steady!"

His pacing became more regular. "This new world, " he said. "I don'tunderstand it. _Why?_... But it is all _why!_"

"I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things Let me try andremember just how it began. "

He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his firstthirty years had become. He remembered fragments, for the most parttrivial moments, things of no great importance that he had observed. Hisboyhood seemed the most accessible at first, he recalled school booksand certain lessons in mensuration. Then he revived the more salientfeatures of his life, memories of the wife long since dead, her magicinfluence now gone beyond corruption, of his rivals and friends andbetrayers, of the swift decision of this issue and that, and then ofhis, last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of hisstrenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again;dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective orinjured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepeningmisery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted outof a life that had become intolerable. 

He reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts invain. It became an inextricable tangle. He saw the sky through theventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the darkrecesses of his memory. "I must sleep, " he said. It appeared as adelightful relief from this mental distress and from the growing painand heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed, lay downand was presently asleep. 

He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartmentsbefore he left them, for he remained imprisoned for three days. Duringthat time no one, except Howard, entered his prison. The marvel of hisfate 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 thisunaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining andnutritive fluids, and light and pleasant foods, quite strange to Graham. He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detailhe was increasingly obliging, but the bearing of Graham on the greatissues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond thesoundproof walls that enclosed him, he would not elucidate. He evaded, as politely as possible, every question on the position of affairs inthe 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 preventhim seeing, worked together in his mind. Almost every possibleinterpretation of his position he debated--even as it chanced, the rightinterpretation. Things that presently happened to him, came to him atlast credible, by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment ofhis release arrived, it found him prepared. 

Howard's bearing went far to deepen Graham's impression of his ownstrange importance; the door between its opening and closing seemed toadmit with him a breath of momentous happening. His enquiries becamemore definite and searching. Howard retreated through protests anddifficulties. The awakening was unforeseen, he repeated; it happened tohave fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion. 

"To explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half ofyears, " protested Howard. 

"The thing is this, " said Graham. "You are afraid of something I shalldo. In some way I am arbitrator--I might be arbitrator. "

"It is not that. But you have--I may tell you this much--the automaticincrease of your property puts great possibilities of interference inyour hands. And in certain other ways you have influence, with youreighteenth century notions. "

"Nineteenth century, " corrected Graham. 

"With your old world notions, anyhow, ignorant as you are of everyfeature 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 yourawakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. The Council hadsurrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact, wethought that you were dead--a mere arrest of decay. And--but it is toocomplex. 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 notbeing crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdomof the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now thantwo 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 sense ofcomplex concealment of which you are the salient point. 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 whohave put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it, Iam alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clearer and morevigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life. And I wantto _live_--"

"_Live!_"

Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in aneasy 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 anxiousthat 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 GrahamCompany? Suppose he were to accept the proposal, demand some sortof _company_? Would there be any possibilities of gathering fromthe conversation of this additional person some vague inkling ofthe struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? Hemeditated again, and the suggestion took colour. He turned on Howardabruptly. 

"What do you mean by company?"

Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Human beings, " hesaid, 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 sucha tedium as this--by feminine society, for instance. We think it noscandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city aclass, a necessary class, no longer despised--discreet--"

Graham stopped dead. 

"It would pass the time, " said Howard. "It is a thing I shouldperhaps have thought of before, but, as a matter of fact, so much ishappening--"

He indicated the exterior world. 

Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman thathis imagination suddenly created dominated his mind with an intenseattraction. 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 greatissue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as youcall it. Yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense--andDeath! Extinction! In my life before I slept I had worked outthat pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, amultitude--. And meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag. "

His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave hisclenched 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 keepme in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for nogood purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of theconsequences. Once I come at my power--"

He realised that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. Hestopped. 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 wasquick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again, and the man fromthe nineteenth century was alone. 

For a moment he stood rigid, with clenched hands half raised. Then heflung them down. "What a fool I have been!" he said, and gave way tohis anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a longtime he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at hisown folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this becausehe did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to hisanger--because he was afraid of Fear. 

Presently he found himself reasoning with himself This imprisonment wasunaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms--new legal forms--of thetime permitted it. It must, of course, be legal. These people were twohundred years further on in the march of civilisation than the Victoriangeneration. It was not likely they would be less--humane. Yet theyhad cleared their minds of formulae! Was humanity a formula as well aschastity?

His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him. The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, thoughfor the most part logically valid, were quite unavailing. "Why shouldanything be done to me?"

"If the worst comes to the worst, " he found himself saying at last, "Ican give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't theyask me for it instead of cooping me up?"

He returned to his former preoccupation with the Council's possibleintentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mindcircled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither couldhe escape into this vast, crowded world? He would be worse off thana Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into nineteenth century London. Andbesides, 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 sounaccountably the axis. A text, irrelevant enough and yet curiouslyinsistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This alsoa 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 andpermitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby. AndGraham, standing underneath, wrestling darkly with the unknown powersthat imprisoned him, and which he had now deliberately challenged, wasstartled 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. When a dark hand wasextended, the swift fan struck it, swung round and beat on with a littlebrownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began tofall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently. 

Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He lookedup again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone. 

He remained motionless--his every sense intent upon the flickering patchof darkness, for outside it was high night. He became aware of somefaint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. Theycame down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out ofthe uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashedwhite, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, heperceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him. 

Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. Hesaw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering. Thena smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vansstopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished beforethey touched the floor. "Don't be afraid, " said a voice. 

Graham stood under the fan. "Who are you?" he whispered. 

For a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then thehead of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. His face appearednearly inverted to Graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakesof snow upon it. His arm went up into the darkness holding somethingunseen. He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of hisforehead were swollen. He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain hisposition. 

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 wastowards Graham. He appeared to be listening. Suddenly there was a hastyexclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape thesweep of the released fan. And when Graham peered up there was nothingvisible but the slowly falling snow. 

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to theventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; thefans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this timein 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 toyou 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 wasbleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Standaway from me, " he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands andone shoulder at Graham's feet. The released ventilator whirled noisily. The stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to abruised shoulder, and with his bright eyes on Graham. 

"You are indeed the Sleeper, " he said. "I saw you asleep. When it wasthe law that anyone might see you. "

"I am the man who was in the trance, " said Graham. "They have imprisonedme here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days. "

The intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly atthe door, and suddenly left Graham and ran towards it, shouting quickincoherent words. A bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and hebegan 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 theshoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. Hefell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. Heknelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him. 

"I did not see you, Sire, " panted the man. He rose and assisted Grahamto arise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy blowson the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face, and ashivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay flat upon thefloor. 

"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 ventilatoras another fragment of metal fell heavily. 

"We want you to come, Sire, " panted the newcomer, and Graham glancingat his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on hisforehead, 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 havespies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this veryday--either to drug or kill you. And everything is ready. The people aredrilled, the wind-vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearersare with us. We have the halls crowded--shouting. The whole city shoutsagainst 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 hissingwith his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them toconceal 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 heavyface downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, thetray tilted sideways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. Hewent down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor ofthe outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied hisface 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 lightshad been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator withghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Threeknelt on the fan. Some dim thing--a ladder was being lowered through theopening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light. 

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swiftalacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears ofthe Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not amoment. 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 thelower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearestman, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride overHoward 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 thenhe was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside theventilating funnel. 

He shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Halfa dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands andface and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastlyviolet white, and then everything was dark again. 

He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure whichhad replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces ofVictorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with hugeserpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circularwheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic throughthe darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as thefitful white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with atransient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; andhere and there, low down! some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanismflickered with livid sparks. 

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stoodabout him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture abouthim, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Thingswere 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 flatroof in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Grahamobeyed. 

"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between themand 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 grewnarrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" hepanted, but received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on. They came to a sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to thedirection they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. Grahamlooked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others. 

"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmillspinning high in the air. "Stoop, " said Graham's guide, and they avoidedan endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "Thisway!" 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 willgo first, " said the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed. Then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to thesnowy darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the side once andthe gulf was black. For a moment he regretted his flight. He dared notlook 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 flatspace damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucentto lights that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstablelooking substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came toand 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 ashouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a newspurt of haste. They clambered panting to a space of huge windmills, oneso vast that only the lower edge of its vans came rushing into sight andrushed up again and was lost in the night and the snow. They hurried fora time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and cameat last above a place of moving platforms like the place into whichGraham had looked from the balcony. They crawled across the slopingtransparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on handsand knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall. 

For the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazysuggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparentroof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down uponit all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave wayto vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. Farbelow, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleepingcity in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on theirincessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot alongthe drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It waslike peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below himwith 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 withthawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he couldnot 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 slidbackward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalancheof snow While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if somebroken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feetankle deep in slush thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. Hisguide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse. 

Through the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vastwindmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheelswas pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling ofextraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from everypoint of the compass. 

"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent ofterror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day. 

Above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appearedvast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in illimitablevistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate thesnowfall they glared. 

"Get on this, " cried Graham's conductor, and thrust him forward to along grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightlysloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham's benurrled feet, and afaint eddy of steam rose from it. 

"Come on!" shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ranswiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of thenext 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 blackshadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham'sconductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways andvanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a hugesupport. 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 snowhad now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again acrossthe picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastlywhite, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthystrips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. Allabout them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as itseemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely movingin the lull, I passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper upinto 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. Andwith all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive anddesign, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of allhuman presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted andunfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield. 

"They will be chasing us, " cried the leader. "We are scarcely halfwaythere yet. Cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least untilit snows more thickly again. "

His teeth chattered in his head. 

"Where are the markets?" asked Graham staring out. "Where are all thepeople?"

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 whirlingeddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and largeand very swift. It came down in a steep curve and swept round, widewings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rosewith an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontallyforward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks ofsnow. And, through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, veryminute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed tohim, with field glasses. For a second they were clear, then hazy througha thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they weregone. 

"Now!" cried his companion. "Come!"

He pulled Graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were runningheadlong down the arcade of ironwork beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on himsuddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. Itextended as far as he could see right and left. It seemed to cut offtheir 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 feelfor something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edgeinto the gulf. His head reappeared. "It is a ledge, " he whispered. "Inthe dark all the way along. Do as I did. "

Graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, andpeered into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courageneither to go on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felthis guide's hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of slidingover the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in aslushy gutter, impenetrably dark. 

"This way, " whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutterthrough the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. Theycontinued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundredstages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degreesof cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel hishands and feet. 

The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feetbelow the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like theghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end ofa cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible anddropping into impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against hisguide's. 

"Still!" whispered the latter very softly. 

He looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machinegliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band ofsnow-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 someindistinct tackle. 

"What is that?" asked Graham. 

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

The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two cross bars intoGraham's hand. Graham could not see them, he ascertained their form byfeeling. They were slung by thin cords to the cable. On the cord werehand grips of some soft elastic substance. "Put the cross between yourlegs, " whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. Griptightly, 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 afterwardsthat darkness hid his face. He said nothing. He began to trembleviolently. He looked sideways at the swift shadow that swallowed up thesky 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 ofhimself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forwardinto the pit of that darkness, seated on the cross wood and holdingthe ropes with the clutch of death. Something cracked, something rappedsmartly against a wall. He heard the pulley of the cradle hum on itsrope. He heard the aeronauts shout. He felt a pair of knees digging intohis back.... He was sweeping headlong through the air, falling throughthe air. All his strength was in his hands. He would have screamed buthe had no breath. 

He shot into a blinding light that made him grip the tighter. Herecognised the great passage with the running ways, the hanging lightsand interlacing girders. They rushed upward and by him. He had amomentary impression of a great circular aperture yawning to swallow himup. 

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 brightlylit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. Thepeople! His people! A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and hiscable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt hewas travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. He distinguishedshouts of "Saved! The Master. He is safe!" The stage rushed up towardshim 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 nolonger gliding along the cable but falling with it. There was a tumultof yells, screams and cries. He felt something soft against his extendedhand, and the impact of a broken fall quivering through his arm... 

He wanted to be still and the people were lifting him. He believedafterwards he was carried to the platform and given some drink, but hewas never sure. He did not notice what became of his guide. When hismind was clear again he was on his feet; eager hands were assisting himto stand. He was in a big alcove, occupying the position that in hisprevious experience had been devoted to the lower boxes. If this wasindeed a theatre. 

A mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of acountless 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 sawno individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of wavingarms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouringover him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, greatarchways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vastarena of people, densely packed and cheering. Across the nearer spacelay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut by the menof the flying machine at its upper end, and had crumpled down into thehall. Men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. But the whole effectwas vague, the very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of thevoices. 

He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported himby one arm. "Let me go into a little room, " he said, weeping; "a littleroom, " and could say no more. A man in black stepped forward, took hisdisengaged arm. He was aware of officious men opening a door beforehim. Someone guided him to a seat. He staggered. He sat down heavily andcovered his face with his hands; he was trembling violently, his nervouscontrol was at an end. He was relieved of his cloak, he could notremember how; his purple hose he saw were black with wet. People wererunning about him, things were happening, but for some time he gave noheed to them. 

He had escaped. A myriad of cries told him that. He was safe. These werethe 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 theshouting of innumerable men. 

CHAPTER IX. THE PEOPLE MARCH

He became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon hisattention, looked up and discovered this was a dark young man in ayellow garment. He took the dose forthwith, and in a moment he wasglowing. A tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder, and pointedto the half open door into the hall. This man was shouting close tohis ear and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendousuproar from the great theatre. Behind the man was a girl in a silverygrey robe, whom Graham, even in this confusion, perceived to bebeautiful. Her dark eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, -were fixed onhim, her lips trembled apart. A partially opened door gave a glimpseof the crowded hall, and admitted a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping and shouting that died away and began again, and rose to athunderous pitch, and so continued intermittently all the time thatGraham remained in the little room. He watched the lips of the man inblack and gathered that he was making some clumsy explanation. 

He stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood upabruptly; 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 searchedtheir 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 half the world. "

He did not believe he heard aright. He resisted the persuasion. Hepretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. "Ihave been awake three days--a prisoner three days. I judge there is somestruggle 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 itconcern 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 havegone mad. "

"Who are those Councillors under the Atlas? Why should they try to drugme?"

"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 worldis on your shoulders. They rule it in your name. "

The sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by onemonotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, camea deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted thepeople in the little room could not hear each other shout. 

Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he hadjust heard. "The Council, " he repeated blankly, and then snatched at aname that had struck him. "But who is Ostrog?" he said. 

"He is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. Our Leader--in yourname. "

"In my name?--And you? Why is he not here?"

"He--has deputed us. I am his brother--his half-brother, Lincoln. Hewants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him. Thatis why he has sent. He is at the wind-vane offices directing. The peopleare 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 redaquiline nose and bushy moustache. "No one expected you to wake. No oneexpected you to wake. They were cunning. Damned tyrants! But they weretaken 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 rumourof fighting beginning. "

The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. "Ostrog has itplanned. Trust him. We have our organisations ready. We shall seize theflying 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 policehave gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "Itis now or never. The Council is rocking--They cannot trust even theirdrilled men--"

"Hear the people calling to you!"

Graham's mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds, now dark andhopeless, now clear and ghastly. He was Master of the Earth, he was aman sodden with thawing snow. Of all his fluctuating impressions thedominant ones presented an antagonism; on the one hand was the WhiteCouncil, powerful, disciplined, few, the White Council from which hehad just escaped; and on the other, monstrous crowds, packed masses ofindistinguishable people clamouring his name, hailing him Master. The other side had imprisoned him, debated his death. These shoutingthousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him. But why thesethings should be so he could not understand. 

The door opened, Lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned, and a rushof people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders cametowards him and Lincoln gesticulating. The voices without explainedtheir soundless lips. "Show us the Sleeper, show us the Sleeper!" wasthe burden of the uproar Men were bawling for "Order! Silence!"

Graham glanced towards the open doorway, and saw a tall, oblong pictureof the hall beyond, a waving, incessant confusion of crowded, shoutingfaces, men and women together, waving pale blue garments, extendedhands. Many were standing, one man in rags of dark brown, a gauntfigure, stood on the seat and waved a black cloth. He met the wonder andexpectation 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 aspace he did not recognise the influence that was transforming him. But a moment that was near to panic passed. He tried to make audibleinquiries of what was required of him. 

Lincoln was shouting in his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. Allthe others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceivedwhat had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chantingtogether. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered togetherand upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music ofan organ, a woven texture of sounds, full of trumpets, full of flauntingbanners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war. And the feet ofthe people were beating time--tramp, tramp. 

He was urged towards the door. He obeyed mechanically. The strengthof that chant took hold of him, stirred him, emboldened him. The hallopened 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 wereabout his neck detaining him in the doorway, and a black subtly-foldingmantle hung from his shoulders. He threw his arm free of this andfollowed Lincoln. He perceived the girl in grey close to him, her facelit, her gesture onward. For the instant she became to him, flushed andeager as she was, an embodiment of the song. He emerged in the alcoveagain. Incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon hisappearing, and flashed up into a foam of shouting. Guided by Lincoln'shand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing thepeople. 

The hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, balconies, broadspaces of amphitheatral steps, and great archways. Far away, high up, seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity. Thewhole multitude was swaying in congested masses. Individual figuressprang out of the tumult, impressed him momentarily, and lost definitionagain. Close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman, carried bythree men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. Nextthis group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place inthe crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, agreat cavity of toothless mouth. A voice called that enigmatical word"Ostrog. " All his impressions were vague save the massive emotionof that trampling song. The multitude were beating time with theirfeet--marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The green weapons waved, flashed and slanted. Then he saw those nearest to him on a level spacebefore the stage were marching in front of him, passing towards a greatarchway, shouting "To the Council!" Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. Heraised his arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had toshout "March!" His mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. He waved his armagain and pointed to the archway, shouting "Onward!" They were no longermarking time, they were marching; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. In thathost were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering robed bare-armedwomen, girls. Men and women of the new age! Rich robes, grey ragsfluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominantblue. A monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. He perceiveda blue-clad negro, a shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tallfair-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 shoutingloyally, and sprang down again and receded, looking backward. Heads, shoulders, hands clutching weapons, all were swinging with thosemarching cadences. 

Faces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there, eyes met hisand passed and vanished. Men gesticulated to him, shouted inaudiblepersonal things. Most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastlywhite. And disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him wasgaunt and lean. Men and women of the new age! Strange and incrediblemeeting! As the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributarygangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in anincessant replacement of people; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The unisonof the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of archesand passages. Men and women mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; hisbrain was tramping. The garments waved onward, the faces poured by moreabundantly. 

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's pressure he turned towards thearchway, walking unconsciously in that rhythm, scarcely noticing hismovement for the melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture andsong, all moved in that direction, the flow of people smote downwarduntil the upturned faces were below the level of his feet. He was awareof a path before him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, andLincoln on his right hand. Attendants intervened, and ever and againblotted out the sight of the multitude to the left. Before him went thebacks of the guards in black--three and three and three. He was marchedalong a little railed way, and crossed above the archway, with thetorrent dipping to flow beneath, and shouting up to him. He did notknow whither he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back across aflaming 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 galleryoverhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms thattraversed the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. Thewhole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of peoplemarching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouringalong a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as theypassed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric lightreceding in perspective dropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bareheads. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. 

The song roared up to Graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarseand noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from theundisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways. 

Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on the opposite side of theway seemed deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aislewere empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind that these alsoshould have swarmed with people. 

He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast! He stopped again. Theguards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He sawthe direction of their faces. The throbbing had something to do with thelights. He too looked up. 

At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply, anisolated phenomenon, having no bearing on the things below. Each hugeglobe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in asystole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systolelike a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation. 

Graham became aware that this strange behaviour of the lights had todo with the people below. The appearance of the houses and ways, theappearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vividlights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude of shadows had sprunginto aggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing with steady swiftness--to leap suddenly back and returnreinforced. The song and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shoutsof "The lights!" Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!"cried these voices. "The lights!" He looked down. In this dancing deathof the lights the area of the street had suddenly become a monstrousstruggle. The huge white globes became purple-white, purple with areddish glow, flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered betweenlight and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere fading specksof glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten seconds the extinctionwas accomplished, and there was only this roaring darkness, a blackmonstrosity that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering myriads ofmen. 

He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. Somethingrapped sharply against his shin. A voice bawled in his ear, "It is allright--all right. "

Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck hisforehead against Lincoln's and bawled, "What is this darkness?"

"The Council has cut the currents that light the city. We mustwait--stop. The people will go on. They will--"

His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Takecare of the Sleeper. " A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his handby an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirledabout him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious eachmoment. Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirledaway from him as his mind reached out to grasp them. Voices seemed to beshouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. There were suddenlya succession of piercing screams close beneath them. 

A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police, " and receded forthwithbeyond his questions. 

A crackling sound grew to distinctness, and there with a leaping offaint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Grahamsaw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons likethose of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The wholearea began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks oflight, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain. 

A glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething expanse of strugglingmen confused his mind. A shout, a burst of cheering, came across theways. He looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung faroverhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by a rope the blindingstar that had driven the darkness back. He wore a red uniform. 

Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of red a little way alongthe vista caught his eye. He saw it was a dense mass of red-clad menjammed the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless cliffof building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists. They werefighting. Weapons flashed and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edgeof the contest, and other heads replaced them, the little flashes fromthe green weapons became little jets of smoky grey while the lightlasted. 

Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darknessonce more, a tumultuous mystery. 

He felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along thegallery. Someone was shouting--it might be at him. He was too confusedto hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a number of peopleblundered past him. It seemed to him that his guards were strugglingwith one another. 

Suddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again, and the whole scenewas white and dazzling. The band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer;its apex was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle. Andraising his eyes Graham saw that a number of these men had also appearednow in the darkened lower galleries of the opposite building, and werefiring over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling confusion ofpeople 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 nowbeing attacked by the red police. Then he became aware that he wasstanding alone, that his guards and Lincoln were along the gallery inthe direction along which he had come before the darkness fell. He sawthey were gesticulating to him wildly, running back towards him. A greatshouting came from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the wholeface of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled withred-clad men. And they were pointing over to him and shouting. "TheSleeper! Save the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats. 

Something struck the wall above his head. He looked up at the impact andsaw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felthis 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 thegallery. "Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis of hisincredulous astonishment. He became for a time the blind creature ofthe fear of death. He ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of thedarkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which hewas exposed. A third glare came close on its predecessors. With it camea 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 whitefacade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderfulthings concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guardsof the Council attempting to recapture him. 

Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger fora hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felta splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without lookingthat the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, wascrowded 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, andincontinently someone, coming, it may be, in a transverse direction, blundered violently into him. He was hurling down a staircase inabsolute darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against awall 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 momentaryrelaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore himback towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. 

There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. Then he wasstaggering and shoving. He heard shouts of "They are coming!" and amuffled cry close to him. His foot blundered against something soft, heheard a hoarse scream under foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" buthe was too confused to speak. He heard the green weapons crackling. Fora space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrust and pressed back and writhed in thepressure, kicked presently against a step, and found himself ascendinga slope. And abruptly the faces all about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a lividglare. One face, a young man's, was very near to him, not twenty inchesaway. 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 alreadydead. 

A fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Itslight came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Grahamthat he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed backacross the lower area of the great theatre. This time the picture waslivid and fragmentary slashed and barred with black shadows. He saw thatquite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through thepeople. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for Lincolnand his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surroundedin a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring toand fro as if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himself was nearthe 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 theglare came to an end. 

In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impededhis movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from hisshoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was scalingthe barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. Thenfeeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. Inthe darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voiceslulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped andfell. As he did so pools and islands amidst the darkness about him leaptto vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the glare of thefifth white star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatrewalls. 

He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting and the whirringrattle of weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceivedthat a number of black-badged men were all about him firing at therebels below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seatsto reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shotsripped the pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metalframes. Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the mostplausible way of escape for him so soon as the veil of darkness fellagain. 

A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!" he said, with his flying feet within six inches of thecrouching 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 itseemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. Adrop of moisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green weapon stoppedhalf raised. For a moment the man stood still with his face suddenlyexpressionless, then he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man anddarkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ranfor his life until a step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambledto his feet, turned up the gangway and ran on. 

When the sixth star glared he was already close to the yawning throat ofa passage. He ran on the swifter for the light, entered the passageand turned a corner into absolute night again. He was knocked sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a crowd ofinvisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one thought nowwas their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He thrust andstruck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly, lost ground and then wasclear again. 

For some minutes he was running through the darkness along a windingpassage, and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed down along 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. Theyare firing. Get out of the fighting. The guards are firing. It will besafe in Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!" There were women andchildren in the crowd as well as men. Men called names to him. The crowdconverged on an archway, passed through a short throat and emerged on awider space again, lit dimly. The black figures about him spread out andran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. Hefollowed. The people dispersed to the right and left.... He perceivedthat 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. Hewent up to this and, stopping in the shadow of its eaves, looked abouthim panting. 

Everything was vague and gray, but he recognised that these great stepswere a series of platforms of the "ways, " now motionless again. Theplatform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctlyseen, and up through the girders and cables was a faint interruptedribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by. From their shoutsand voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting. Otherless noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows. 

From very far away down the street he could hear the sound of astruggle. But it was evident to him that this was not the street intowhich the theatre opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenlydropped out of sound and hearing. And--grotesque thought!--they werefighting 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 unquestioningly. At thattime he had little mind for details; the whole effect was a hugeastonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon theswarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effortto piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of theSilent Rooms. At first his memory leapt these things and took him backto the cascade at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombresplendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everythingwith unreality. And then the gap filled, and he began to comprehend hisposition. 

It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the SilentRooms. At least he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some waythe owner of half the world, and great political parties were fightingto possess him. On the one hand was the White Council, with its redpolice, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property andperhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this giganticcity was convulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of hisworld! "I do not understand, " he cried. "I do not understand!"

He had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty ofthe twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figuredthe redclad men as busily hunting him, driving the blackbadgedrevolutionists before them. 

At any rate chance had given him a breathing space. He could lurkunchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. His eyefollowed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, andit came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there thesun was rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiarlight of day. In a little while he had recovered his breath. Hisclothing 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 manout of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of half the world. Wherever there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitementhe was afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up anddown by the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at alower or higher level. And though he came on no more fighting, thewhole city stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marchingmultitude of men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part they were men, and they carried what he judged wereweapons. It seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly inthe quarter of the city from which he came. Ever and again a distantroaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his cautionprevailed, and he continued wandering away from the fighting--so far ashe could judge. He went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. Aftera time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer andfewer people passed him, until at last the Titanic streets becamedeserted. The frontages of the buildings grew plain and harsh; he seemedto have come to a district of vacant warehouses. Solitude crept uponhim--his pace slackened. 

He became aware of a growing fatigue. At times he would turn asideand seat himself on one of the numerous seats of the upper ways. Buta feverish restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in hisstruggle, would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggleon his behalf alone?

And then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaringand thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a series ofgigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remoteroofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, andin the distance were shouts and running. He, too, was startled to anaimless activity, and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back. 

A man came running towards him. His self-control returned. "What havethey blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion, " andbefore Graham could speak he had hurried on. 

The great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeitthe rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. He noted many strangefeatures, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of theinscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profits it to decipher aconfusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strainof eye and mind, into "Here is Eadhamite, " or, "Labour Bureau--LittleSide?" Grotesque thought, that in all probability some or all of thesecliff-like houses were his!

The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact hehad 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, but a great vaguedanger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. Somewhere throughthe labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. Would he, after all, bekilled before he saw? It might be that even at the next shadowy cornerhis destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longing toknow, arose in him. 

He became fearful of corners. It seemed to him that there was safetyin concealment. Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lightsreturned? At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of thehigher ways, conceiving he was alone there. 

He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he lookedagain he found the dark through of parallel ways and that intolerablealtitude of edifice, gone? Suppose he were to discover the whole storyof these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, thedarkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sortof dream. It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless. Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this saner world regardhim as Owner and Master?

So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hopingin spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of thenineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastleabout him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home. But facttakes no heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a black banner trampedathwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose thatgiddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensiblelettering showing faintly on its face. 

"It is no dream, " he said, "no dream. " And he bowed his face upon hishands. 

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 acouple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure. 

"Have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very oldman. 

Graham hesitated. "None, " he said. 

"I stay here till the lights come again, " said the old man. "These bluescoundrels are everywhere--everywhere. "

Graham's answer was inarticulate assent. He tried to see the old man butthe darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, buthe 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 theybring some negroes to protect us?... No more dark passages for me. Ifell over a dead man. "

"You're safer with company, " said the old man, "if it's company ofthe right sort, " and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came towardsGraham. 

Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down as ifrelieved to be no longer alone. "Eh!" he said, "but this is a terribletime! War and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dyingin the dark. Sons! I have three sons. God knows where they are tonight. "

The voice ceased. Then repeated quavering: "God knows where they aretonight. "

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 willbe 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! Were not common people. Though they've sent me to wandertonight and take my chance.... I knew what was going on. Before mostpeople. But this darkness! And to fall over a dead body suddenly in thedark!"

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 thepeople, " he hazarded. 

"Few friends. And poor ones at that. They've had their time. Eh! Theyshould have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election. AndOstrog. And now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing canstay it. Twice they rejected Ostrog--Ostrog the Boss. I heard of hisrages at the time--he was terrible. Heaven save them! For nothing onearth can now, he has raised the Labour Companies upon them. No one elsewould have dared. All the blue canvas armed and marching! He will gothrough 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 cameclose. "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 inthe night. A poor, drugged insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all Iknow. I mustn't tell all I know. "

For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much forhim. "I don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before mytime--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, tomake the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he wassure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening hadnot been natural! Was that an old man's senile superstition, too, orhad it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, hepresently came on something that might conceivably be an impression ofsome such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happenedupon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of thenew age. The old man wheezed a while 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 promisedthen, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were--not to be moreafraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dustground upon it. Dust ground upon it. Until he set to work--the workerscut each other's throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a Labour policemanat 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 'tisill 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 repeatthis a third time. "Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and foolsbawling freedom and the like, " said the old man. "Not in all my life hasthere been that. These are like the old days--for sure--when the Parispeople broke out--three gross of years ago. That's what I mean hasn'tbeen. 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 andtrouble, and hunger and threats and high talk and arms. Blue canvas andmurmurs. No one safe. Everything sliding and slipping. And now here weare! 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 arecertain this Ostrog--you are certain Ostrog organised this rebellion andarranged for the waking of the Sleeper? Just to assert himself--becausehe was not elected to the Council?

"Everyone knows that, I should think, " said the old man. "Except--justfools. He meant to be master somehow. In the Council or not. Everyonewho knows anything knows that. And here we are with dead bodies lyingin the dark! Why, where have you been if you haven't heard all aboutthe trouble between Ostrog and the Verneys? And what do you think thetroubles are about? The Sleeper? Eh? You think the Sleeper's real andwoke of his own accord--eh?"

"I'm a dull man, older than I look, and forgetful, " said Graham. "Lotsof things that have happened--especially of late years--. If I was theSleeper, 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! Butits not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. But thesenotorious 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--forso 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 JuliusCaesar are all the same to me. It's interesting to hear you talk ofthese 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 heavy thud, a concussionthat made their seat shiver. The passers-by stopped, shouted to oneanother. The old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man whopassed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accostedothers. None knew what had happened. 

He returned to the seat and found the old man muttering vagueinterrogations in an undertone. For a while they said nothing to oneanother. 

The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote oppressedGraham's imagination. Was this old man right, was the report of thepeople right, and were the revolutionaries winning? Or were they all inerror, and were the red guards driving all before them? At any time theflood of warfare might pour into this silent quarter of the city andseize upon him again. It behooved him to learn all he could while therewas time. He turned suddenly to the old man with a question and left itunsaid. But his motion moved the old man to speech again. 

"Eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "This Sleeper thatall the fools put their trust in! I've the whole history of it--I wasalways a good one for histories. When I was a boy--I'm that old--Iused to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seennone--they rot and dust so--and the Sanitary Company burns them to makeashlarite. But they were convenient in their dirty way. Oh I learnt alot. These new-fangled Babble Machines--they don't seem new-fangled toyou, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all theSleeper business from the first. "

"You will scarcely believe it, " said Graham slowly, "I'm soignorant--I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, mycircumstances have been so odd--I know nothing of this Sleeper'shistory. Who was he?"

"Eh!" said the old man. "I know. I know. He was a poor nobody, and seton a playful woman, poor soul! And he fell into a trance. There's theold things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--stillshowing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a halfof years. "

"Set on a playful woman, poor soul, " said Graham softly to himself, andthen aloud, "Yes--well! go on. "

"You must know he had a cousin named Warming a solitary man withoutchildren, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the firstEadhamite roads. But surely you've heard? No? Why? He bought all thepatent rights and made a big company. In those days there were grossesof grosses of separate businesses and business companies. Grosses ofgrosses! His roads killed the railroads--the old things--in two dozenyears; he bought up and Eadhamited' the tracks. And because he didn'twant to break up his great property or let in shareholders, he left itall to the Sleeper, and put it under a Board of Trustees that he hadpicked and trained. He knew then the Sleeper wouldn't wake, that hewould 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 boataccident, followed that up with another great bequest. His trusteesfound themselves with a dozen myriads of lions'-worth or more ofproperty 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 learnmuch in the schools nowadays. But I know all about him. He was a richAmerican who went from England, and he left the Sleeper even more thanWarming. How he made it? That I don't know. Something about pictures bymachinery. 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 twelvebrains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They workedpolitics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currencyand tariffs. They grew--they grew. And for years the twelve trusteeshid the growing of the Sleeper's estate, under double names and companytitles and all that. The Council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper, they bought. If you listen tothe old stories you will see the Council growing and growing Billionsand billions of lions at last--the Sleeper's estate. And all growingout of a whim--out of this Warming's will, and an accident to Isbister'ssons. 

"Men are strange, " said the old man. "The strange, thing to me is howthe Council worked together so long. As many as twelve. But they workedin cliques from the first. And they've slipped back. In my young daysspeaking of the Council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. Wedidn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and allthat! Or else I've got wiser. 

"Men are strange, " said the old man. "Here are you, young andignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and I might reasonably beforgetting--explaining it all to you short and clear. 

"Sevendy, " he said, "sevendy, and I hear and see--hear better than Isee. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings ofthings. Sevendy!

"Life is strange. I was twaindy before Ostrog was a baby. I remember himlong 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 tosee this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heapson 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 Sleeperhas been asleep--"

"Changed, " said the old man. 

"Perhaps. And meanwhile the Sleeper's property grew in the hands ofTwelve Trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership ofthe world. The Twelve Trustees--by virtue of this property have becomevirtually masters of the world. Because they are the paying power--justas the old English Parliament used to be--"

"Eh!" said the old man. "That's so--that's a good comparison. You're notso--"

"And now this Ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by wakingthe Sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had everdreamt would wake again--raising the Sleeper to claim his property fromthe 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 timetonight. "

"Aye, " said Graham, "it's strange. "

"Have you been in a Pleasure City?" said the old man. "All my life I'velonged--" He laughed. "Even now, " he said, "I could enjoy a littlefun. Enjoy seeing things, anyhow. " He mumbled a sentence Graham did notunderstand. 

"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. Mydear sir, where were you at the time? He was in the hall of themarkets--where the fighting has been. All the city was screaming aboutit. All the Babble Machines! Everywhere it was shouted. Even the foolswho speak for the Council were admitting it. Everyone was rushing off tosee him--everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And eventhen! But you're joking! Surely you're pretending. It was to stop theshouting of the Babble Machines and prevent the people gathering thatthey 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 aminute. 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 thousandthings that were never heard. I know Ostrog too well for that. DidI tell you? In a way I'm a sort of relation of Ostrog's. A sort ofrelation. Through my daughter-in-law. "

"I suppose--"

"Well?"

"I suppose there's no chance of this Sleeper asserting himself. Isuppose 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 hisposition. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why shouldhe 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 assuredof 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 morethan you pretend. "

"Perhaps I do, " said Graham. "But no! why should I go on acting? No, Ido 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 knowwhat money you use, I do not know what foreign countries there are. Ido 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, wouldyou 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. " Awithered 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 queerlooking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've gottickets and been. The image of the real one, as the photographs showhim, this substitute used to be. Yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's aqueer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll besent to Capri. It's the best fun for a greener. "

His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously ofpleasures and strange delights. "The luck of it, the luck of it! All mylife 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, " saidthe 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 afool 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 willtell you now. You are wrong about the Sleeper. "

"How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything--not even aboutPleasure Cities. "

Graham paused. 

"You don't know, " said the old man. "How are you to know? It's very fewmen--"

"I _am_ the Sleeper. "

He had to repeat it. 

There was a brief pause. "There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'llexcuse me. It might get you into trouble in a time like this, " said theold 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 stonebuilt village, in the days when there werehedgerows, and villages, and inns, and all the countryside cut up intolittle pieces, little fields. Have you never heard of those days? And itis 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 havehim and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've been talking sensiblyenough up to now. I can see it as though I was there. There will beLincoln like a keeper just behind him; they won't let him go aboutalone. Trust them. You're a queer fellow. One of these fun pokers. I seenow 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 tellingthat to the wrong man altogether. Eh! as if I should believe. What'syour 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, talkingclipped, 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 amI--in this damned twilight--I never knew a dream in twilight before--ananachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool thatI am myself, and meanwhile--Ugh!"

He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old manwas pursuing him. "Eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "I'm an oldfool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness. "

Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secretflashed into his mind. 

"I didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you, " said the old man comingnear. "It's no manner of harm. Call yourself the Sleeper if it pleasesyou. '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 criesreceding. But at last the darkness swallowed him, and Graham saw him nomore. 

CHAPTER XII. OSTROG

Graham could now take a clearer view of his position. For a long timeyet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of thisOstrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. Onething was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt hadsucceeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance. But every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of hisrecapture 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 andshouting: "Capitulated! Given up!" "A dozand of men. " "Two dozand ofmen. " "Ostrog, Hurrah! Ostrog, Hurrah!" These cries receded, becameindistinct. 

Other shouting men followed. For a time his attention was absorbedin the fragments of speech he heard. He had a doubt whether all werespeaking English. Scraps floated to him, scraps like Pigeon English, like 'nigger' dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. He daredaccost no one with questions. The impression the people gave him jarredaltogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed theold man's faith in Ostrog. It was only slowly he could bring himselfto believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of theCouncil, that the Council which had pursued him with such power andvigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict. And ifthat was so, how did it affect him? Several times he hesitated on theverge of fundamental questions. Once he turned and walked for a longway after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable tomaster 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 towardsWestminster. His second led to the discovery of a short cut in whichhe was speedily lost. He was told to leave the ways to which he hadhitherto confined himself knowing no other means of transit--andto plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of acrossway. Thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these anambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking ina strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow ofspeech with the drifting corpses of English words therein, the dialectof the latter-day vile. Then another voice drew near, a girl's voicesinging, "tralala tralala. " She spoke to Graham, her English touchedwith something of the same quality. She professed to have lost hersister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of himand laughed. But a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseenagain. 

The sounds about him increased. Stumbling people passed him, speakingexcitedly. "They have surrendered!" "The Council! Surely not theCouncil!" "They are saying so in the Ways. " The passage seemed wider. Suddenly the wall fell away. He was in a great space and people werestirring remotely. He inquired his way of an indistinct figure. "Strikestraight across, " said a woman's voice. He left his guiding wall, and ina moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils ofglass. Graham's eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vistawith pallid tables on either side. He went down this. At one or two ofthe tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. There werepeople then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a mealin spite of social convulsion and darkness. Far off and high up hepresently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. As he approachedthis, a black edge came up and hid it. He stumbled at steps and foundhimself in a gallery. He heard a sobbing, and found two scared littlegirls crouched by a railing. These children became silent at the nearsound of feet. He tried to console them, but they were very still untilhe 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 wideopening. He saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of theblackness into a street of moving Ways again. Along this a disorderlyswarm of people marched shouting. They were singing snatches of the songof the revolt, most of them out of tune. Here and there torches flaredcreating brief hysterical shadows. He asked his way and was twicepuzzled by that same thick dialect. His third attempt won an answerhe could understand. He was two miles from the wind-vane offices inWestminster, but the way was easy to follow. 

When at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices itseemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching alongthe Ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restorationof the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the Council mustalready be accomplished. And still no news of his absence came to hisears. 

The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. Suddenlyhe stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world wasincandescent. The light found him already upon the outskirts of theexcited crowds that choked the Ways near the wind-vane offices, and thesense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourlessintention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety. 

For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse andweary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in hiscause. The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by somemoving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spiteof his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented hisapproaching it. From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged itconveyed news of the fighting about the Council House. Ignorance andindecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. For a time hecould not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken facade of thisplace. He made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people, until he realised that the descending staircase of the central Way ledto the interior of the buildings. This gave him a goal, but the crowdingin the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reachit. And even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hourof vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before hecould get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eagerto see him. His story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser forthat, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply tohave news of extraordinary importance for Ostrog. What it was he wouldnot say. They sent his note reluctantly. For a long time he waited ina little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last cameLincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. He stopped in the doorwayscrutinising 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 thewind-vane offices. We feared you had been killed in the theatre. Hedoubted--and things are very urgent still in spite of what we aretelling them _there_--or he would have come to you. "

They ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed agreat hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered acomparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and alarge oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall. There Lincoln left Graham for a space, and he remained alone withoutunderstanding the shifting smoky shapes that drove slowly across thisdisc. 

His attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. It wascheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, aroaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a soundheard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room wasa noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chainwas running over the teeth of a wheel. 

Then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "Itis Ostrog!" he heard her say. A little bell rang fitfully, and theneverything was still again. 

Presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. The footstepsof some one person detached itself from the other sounds and drewnear, 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 droppedit and stood before it. Graham's first impression was of a very broadforehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquilinenose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. The folds of flesh over theeyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted theupright bearing, and said the man was old. Graham rose to his feetinstinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regardingeach 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 youchiefly, 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 keepour secret--the secret of your disappearance. Where have you been? Howdid 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 tellme 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, tosave him the difficulty of acting. It was imperative. The whole of thisrevolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. Evennow a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouringto see you. They do not trust... You know, of course--something of yourposition?"

"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 more than half the world. As aresult of that you are practically King. Your powers are limited inmany intricate ways, but you are the figure head, the popular symbol ofgovernment. 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 agreat number of people in your days regarded the Crown as the ruler. They are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the ruleof your Trustees. For the most part it is the old discontent, the oldquarrel of the common man with his commonness--the misery of work anddiscipline and unfitness. But your Trustees have ruled ill. In certainmatters, in the administration of the Labour Companies, for example, they have been unwise. They have given endless opportunities. Already weof the popular party were agitating for reforms--when your waking came. Came! If it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunity. "He smiled. "The public mind, making no allowance for your years ofquiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealingto you, and--Flash!"

He indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and Graham moved his head toshow that he understood. 

"The Council muddled--quarreled. They always do. They could not decidewhat to do with you. You know how they imprisoned you?"

"I see. I see. And now--we win?"

"We win. Indeed we win. Tonight, in five swift hours. Suddenly we struckeverywhere. The windvane people, the Labour Company and its millions, burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeropiles. "

He paused. "Yes, " said Graham, guessing that aeropile meant flyingmachine. 

"That was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All thecity rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all thepublic services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the redpolice. You were rescued, and their own police of the Ways--not half ofthem could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmedor 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 thatfoolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lostyou. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off fromthe Council House there. Truly tonight has been a night of victory. Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago--the White Council ruled asit 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 clearlyunderstand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Whereis 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 waspuzzled. 

Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, hadassumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strangeunfamiliar 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 remoterview, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then heperceived that the rows of great windwheels he saw, the wide intervals, the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which hehad fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of redfigures marching across an open space between files of men in black, and realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the uppersurface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judgedthat this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, butthat matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of redfigures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out ofthe picture to the left. He wondered momentarily, and then saw that thepicture 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 spaceof London--all the houses are practically continuous now. The streetsand public squares are covered in. The gaps and chasms of your time havedisappeared. "

Something out of focus obliterated half the picture. Its form suggesteda man. There was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept acrossthe oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picturewas clear again. And now Graham beheld men running down among thewind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out littlesmoky flashes. They swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating--it might be they were shouting, but of that the picturetold nothing. They and the windwheels passed slowly and steadily acrossthe field of the mirror. 

"Now, " said Ostrog, "comes the Council House, " and slowly a black edgecrept into view and gathered Graham's attention. Soon it was no longeran edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clusteringedifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid wintersky. Gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers andgirders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. And over thesevestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering, leaping, swarming. 

"This is the Council House, " said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. Andthe fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing upthe 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 sea of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of whitebuilding. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction ofits surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had tornapart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of theirinteriors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged wallhung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallicrods. And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, thered-clothed defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashesilluminated the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Grahamthat an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, butthen he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, butsheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last raggedstronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing. 

And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in alittle chamber within that remote building wondering what was happeningin the world!

Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently acrossthe centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building wassurrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describein concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction toisolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that hugedownfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvisedmortuary among the wreckage showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mitesalong a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. Hewas more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, thedistribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contestthat had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It wasno tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, buta splendidly organised _coup d'etat_. Ostrog's grasp of details wasastonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot ofblack and red specks that crawled amidst these places. 

He stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showedthe room whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins thecourse of his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutterran, 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 atthe Council House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right ahillside 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. Itwill fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their lastfrantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of thesemen will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are revivingthe 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. Yourawakening has perplexed them, paralysed them. "

"But haven't the Council flying machines? Why is there no fighting withthem?"

"They had. But the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt withus. They wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they wouldnot stir against us. We had to get a pull with the aeronauts. Quite halfwere with us, and the others knew it. Directly they knew you had gotaway, those looking for you dropped. We killed the man who shot atyou--an hour ago. And we occupied the flying stages at the outset inevery city we could, and so stopped and captured the airplanes, and asfor the little flying machines that turned out--for some did--we kept uptoo 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 spaceabout there for them to get up. Several we have smashed, several othershave dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to the Continentto find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out. Most ofthese men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out of harm'sway. 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 whathe meant by flying stages. Even the four nearer ones were remote andobscured by a thin morning haze. But Graham could perceive they werevery vast structures, judged even by the standard of the things aboutthem. 

And then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again thesight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had beenmarching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleagueredwhite fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, butglowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About itthe pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenderswere no longer firing. 

So, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw theclosing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of hisrule. With a quality of startling discovery it came to him that thiswas his world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was nospectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whateverlife was still before him, lay all his duties and dangers andresponsibilities. He turned with fresh questions. Ostrog began to answerthem, and then broke off abruptly. "But these things I must explain morefully later. At present there are--duties. The people are coming by themoving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the marketsand theatres are densely crowded. You are just in time for them. Theyare clamouring to see you. And abroad they want to see you. Paris, New York, Chicago, Denver, Capri--thousands of cities are up and in atumult, undecided, and clamouring to see you. They have clamoured thatyou should be awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcelybelieve--"

"But surely--I can't go... "

Ostrog answered from the other side of the room, and the pictureon the oval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again. "There are kinetotele-photographs, " he said. "As you bow to the peoplehere--all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and stillin darkened halls, will see you also. In black and white, of course--notlike this. And you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting inthe hall. 

"And there is an optical contrivance we shall use, " said Ostrog, "usedby some of the posturers and women dancers. It may be novel to you. Youstand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnifiedimage of you thrown on a screen--so that even the furtherest man in theremotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes. "

Graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "Whatis the population of London?"

"Eight and twaindy myriads. "

"Eight and what?"

"More than thirty-three millions. "

These figures went beyond Graham's imagination "You will be expected tosay something, " said Ostrog. "Not what you used to call a Speech, butwhat our people call a Word--just one sentence, six or seven words. Something formal. If I might suggest--' I have awakened and my heart iswith 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. Butfirst we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. Do youmind? 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, turnedto the curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants. Almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robeGraham had worn in the theatre, was brought. And as he threw it abouthis shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of ahigh-pitched bell. Ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled the curtain aside anddisappeared. 

For a moment Graham stood with the deferential attendant listeningto Ostrog's retreating steps. There was a sound of quick question andanswer and of men running. The curtain was snatched back and Ostrogreappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. He crossed theroom in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped Grahams armand pointed to the mirror. 

"Even as we turned away, " he said. 

Graham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirroredCouncil House. For a moment he did not understand. And then he perceivedthat 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 jerksup the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose. 

The oval picture paled as Lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered. 

"They are clamourous, " he said. 

Ostrog kept his grip of Graham's arm. 

"We have raised the people, " he said. "We have given them arms. Fortoday 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 longnarrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvaswere carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medicalpurple hurried to and fro. From this room came groans and wailing. He had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on othercouches, bandaged and blood-stained. It was just a glimpse from a railedfootway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towardsthe markets. 

The roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. And, arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving ofblue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatrenear the public markets came into view down a long passage. The pictureopened out. He perceived they were entering the great theatre of hisfirst appearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-workof glare and blackness in his flight from the red police. This time heentered it along a gallery at a level high above the stage. The placewas now brilliantly lit again. He sought the gangway up which he hadfled, but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; norcould he see anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and suchlike traces of the fight because of the density of the people. Exceptthe stage the whole place was closely packed. Looking down the effectwas a vast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned faceregarding him. At his appearance with Ostrog the cheering died away, thesinging 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 whitebanner of the Council fell. But some hours had to elapse before it waspossible to effect the formal capitulation, and so after he had spokenhis "Word" he retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. The continuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left himinordinately fatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space hesat inert and passive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. Hewas roused by two medical attendants, come prepared with stimulants tosustain him through the next occasion. After he had taken their drugsand bathed by their advice in cold water, he felt a rapid return ofinterest and energy, and was presently able and willing to accompanyOstrog through several miles (as it seemed) of passages, lifts, andslides to the closing scene of the White Council's rule. 

The way ran deviously through a maze of buildings. They came at last toa passage that curved about, and showed broadening before him an oblongopening, clouds hot with sunset, and the ragged skyline of the ruinousCouncil House. A tumult of shouts came drifting up to him. In anothermoment they had come out high up on the brow of the cliff of tornbuildings that overhung the wreckage. The vast area opened to Graham'seyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had hadof it in the oval mirror. 

This rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the better part of a mile toits 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 theshadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the greatblack banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds againstthe 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 itsbase came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, andthe sound of trumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring ofdesolation; the smashed and blackened masses, the gaunt foundations andruinous lumber of the fabric that had been destroyed by the Council'sorders, skeletons of girders, Titanic masses of wall, forests of stoutpillars. Amongst the sombre wreckage beneath, running water flashed andglistened, and far away across the space, out of the midst of a vaguevast 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 toindistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, theyclung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. Theyswarmed along the edges of the circle of ruins. The air was full oftheir shouting, and were pressing and swaying towards the central space. 

The upper storeys of the Council House seemed deserted, not a humanbeing was visible. Only the drooping banner of the surrender hungheavily against the light. The dead were within the Council House, orhidden by the swarming people, or carried away. Graham could see onlya few neglected bodies in gaps and corners of the ruins, and amidst theflowing water. 

"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxiousto see you. "

Graham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken vergeof wall dropped sheer. He I stood looking down, a lonely, tall, blackfigure against the sky. 

Very slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. And as they did solittle bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting throughthe crowds towards the Council House. He saw little black heads becomepink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweepacross the space. It occurred to him that he should accord them somerecognition. He held up his arm, then pointed to the Council House anddropped 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 inthe south, before the capitulation was accomplished. Above was a slowinsensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below washurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments oforganisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Councilcame out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-handconflict within those long passages and chambers. 

Guards in black lined the way that the Council would come, and as faras the eye could reach into the hazy blue twilight of the ruins, andswarming now at every possible point in the captured Council Houseand along the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent buildings, wereinnumerable people, and their voices even when they were not cheering, were as the soughing of the sea upon a pebble beach. Ostrog had chosena huge commanding pile of crushed and overthrown masonry, and on thisa stage of timbers and metal girders was being hastily constructed. Its essential parts were complete, but humming and clangorous machinerystill glared fitfully in the shadows beneath this temporary edifice. 

The stage had a small higher portion on which Graham stood with Ostrogand Lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minorofficers. A broader lower stage surrounded this quarter deck, and onthis were the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the littlegreen weapons whose very names Graham still did not know. Those standingabout him perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarmingpeople in the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the WhiteCouncil House, whence the Trustees would presently come, and to thegaunt cliffs of ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. Thevoices of the crowd swelled to a deafening tumult. 

He saw the Councillors first afar off in the glare of one of thetemporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figuresblinking in a black archway. In the Council House they had been indarkness. He watched them approaching, drawing nearer past first thisblazing electric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd overwhom their power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched alongbeside them. As they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, whiteand anxious. He saw them blinking up through the glare about him andOstrog. He contrasted their strange cold looks in the Hall of Atlas.... Presently he could recognise several of them; the man who had rappedthe table at Howard, a burly man with a red beard, and onedelicate-featured, short, dark man with a peculiarly long skull. Henoted that two were whispering together and looking behind him atOstrog. Next there came a tall, dark and handsome man, walking downcast. Abruptly he glanced up, his eyes touched Graham for a moment, andpassed beyond him to Ostrog. The way that had been made for them was socontrived that they had to march past and curve about before they cameto the sloping path of planks that ascended to the stage where theirsurrender was to be made. 

"The Master, the Master! God and the Master, " shouted the people. "Tohell with the Council!" Graham looked at their multitudes, recedingbeyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him, white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little groupof White Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet starsoverhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Couldthat be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred yearsgone 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 thehead of that complex world. 

At first when he rose from the long deep sleep that followed his rescueand 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 happenedcame back to him, at first with a quality of insincerity like a storyheard, like something read out of a book. And even before his memorieswere clear, the exultation of his escape, the wonder of his prominencewere back in his mind. He was owner of half the world; Master of theEarth. This new great age was in the completest sense his. He no longerhoped to discover his experiences a dream; he became anxious now toconvince himself that they were real. 

An obsequious valet assisted him to dress under the direction of adignified chief attendant, a little man whose face proclaimed himJapanese, albeit he spoke English like an Englishman. From the latter helearnt something of the state of affairs. Already the revolution was anaccepted fact; already business was being resumed throughout the city. Abroad the downfall of the Council had been received for the most partwith delight. Nowhere was the Council popular, and the thousand citiesof Western America, after two hundred years still jealous of New York, London, and the East, had risen almost unanimously two days before atthe news of Graham's imprisonment. Paris was fighting within itself. Therest of the world hung in suspense. 

While he was breaking his fast, the sound of a telephone bell jettedfrom a corner, and his chief attendant called his attention to the voiceof Ostrog making polite enquiries. Graham interrupted his refreshmentto reply. Very shortly Lincoln arrived, and Graham at once expresseda strong desire to talk to people and to be shown more of the new lifethat was opening before him. Lincoln informed him that in three hours'time a representative gathering of officials and their wives would beheld in the state apartments of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's desireto traverse the ways of the city was, however, at present impossible, because of the enormous excitement of the people. It was, however, quitepossible for him to take a bird's eye view of the city from the crow'snest of the windvane keeper. To this accordingly Graham was conductedby his attendant. Lincoln, with a graceful compliment to the attendant, apologised for not accompanying them, on account of the present pressureof 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 aspear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawnin a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem wasa light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes--minute they lookedfrom above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These werethe specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's mirrors, in oneof which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. His Japaneseattendant ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking andanswering questions. 

It was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of thewind warmed. The sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of Londonshone dazzling under the morning sun. The air was clear of smoke andhaze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen. 

Save for the irregular oval of ruins about the House of the Council andthe black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty cityseen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, tohis imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of theworld. A multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and thehuge openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times ofpeace the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of Europeand America, were also black with the victors. Across a narrow way ofplanking raised on trestles that crossed the ruins a crowd of workmenwere busy restoring the connection between the cables and wires of theCouncil House and the rest of the city, preparatory to the transferthither of Ostrog's headquarters from the Wind-Vane buildings. 

For the rest the luminous expanse was undisturbed. So vast was itsserenity in comparison with the areas of disturbance, that presentlyGraham, looking beyond them, could almost forget the thousands of menlying out of sight in the artificial glare within the quasi-subterraneanlabyrinth, dead or dying of the overnight wounds, forget the improvisedwards with the hosts of surgeons, nurses, and bearers feverishly busy, forget, indeed, ' all the wonder, consternation and novelty under theelectric lights. Down there in the hidden ways of the anthill he knewthat the revolution triumphed, that black everywhere carried the day, black favours, black banners, black festoons across the streets. And outhere, under the fresh sunlight, beyond the crater of the fight, as ifnothing had happened to the earth, the forest of Wind Vanes that hadgrown from one or two while the Council had ruled, roared peacefullyupon their incessant duty. 

Far away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the SurreyHills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contoursof Highgate and Muswell Hill were similarly jagged. And all over thecountryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedgeshad interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestledamong their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing likevast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, casttheir whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowedaway incessantly through all the arteries of the city. And underneaththese wandered the countless flocks and herds of the British Food Trustwith their lonely guards and keepers. 

Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapesbelow. St. Paul's he knew survived, and many of the old buildings inWestminster, embedded out of sight, arched over and covered in among thegiant growths of this great age. The Themes, too, made no fall and gleamof silver to break the wilderness of the city; the thirsty water mainsdrank up every drop of its waters before they reached the walls. Its bedand estuary scoured and sunken, was now a canal of sea water and a raceof grimy bargemen brought the heavy materials of trade from the Poolthereby beneath the very feet of the workers. Faint and dim in theeastward between earth and sky hung the clustering masts of the colossalshipping in the Pool. For all the heavy traffic, for which there wasno need of haste, came in gigantic sailing ships from the ends of theearth, and the heavy goods for which there was urgency in mechanicalships of a smaller swifter sort. 

And to the south over the hills, came vast aqueducts with sea waterfor the sewers and in three separate directions, ran pallid lines--theroads, stippled with moving grey specks. On the first occasion thatoffered he was determined to go out and see these roads. That would comeafter the flying ship he was presently to try. His attendant officerdescribed them as a pair of gently curving surfaces a hundred yardswide, each one for the traffic going in one direction, and made of asubstance called Eadhamite--an artificial substance, so far as he couldgather, resembling toughened glass. Along this shot a strange traffic ofnarrow rubber-shod vehicles, great single wheels, two and four wheeledvehicles, sweeping along at velocities of from one to six milesa minute. Railroads had vanished; a few embankments remained asrust-crowned trenches here and there. Some few formed the cores ofEadhamite ways. 

Among the first things to strike his attention had been the great fleetsof advertisement balloons and kites that receded in irregular vistasnorthward and southward along the lines of the aeroplane journeys. Noaeroplanes were to be seen. Their passages had ceased, and only onelittle-seeming aeropile circled high in the blue distance above theSurrey Hills, an unimpressive soaring speck. 

A thing Graham had already learnt, and which he found very hard toimagine, was that nearly all the towns in the country, and almost allthe villages, had disappeared. Here and there only, he understood, some gigantic hotel-like edifice stood amid square miles of some singlecultivation and preserved the name of a town--as Bournemouth, Wareham, or Swanage. Yet the officer had speedily convinced him how inevitablesuch a change had been. The old order had dotted the country withfarmhouses, and every two or three miles was the ruling landlord'sestate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop andchurch--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--simplybecause that eight mile marketing journey, four there and back, was asmuch as was comfortable for the farmer. But directly the railways cameinto play, and after them the light railways, and all the swift newmotor cars that had replaced waggons and horses, and so soon as the highroads began to be made of wood, and rubber, and Eadhamite, and all sortsof elastic durable substances--the necessity of having such frequentmarket towns disappeared. And the big towns grew. They drew the workerwith the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the employerwith their suggestions of an infinite ocean of labour. 

And as the standard of comfort rose, as the complexity of the mechanismof living increased life in the country had become more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. The disappearance of vicar and squire, theextinction of the general practitioner by the city specialist, hadrobbed 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 livean isolated savage. In the country were neither means of being clothednor fed (according to the refined conceptions of the time), no efficientdoctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits. 

Moreover, mechanical appliances in agriculture made one engineer theequivalent of thirty labourers. So, inverting the condition of the cityclerk in the days when London was scarce inhabitable because of thecoaly foulness of its air, the labourers now came hurrying by road orair to the city and its life and delights at night to leave it again inthe morning. The city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon anew stage in his development. First had come the nomad, the hunter, thenhad followed the agriculturist of the agricultural state, whose townsand cities and ports were but the headquarters and markets of thecountryside. And now, logical consequence of an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation of men. Save London, there were onlyfour other cities in Britain--Edinburgh, Portsmouth, Manchester andShrewsbury. Such things as these, simple statements of fact though theywere to contemporary men, strained Graham's imagination to picture. Andwhen he glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existedon the Continent, it failed him altogether. 

He had a vision of city beyond city, cities on great plains, citiesbeside great rivers, vast cities along the sea margin, cities girdled bysnowy mountains. Over a great part of the earth the English tongue wasspoken; taken together with its Spanish American and Hindoo and Negroand "Pidgin" dialects, it was the everyday language of two-thirds ofthe people of the earth. On the Continent, save as remote and curioussurvivals, three other languages alone held sway--German, which reachedto Antioch and Genoa and jostled Spanish-English at Gdiz, a GallicisedRussian which met the Indian English in Persia and Kurdistan and the"Pidgin" English in Pekin, and French still clear and brilliant, thelanguage of lucidity, which shared the Mediterranean with the IndianEnglish 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 socialorganisation prevailed, and everywhere from Pole to Equator his propertyand his responsibilities extended. The whole world was civilised; thewhole world dwelt in cities; the whole world was property. Over theBritish Empire and throughout America his ownership was scarcelydisguised, Congress and Parliament were usually regarded as antique, curious gatherings. And even in the two Empires of Russia and Germany, the influence of his wealth was conceivably of enormous weight. There, of course, came problems--possibilities, but, uplifted as he was, evenRussia and Germany seemed sufficiently remote. And of the quality of theblack belt administration, and of what that might mean for him hethought, after the fashion of his former days, not at all. That itshould hang like a threat over the spacious vision before him could notenter his nineteenth century mind. But his mind turned at once from thescenery to the thought of a vanished dread. "What of the yellow peril?"he asked and Asano made him explain. The Chinese spectre had vanished. Chinaman and European were at peace. The twentieth century haddiscovered with reluctant certainty that the average Chinaman was ascivilised, more moral, and far more intelligent than the averageEuropean serf, and had repeated on a gigantic scale the fraternisationof Scot and Englishman that happened in the seventeenth century. AsAsano put it; "They thought it over. They found we were white men afterall. " Graham turned again to the view and his thoughts took a newdirection. 

Out of the dim south-west, glittering and strange, voluptuous, andin some way terrible, shone those Pleasure Cities, of which thekinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the street had spoken. Strange places reminiscent of the legendary Sybaris, cities of art andbeauty, mercenary art and mercenary beauty, sterile wonderful citiesof motion and music, whither repaired all who profited by the fierce, inglorious, economic struggle that went on in the glaring labyrinthbelow. 

Fierce he knew it was. How fierce he could judge from the fact thatthese latter-day people referred back to the England of the nineteenthcentury as the figure of an idyllic easy-going life. He turned his eyesto the scene immediately before him again, trying to conceive the bigfactories of that intricate maze. 

Northward he knew were the potters, makers not only of earthenware andchina, but of the kindred pastes and compounds a subtler mineralogicalchemistry had devised; there were the makers of statuettes and wallornaments and much intricate furniture; there too were the factorieswhere feverishly competitive authors devised their phonograph discoursesand advertisements and arranged the groupings and developments for theirperpetually startling and novel kinematographic dramatic works. Thence, too, flashed the world-wide messages, the world-wide falsehoods of thenews-tellers, the chargers of the telephonic machines that had replacedthe newspapers of the past. 

To the westward beyond the smashed Council House were the voluminousoffices of municipal control and government; and to the eastward, towards the port, the trading quarters, the huge public markets, thetheatres, houses of resort, betting palaces, miles of billiard saloons, baseball and football circuses, wild beast rings and the innumerabletemples of the Christian and quasi-Christian sects, the Mahomedans, Buddhists, Gnostics, Spook Worshippers, the Incubus Worshippers, theFurniture Worshippers, and so forth; and to the south again a vastmanufacture of textiles, pickles, wines and condiments. And from pointto point tore the countless multitudes along the roaring mechanicalways. A gigantic hive, of which the winds were tireless servants, andthe ceaseless wind-vanes an appropriate crown and symbol. 

He thought of the unprecedented population that had been sucked up bythis sponge of halls and galleries--the thirty-three million lives thatwere playing out each its own brief ineffectual drama below him, and thecomplacency that the brightness of the day and the space and splendourof the view, and above all the sense of his own importance had begotten, dwindled and perished. Looking down from this height over the cityit became at last possible to conceive this overwhelming multitude ofthirty-three millions, the reality of the responsibility he would takeupon himself, the vastness of the human Maelstrom over which his slenderkingship hung. 

He tried to figure the individual life. It astonished him to realise howlittle the common man had changed in spite of the visible change in hisconditions. Life and property, indeed, were secure from violence almostall over the world, zymotic diseases, bacterial diseases of all sortshad practically vanished, everyone had a sufficiency of food andclothing, was warmed in the city ways and sheltered from the weather--somuch the almost mechanical progress of science and the physicalorganisation of society had accomplished. But the crowd, he was alreadybeginning to discover, was a crowd still, helpless in the hands ofdemagogue and organiser, individually cowardly, individually swayed byappetite, collectively incalculable. The memory of countless figures inpale blue canvas came before his mind. Millions of such men and womenbelow him, he knew, had never been out of the city, had never seenbeyond the little round of unintelligent grudging participation in theworld's business, and unintelligent dissatisfied sharing in its tawdrierpleasures. He thought of the hopes of his vanished contemporaries, and for a moment the dream of London in Morris's quaint old _Newsfrom Nowhere_, and the perfect land of Hudson's beautiful _CrystalAge_--appeared before him in an atmosphere of infinite loss. He thoughtof his own hopes. 

For in the latter days of that passionate life that lay now so farbehind him, the conception of a free and equal manhood had become a veryreal thing to him. He had hoped, as indeed his age had hoped, rashlytaking it for granted, that the sacrifice of the many to the few wouldsome day cease, that a day was near when every child born of womanshould have a fair and assured chance of happiness. And here, aftertwo hundred years, the same hope, still unfulfilled, cried passionatelythrough the city. After two hundred years, he knew, greater than ever, grown with the city to gigantic proportions, were poverty and helplesslabour and all the sorrows of his time. 

Already he knew something of the history of the intervening years. He had heard now of the moral decay that had followed the collapse ofsupernatural religion in the minds of ignoble man, the decline of publichonour, the ascendency of wealth. For men who had lost their belief inGod had still kept their faith in property, and wealth ruled a venialworld. 

His Japanese attendant, Asano, in expounding the political history ofthe intervening two centuries, drew an apt image from a seed eaten byinsect parasites. First there is the original seed, ripening vigorouslyenough. And then comes some insect and lays an egg under the skin, andbehold! in a little while the seed is a hollow shape with an active grubinside that has eaten out its substance. And then comes some secondaryparasite, some ichneumon fly, and lays an egg within this grub, andbehold! that, too, is a hollow shape, and the new living thing is insideits predecessor's skin which itself is snug within the seed coat. Andthe seed coat still keeps its shape, most people think it a seed still, and for all one knows it may still think itself a seed, vigorous andalive. "Your Victorian kingdom, " said Asano, "was like that--kingshipwith the heart eaten out. The landowners--the barons and gentry--beganages ago with King John; there were lapses, but they beheaded KingCharles, and ended practically with King George mere husk of a king... The real power in the hands of their parliament. But the Parliament--theorgan of the land-holding tenant-ruling gentry--did not keep itspower long. The change had already come in the nineteenth century. Thefranchises had been broadened until it included masses of ignorantmen, 'urban myriads, ' who went in their featureless thousands to votetogether. And the natural consequence of a swarming constituency is therule of the party organisation. Power was passing even in the Victoriantime to the party machinery, secret, complex, and corrupt. Very speedilypower was in the hands of great men of business who financed themachines. A time came when the real power and interest of the Empirerested visibly between the two party councils, ruling by newspapers andelectoral organisations--two small groups of rich and able men, workingat first in opposition, then presently together. "

There was a reaction of a genteel ineffectual sort. There werenumberless books in existence, Asano said, to prove that--thepublication of some of them was as early as Graham's sleep--a wholeliterature of reaction in fact. The party of the reaction seems tohave locked itself into its study and rebelled with unflinchingdetermination--on paper. The urgent necessity of either capturing ordepriving the party councils of power is a common suggestion underlyingall the thoughtful work of the early twentieth century, both in Americaand England. In most of these things America was a little earlier thanEngland, though both countries drove the same way. 

That counter-revolution never came. It could never organise and keeppure. There was not enough of the old sentimentality, the old faith inrighteousness, left among men. Any organisation that became big enoughto influence the polls became complex enough to be undermined, brokenup, or bought outright by capable rich men. Socialistic and Popular, Reactionary and Purity Parties were all at last mere Stock Exchangecounters, selling their principles to pay for their electioneering. Andthe great concern of the rich was naturally to keep property intact, theboard clear for the game of trade. Just as the feudal concern hadbeen to keep the board clear for hunting and war. The whole world wasexploited, a battle field of businesses; and financial convulsions, thescourge of currency manipulation, tariff wars, made more human miseryduring the twentieth century--because the wretchedness was dreary lifeinstead of speedy death--than had war, pestilence and famine, in thedarkest hours of earlier history. 

His own part in the development of this time he now knew clearly enough. Through the successive phases in the development of this mechanicalcivilisation, aiding and presently directing its development, there hadgrown a new power, the Council, the board of his trustees. At first ithad been a mere chance union of the millions of Isbister and Warming, amere property holding company, the creation of two childless testators'whims, but the collective talent of its first constitution had speedilyguided it to a vast influence, until by title deed, loan and share, under a hundred disguises and pseudonyms it had ramified through thefabric of the American and English States. 

Wielding an enormous influence and patronage, the Council had earlyassumed a political aspect; and in its development it had continuallyused its wealth to tip the beam of political decisions and its politicaladvantages to grasp yet more and more wealth. At last the partyorganisations of two hemispheres were in its hands; it became an innercouncil of political control. Its last struggle was with the tacitalliance of the great Jewish families. But these families were linkedonly by a feeble sentiment, at any time inheritance might fling a hugefragment of their resources to a minor, a woman or a fool, marriages andlegacies alienated hundreds of thousands at one blow. The Council had nosuch breach in its continuity. Steadily, steadfastly it grew. 

The original Council was not simply twelve men of exceptional ability;they fused, it was a council of genius. It struck boldly for riches, for political influence, and the two subserved each other. With amazingforesight it spent great sums of money on the art of flying, holdingthat invention back against an hour foreseen. It used the patent laws, and a thousand half-legal expedients, to hamper all investigators whorefused to work with it. In the old days it never missed a capable man. It paid his price. Its policy in those days was vigorous--unerring, and against it as it grew steadily and incessantly was only the chaoticselfish rule of the casually rich. In a hundred years Graham had becomealmost exclusive owner of Africa, of South America, of France, ofLondon, of England and all its influence--for all practical purposes, that is--a power in North America--then the dominant power in America. The Council bought and organised China, drilled Asia, crippled the OldWorld empires, undermined them financially, fought and defeated them. 

And this spreading usurpation of the world was so dexterouslyperformed--a proteus--hundreds of banks, companies, syndicates, maskedthe Council's operations--that it was already far advanced before commonmen suspected the tyranny that had come. The Council never hesitated, never faltered. Means of communication, land, buildings, governments, municipalities, the territorial companies of the tropics, every humanenterprise, it gathered greedily. And it drilled and marshalled its men, its railway police, its roadway police, its house guards, and drain andcable guards, its hosts of land-workers. Their unions it did not fight, but it undermined and betrayed and bought them. It bought the worldat last. And, finally, its culminating stroke was the introduction offlying. 

When the Council, in conflict with the workers in some of its hugemonopolies, did something flagrantly illegal and that without even theordinary civility of bribery, the old Law, alarmed for the profits ofits complaisance, looked about it for weapons. But there were nomore armies, no fighting navies; the age of Peace had' come. Theonly possible war ships were the great steam vessels of the Council'sNavigation Trust. The police forces they controlled; the police ofthe railways, of the ships, of their agricultural estates, theirtime-keepers and order-keepers, outnumbered the neglected little forcesof the old country and municipal organisations ten to one. And theyproduced flying machines. There were men alive still who could rememberthe last great debate in the London House of Commons--the legal party, the party against the Council was in a minority, but it made a desperatefight--and how the members came crowding out upon the terrace to seethese great unfamiliar winged shapes circling quietly overhead. TheCouncil had soared to its power. The last sham of a democracy that hadpermitted unlimited irresponsible property was at an end. 

Within one hundred and fifty years of Graham's falling asleep, hisCouncil had thrown off its disguises and ruled openly, supreme in hisname. Elections had become a cheerful formality, a septennial folly, an ancient unmeaning custom; a social Parliament as ineffectual as theconvocation of the Established Church in Victorian times assembled nowand then; and a legitimate King of England, disinherited, drunkenand witless, played foolishly in a second-rate music-hall. So themagnificent dream of the nineteenth century, the noble project ofuniversal individual liberty and universal happiness, touched by adisease of honour, crippled by a superstition of absolute property, crippled by the religious feuds that had robbed the common citizens ofeducation, robbed men of standards of conduct, and brought the sanctionsof morality to utter contempt, had worked itself out in the face ofinvention and ignoble enterprise, first to a warring plutocracy, andfinally to the rule of a supreme plutocrat. His Council at lasthad ceased even to trouble to have its decrees endorsed by theconstitutional authorities, and he a motionless, sunken, yellow-skinnedfigure had lain, neither dead nor living, recognisably and immediatelyMaster of the Earth. And awoke at last to find himself--Master of thatinheritance! Awoke to stand under the cloudless empty sky and gaze downupon the greatness of his dominion. 

To what end had he awakened? Was this city, this hive of hopelesstoilers, the final refutation of his ancient hopes? Or was the fire ofliberty, the fire that had blazed and waned in the years of his pastlife, still smouldering below there? He thought of the stir and impulseof the song of the revolution. Was that song merely the trick of ademagogue, to be forgotten when its purpose was served? Was the hopethat still stirred within him only the memory of abandoned things, the vestige of a creed outworn? Or had it a wider meaning, an importinterwoven with the destiny of man? To what end had he awakened, whatwas there for him to do? Humanity was spread below him like a map. Hethought of the millions and millions of humanity following each otherunceasingly for ever out of the darkness of non-existence into thedarkness of death. To what end? Aim there must be, but it transcendedhis power of thought. He saw for the first time clearly his own infinitelittleness, saw stark and terrible the tragic contrast of human strengthand the craving of the human heart. For that little while he knewhimself for the petty accident he was, and knew therewith the greatnessof his desire. And suddenly his littleness was intolerable, hisaspiration was intolerable, and there came to him an irresistibleimpulse to pray. And he prayed. He prayed vague, incoherent, contradictory things, his soul strained up through time and space andall the fleeting multitudinous confusion of being, towards something--hescarcely knew what--towards something that could comprehend his strivingand endure. 

A man and a woman were far below on a roof space to the southwardenjoying the freshness of the morning air. The man had brought out aperspective glass to spy upon the Council House and he was showing herhow to use it. Presently their curiosity was satisfied, they could seeno traces of bloodshed from their position, and after a survey of theempty sky she came round to the crow's nest. And there she saw twolittle black figures, so small it was hard to believe they were men, one who watched and one who gesticulated with hands outstretched to thesilent emptiness of Heaven. 

She handed the glass to the man. He looked and exclaimed:

"I believe it is the Master. Yes. I am sure. It is the Master!"

He lowered the glass and looked at her. "Waving his hands about almostas if he was praying. I wonder what he is up to. Worshipping the sun?There weren't Parses in this country in his time, were there?"

He looked again. "He's stopped it now. It was a chance attitude, Isuppose. " He put down the glass and became meditative. "He won't haveanything to do but enjoy himself--just enjoy himself. Ostrog will bossthe show of course. Ostrog will have to, because of keeping all theseLabourer fools in bounds. Them and their song! And got it all bysleeping, dear eyes--just sleeping. It's a wonderful world. "

CHAPTER XV. PROMINENT PEOPLE

The state apartments of the Wind Vane Keeper would have seemedastonishingly intricate to Graham had he entered them fresh from hisnineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to thescale of the new time. They can scarcely be described as halls androoms, seeing that a complicated system of arches, bridges, passages andgalleries divided and united every part of the great space. He cameout through one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a. Plateau oflanding at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, withmen and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seenascending and descending. From this position he looked down a vista ofintricate ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned bybridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminatingfar off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens. 

Glancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending gallerieswith faces looking down upon him. The air was full of the babble ofinnumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay andexhilarating music whose source he never discovered. 

The central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortablycrowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands. They were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifullyas the women, for the sobering influence of the Puritan conception ofdignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. The hair ofthe men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled ina manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished fromthe earth. Frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed Rossettiabounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to Graham under themysterious title of an "amorist", wore his hair in two becoming plaits ala Marguerite. The pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizensof Chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. There waslittle uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. Themore shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here werepuffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. The fashions ofthe days of Leo the Tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, butthe aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. Masculineembonpoint, which, in Victorian times, would have been subjected tothe tightly buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-leggedtight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth ofdignity and drooping folds. Graceful slenderness abounded' also. ToGraham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not onlydid these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether tooexpressive in their vividly expressive faces. They gesticulated, theyexpressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressedthe emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them withastonishing frankness. Even at the first glance it was evident thatwomen were in a great majority. 

The ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearingand manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected aclassical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashionof the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders asGraham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or beltat the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. Thedelightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by thepassage of two centuries. 

Everyone's movements seemed graceful. Graham remarked to Lincoln thathe saw men as Raphael's cartoons walking, and Lincoln told him thatthe attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of everyrich person's education. The Master's entry was greeted with a sort oftittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished mannersby not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, ashe descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle. 

He had already learnt from Lincoln that these were the leaders ofexisting London society; almost every person there that night was eithera powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official. Many had returned from the European Pleasure Cities expressly to welcomehim. The aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a partin the overthrow of the Council only second to Graham's were veryprominent, and so, too, was the Wind Vane Control. Amongst others therewere several of the more prominent officers of the Food Trust; thecontroller of the European Piggeries had a particularly melancholy andinteresting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. A bishop in fullcanonicals passed athwart Graham's vision, conversing with a gentlemandressed exactly like the traditional Chaucer, including even the laurelwreath. 

"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 ofthe Councillors. But he's one of the Red Rose Royalists--a delightfulclub--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 thegeneral inversion of the new age. He bowed condescendingly to his firstintroduction. It was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailedeven 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 suntannedface contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. Justat present his critical defection from the Council made him a veryimportant person indeed. 

His manner contrasted very favourably, according to Graham's ideas, withthe general bearing. He made a few commonplace remarks, assurances ofloyalty and frank inquiries about the Master's health. His manner wasbreezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day English. Hemade it admirably clear to Graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"--heused that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he wasa thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn'tprofess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worthknowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness andpassed. 

"I am glad to see that type endures, " said Graham

"Phonographs and kinematographs, " said Lincoln, a little spitefully. "Hehas studied from the life. " Graham glanced at the burly form again. Itwas oddly reminiscent. 

"As a matter of fact we bought him, " said Lincoln. "Partly. And partlyhe was afraid of Ostrog Everything rested with him. "

He turned sharply to introduce the Surveyor-General of the Public SchoolTrust. This person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, hebeamed down upon Graham through _pince-nez_ of a Victorian pattern, andillustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand. Graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, andasked him a number of singularly direct questions. The Surveyor-Generalseemed quietly amused at the Master's fundamental bluntness. He was alittle vague as to the monopoly of education his Company possessed; itwas done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous LondonMunicipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progresssince the Victorian times. "We have conquered Cram, " he said, "completely conquered Cram--there is not an examination left in theworld. 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 notattract then--we let it go. We cover an immense field. "

He proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. TheSurveyor-General mentioned the names of Pestalozzi and Froebelwith profound respect, although he displayed no intimacy with theirepoch-making works. Graham learnt that University Extension stillexisted in a modified form. "There is a certain type of girl, forexample, " said the Surveyor-General, dilating with a sense of hisusefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies--when they arenot too difficult you know. We cater for them by the thousand. Atthis moment, " he said with a Napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundredphonographs are lecturing in different parts of London on the influenceexercised by Plato and Swift on the love affairs of Shelley, Hazlitt, and Burns. And afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and thenames in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. You see how yourlittle germ has grown? The illiterate middle-class of your days hasquite passed away. "

"About the public elementary schools, " said Graham. "Do you controlthem?"

The Surveyor-General did, "entirely. " Now, Graham, in his laterdemocratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioningquickened. Certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old manwith whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. TheSurveyor-General, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "We haveabolished Cram, " he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpretas the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General becamesentimental. "We try and make the elementary schools very pleasant forthe little children. They will have to work so soon. Just a few simpleprinciples--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 getthe ideas, one cannot tell. They tell one another. There are socialisticdreams--anarchy even! Agitators will get to work among them. I takeit--I have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight againstpopular discontent. Why should people be made unhappy?"

"I wonder, " said Graham thoughtfully. "But there are a great many thingsI want to know. "

Lincoln, who had stood watching Graham's face throughout theconversation, 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 someof these ladies?"

The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries of the European Food Trustwas a particularly charming little person with red hair and animatedblue eyes. Lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and shedisplayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old times, "as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. Asshe talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demandedreciprocity. 

"I have tried, " she said, "countless times--to imagine those oldromantic days. And to you they are memories. How strange and crowded theworld must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the oldtimes, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mudand all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simpleadvertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange blackcoats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridgesoverhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about thestreets. 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 sighedencouragingly. "No?"

"No, " said Graham. "It was a little life--and unmeaning. But this--. We thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. Yet Isee--although in this world I am barely four days old--looking back onmy own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning ofthis new order. The mere beginning of this new order. You will find ithard 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 darkabout 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 greatpublic businesses. Who is that distinguished looking man?"

"That? He's a most important officer. That is Morden. He is managingdirector of the Antibilious Pill Company. I have heard that his workerssometimes 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 awonderful time it is! That man in purple?"

"He is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. But we like him. Heis really clever and very amusing. He is one of the heads of theMedical Faculty of our London University. All medical men, you know, areshareholders in the Medical Faculty Company, and wear that purple. Youhave to be--to be qualified. But of course, people who are paid by feesfor doing something--" She smiled away the social pretensions of allsuch people. 

"Are any of your great artists or authors here?"

"No authors. They are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied aboutthemselves. And they quarrel so dreadfully! They will fight, some ofthem, for precedence on staircases! Dreadful isn't it? But I thinkWraysbury, 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 inhis hands. " She smiled. 

Graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance wasexpressive. "Have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" hesaid. "Who are your great painters?"

She looked at him doubtfully. Then laughed. "For a moment, " she said, "Ithought you meant--" She laughed again. "You mean, of course, those goodmen you used to think so much of because they could cover great spacesof canvas with oil-colours? Great oblongs. And people used to put thethings in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. Wehaven'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 abovesuspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "Andhere, " and she indicated her eyelid. 

Graham had an adventurous moment. Then a grotesque memory of a picturehe had somewhere seen of Uncle Toby and the Widow flashed across hismind. An archaic shame came upon him. He became acutely aware that hewas visible to a great number of interested people. "I see, " he remarkedinadequately. He turned awkwardly away from her, fascinating facility. He looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupiedthemselves with other things. Possibly he coloured a little. "Who isthat talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes. 

The person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of theAmerican theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at Mexico. Hisface reminded Graham of a bust of Caligula. Another striking lookingman was the Black Labour Master. The phrase at the time made no deepimpression, but afterwards it recurred;--the Black Labour Master? Thelittle lady, in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charminglittle woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the Anglican Bishop ofLondon. She added encomiums on the episcopal courage--hitherto there hadbeen a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither a natural nor an expedientcondition of things. Why should the natural development of theaffections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?"

"And, bye the bye, " she added, "are you an Anglican?" Graham was on theverge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife, "apparently an euphemistic phrase, when Lincoln's return broke off thisvery suggestive and interesting conversation. They crossed the aisle towhere a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in Burmese costume(as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. From their civilities hepassed to other presentations. 

In a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organisethemselves into a general effect. At first the glitter of the gatheringhad raised all the democrat in Graham; he had felt hostile andsatirical. But it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere ofcourteous regard. Soon the music, the light, the play of colours, theshining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transientinterest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skillfully modulatedvoices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woventogether into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. Graham for a timeforgot his spacious resolutions. He gave way insensibly to theintoxication of me position that was conceded him, his manner becameless conscious, more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, theblack robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. Afterall this was a brilliant interesting world. 

His glance went approvingly over the shifting colours of the people, it rested here and there in kindly criticism upon a face. Presently itoccurred to him that he owed some apology to the charming little personwith the red hair and blue eyes. He felt guilty of a clumsy snub. Itwas not princely to ignore her advances, even if his policy necessitatedtheir rejection. He wondered if he should see her again. And suddenlya little thing touched all the glamour of this brilliant gathering andchanged its quality. 

He looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and lookingdown upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face ofthe girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatreafter his escape from the Council. And she was looking with much thesame expression of curious expectation, of uncertain intentness, uponhis proceedings. For the moment he did not remember when he had seenher, and then with recognition came a vague memory of the stirringemotions of their first encounter. But the dancing web of melody abouthim kept the air of that great marching song from his memory. 

The lady to whom he was talking repeated her remark, and Graham recalledhimself to the quasiregal flirtation upon which he was engaged. 

But from that moment a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew todissatisfaction, came into his mind. He was troubled as if by somehalf forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping fromhim amidst this light and brilliance. The attraction that these brightladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He nolonger made vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advancesthat he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wanderedfor another sight of that face that had appealed so strongly to hissense of beauty. But he did not see her again until he was awaitingLincoln's return to leave this assembly. In answer to his requestLincoln had promised that an attempt should be made to fly thatafternoon, if the weather permitted. He had gone to make certainnecessary arrangements. 

Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with abright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the subject was hischoice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personaldevotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had alreadyfound several other latter-day women that night, less well informedthan charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearermelody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down to him. 

He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses ofcable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the publicways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. But nowhe perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platformsand a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could notaccount for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways ahuge crowd' must be watching this place in which their Master amusedhimself. He wondered what they might be thinking. 

Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music ofthis gathering reasserted itself, the motif of the marching song, onceit had begun, lingered in his mind. 

The bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries ofEadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again. She was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her firstbefore she saw him. She was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her darkhair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold lightfrom the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face. 

The lady in trouble about the Eadhamite saw the change in hisexpression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. "Would you care toknow that girl, Sire?" she asked boldly. "She is Helen Wotton--a nieceof Ostrog's. She knows a great many serious things. She is one of themost serious persons alive. I am sure you will like her. "

In another moment Graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyedlady had fluttered away. 

"I remember you quite well, " said Graham. "You were in that littleroom. 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 facewas steady. "It was wonderful, " she said, hesitated, and spoke witha 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 heardher words. 

Lincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way throughthe press towards them. She saw him and turned to Graham strangelyeager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. "Sire, " she saidquickly, "I cannot tell you now and here. But the common people are veryunhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. Do not forget thepeople, 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 pleasant, Sire?" asked Lincoln, with smilingdeference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering byone comprehensive gesture. "At any rate, you find it changed. "

"Yes, " said Graham, "changed. And yet, after all, not so greatlychanged. "

"Wait till you are in the air, " said Lincoln. "The wind has fallen; evennow an aeropile awaits you. "

The girl's attitude awaited dismissal. 

Graham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found awarning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany Lincoln. 

CHAPTER XVI. THE AEROPHILE

For a while, as Graham went through the passages of the Wind-Vaneoffices with Lincoln, he was preoccupied. But, by an effort, he attendedto the things which Lincoln was saying. Soon his preoccupation vanished. Lincoln was talking of flying. Graham had a strong desire to know moreof this new human attainment. He began to ply Lincoln with questions. He had followed the crude beginnings of aerial navigation very keenly inhis previous life; he was delighted to find the familiar names ofMaxim and Pilcher, Langley and Chanute, and, above all, of the aerialproto-martyr Lillienthal, still honoured by men. 

Even during his previous life two lines of investigation had pointedclearly to two distinct types of contrivance as possible, and both ofthese had been realised. On the one hand was the great engine-drivenaeroplane, a double row of horizontal floats with a big aerial screwbehind, and on the other the nimbler aeropile. The aeroplanes flewsafely only in a calm or moderate wind, and sudden storms, occurrencesthat were now accurately predictable, rendered them for all practicalpurposes useless. They were built of enormous size--the usual stretchof wing being six hundred feet or more, and the length of the fabric athousand feet. They were for passenger traffic alone. The lightly swungcar they carried was from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet inlength. It Was hung in a peculiar manner in order to minimise thecomplex vibration that even a moderate wind produced, and for the samereason the little seats within the car--each passenger remained seatedduring the voyage--were slung with great freedom of movement. Thestarting of the mechanism was only possible from a gigantic car onthe rail of a specially constructed stage. Graham had seen these vaststages, the flying stages, from the crow's nest very well. Six hugeblank areas they were, with a giant "carrier" stage on each. 

The choice of descent was equally circumscribed, an accurately planesurface being needed for safe grounding. Apart from the destruction thatwould have been caused by the descent of this great expanse of sail andmetal, and the impossibility of its rising again, the concussion of anirregular surface, a tree-set hillside, for instance, or an embankment, would be sufficient to pierce or damage the framework, to smash the ribsof the body, and perhaps kill those aboard. 

At first Graham felt disappointed with these cumbersome contrivances, but he speedily grasped the fact that smaller machines would have beenunremunerative, for the simple reason that their carrying power would bedisproportionately diminished with diminished size. Moreover, the hugesize of these things enabled them--and it was a consideration of primaryimportance--to traverse the air at enormous speeds, and so run no risksof unanticipated weather. The briefest journey performed, that fromLondon to Paris, took about three-quarters of an hour, but the velocityattained was not high; the leap to New York occupied about two hours, and by timing oneself carefully at the intermediate stations it waspossible in quiet weather to go around the world in a day. 

The little aeropiles (as for no particular reason they weredistinctively called) were of an altogether different type. Several ofthese were going to and fro in the air. They were designed to carry onlyone or two persons, and their manufacture and maintenance was so costlyas to render them the monopoly of the richer sort of people. Theirsails, which were brilliantly coloured, consisted only of two pairs oflateral air floats in the same plane, and of a screw behind. Theirsmall size rendered a descent in any open space neither difficult nordisagreeable, and it was possible to attach pneumatic wheels or even theordinary motors for terrestrial tragic to them, and so carry them to aconvenient starting place. They required a special sort of swift car tothrow them into the air, but such a car was efficient in any open placeclear of high buildings or trees. Human aeronautics, Graham perceived, were evidently still a long way behind the instinctive gift of thealbatross or the fly-catcher. One great influence that might havebrought the aeropile to a more rapid perfection had been withheld; theseinventions had never been used in warfare. The last great internationalstruggle had occurred before the usurpation of the Council. 

The Flying Stages of London were collected together in an irregularcrescent on the southern side of the river. They formed three groups oftwo 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 structuresrising high above the general roof surfaces. Each was about fourthousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of thecompound of aluminium and iron that had replaced iron in architecture. Their higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through which liftsand staircases ascended. The upper surface was a uniform expanse, withportions--the starting carriers--that could be raised and were then ableto run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric. Savefor any aeropiles or aeroplanes that were in port these open surfaceswere kept clear for arrivals. 

During the adjustment of the aeroplanes it was the custom for passengersto wait in the system of theatres, restaurants, news-rooms, and placesof pleasure and indulgence of various sorts that interwove with theprosperous shops below. This portion of London was in consequencecommonly the gayest of all its districts, with something of themeretricious gaiety of a seaport or city of hotels. And for those whotook a more serious view of aeronautics, the religious quarters hadflung out an attractive colony of devotional chapels, while a hostof brilliant medical establishments competed to supply physicalpreparatives for the journey. At various levels through the mass ofchambers and passages beneath these, ran, in addition to the main movingways of the city which laced and gathered here, a complex system ofspecial passages and lifts and slides, for the convenient interchange ofpeople and luggage between stage and stage. And a distinctive feature ofthe architecture of this section was the ostentatious massiveness of themetal piers and girders that everywhere broke the vistas and spanned thehalls and passages, crowding and twining up to meet the weight of thestages and the weighty impact of the aeroplanes overhead. 

Graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. He was accompaniedby Asano, his Japanese attendant. Lincoln was called away by Ostrog, who was busy with his administrative concerns. A strong guard of theWind-Vane police awaited the Master outside the Wind-Vane offices, andthey cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. His passageto the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowdgathered and followed him to his destination. As he went along, he couldhear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women andchildren in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. He could not hear what they shouted. He wasstruck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among thepoor of the city. When at last he descended, his guards were immediatelysurrounded by a dense excited crowd. Afterwards it occurred to him thatsome had attempted to reach him with petitions. His guards cleared apassage for him with difficulty. 

He found an aeropile in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on thewestward stage. Seen close this mechanism was no longer small. As it layon its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, itsaluminium body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. Its lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nervesalmost like the nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassyartificial membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of squareyards. The chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swingby a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and wellabaft the middle. The passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guardand guarded about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. It could, if desired, be completely closed in, but Graham was anxious for novelexperiences, and desired that it should be left open. The aeronautsat behind a glass that sheltered his face. The passenger could securehimself 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 lockerat the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps andrestoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as amakeweight to the parts of the central engine that projected to thepropeller at the stern. 

The engine was very simple in appearance. Asano, pointing out theparts of this apparatus to him, told him that, like the gas-engine ofVictorian days, it was of the explosive type, burning a small drop ofa substance called "fomile" at each stroke. It consisted simply ofreservoir and piston about the long fluted crank of the propeller shaft. So much Graham saw of the machine. 

The flying stage about him was empty save for Asano and their suite ofattendants. Directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. Hethen drank a mixture containing ergot--a dose, he learnt, invariablyadministered to those about to fly, and designed to counteract thepossible effect of diminished air pressure upon the system. Having doneso, he declared himself ready for the journey. Asano took the emptyglass from him, stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below onthe stage waving his hand. Suddenly he seemed to slide along the stageto the right and vanish. 

The engine was beating, the propeller spinning, and for a second thestage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontallypast Graham's eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. Hegripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. He felthimself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of thewind screen. The propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmicimpulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which the engineercontrolled very delicately. The machine began a quivering vibration thatcontinued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running awayto starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. He looked fromthe face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. Lookingsideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw--a rapidfunicular railway might have given the same sensations. He recognisedthe Council House and the Highgate Ridge. And then he looked straightdown between his feet. 

For a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense ofinsecurity. He held tight. For a second or so he could not lift hiseyes. Some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the bigwindvanes of south-west London, and beyond it the southernmost flyingstage crowded with little black dots. These things seemed to be fallingaway from him. For a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. Heset his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the momentof panic passed. 

He remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring intothe sky. Throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb, --beat. He gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, andsaw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. He smiled in return--perhaps alittle artificially. "A little strange at first, " he shouted before herecalled 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 horizoncrept up the sky. For a little while he could' not banish the thoughtof possible accidents from his mind. Throb, throb, throb--beat; supposesome trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! Suppose--! Hemade a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. After a while theydid at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. And up he wentsteadily, higher and higher into the clear air. 

Once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air wasover, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedilypleasurable. He had been warned of air sickness. But he found thepulsating movement of the aeropile as it drove up the faint south-westbreeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on tobroad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a goodsailor. And the keenness of the more rarefied air into which theyascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. He looked upand saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. His eye camecautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of whitebirds that hung in the lower sky. For a space he watched these. Thengoing lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure ofthe Wind-Vane keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight andgrowing 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, andbanished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. For the boundaryof London was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or fourhundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, acomplex decorative facade. 

That gradual passage of town into country through an extensive spongeof suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities ofthe nineteenth century, existed no longer. Nothing remained of it buta waste of ruins here, variegated and dense with thickets of theheterogeneous growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdantstretches of winter greens. The latter even spread among the vestigesof houses. But for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, thewreckage of suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queerislands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandonedindeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed', to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanismsof the time. 

The vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countlesscells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the citywall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. Here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remainsof Victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. Thatwinter day they seemed deserted. Deserted, too, were the artificialgardens among the ruins. The city limits were indeed as sharply definedas in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and therobber foreman prowled to the very walls. A huge semi-circular throatpoured out a vigorous traffic upon the Eadhamite Bath Road. So the firstprospect of the world beyond the city flashed on Graham, and dwindled. And when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw belowhim the vegetable fields of the Thames valley--innumerable minuteoblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewageditches. 

His exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. Hefound himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiringto shout. After a time that desire became too strong for him, and heshouted. 

The machine had now risen as high as was customary with aeropiles, andthey began to curve about towards the south. Steering, Graham perceived, was effected by the opening or closing of one or two thin strips ofmembrane in one or other of the otherwise rigid wings, and by themovement of the whole engine backward or forward along its supports. Theaeronaut set the engine gliding slowly forward along its rail andopened the valve of the leeward wing until the stem of the aeropile washorizontal and pointing southward. And in that direction they drove witha slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, firsta short, sharp ascent and' then a long downward glide that was veryswift and pleasing. During these downward glides the propellor wasinactive altogether. These ascents gave Graham a glorious sense ofsuccessful effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond allexperience. He wanted never to leave the upper air again. 

For a time he was intent upon the minute details of the landscape thatran swiftly northward beneath him. Its minute, clear detail pleased himexceedingly. He was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had oncedotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of country from whichall farms and villages had gone, save for crumbling ruins. He had knownthe thing was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. He tried to make out places he had known within the hollow basin ofthe world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that theThames valley was left behind. Soon, however, they were driving over asharp chalk hill that he recognised as the Guildford Hog's Back, becauseof the familiar outline of the gorge at its eastward end, and because ofthe 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 wastesof Aldershot, and so forth. The Downs escarpment was set with giganticslow-moving wind-wheels. Save where the broad Eadhamite PortsmouthRoad, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the oldrailway, the gorge of the Wey was choked with thickets. 

The whole expanse of the Downs escarpment, so far as the grey hazepermitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest ofthe city was but a younger brother. They stirred with a stately motionbefore the south-west wind. And here and there were patches dottedwith the sheep of the British Food Trust, and here and there a mountedshepherd made a spot of black. Then rushing under the stern of theaeropile came the Wealden Heights, the line of Hindhead, Pitch Hill, andLeith Hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to robthe downland whirlers of their share of breeze. The purple heather wasspeckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of blackoxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. Swiftly these sweptbehind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specksthat were swallowed up in haze. 

And when these had vanished in the distance Graham heard a peewitwailing close at hand. He perceived he was now above the South Downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of Portsmouth LandingStage towering over the ridge of Portsdown Hill. In another moment therecame into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the littlewhite cliffs of the Needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey andglittering waters of the narrow sea. They seemed to leap the Solent ina moment, and in a few seconds the Isle of Wight was running past, andthen beneath him spread a wider and wide extent of sea, here purple withthe shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and herea spread of cloudy greenish blue. The Isle of Wight grew smaller andsmaller. In a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself fromother strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became acoastline--sunlit and pleasant--the coast of northern France. It rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of theDownland of England was speeding by below. 

In a little time, as it seemed, Paris came above the horizon, and hungthere for a space, and sank out of sight again as the aeropile circledabout to the north again. But he perceived the Eiffel Tower stillstanding, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pinpoint Colossus. And he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, aslanting drift of smoke. The aeronaut said something about "trouble inthe underways, " that Graham did not heed at the time. But he marked theminarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above thecity windvanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least Parisstill kept in front of her larger rival. And even as he looked a paleblue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf drivingup before a gale. It curved round and soared towards them growingrapidly larger and larger. The aeronaut was saying something. "What?"said Graham, loath to take his eyes from this. "Aeroplane, Sire, " bawledthe aeronaut pointing. 

They rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. Nearer it cameand nearer, larger and larger. The throb, throb, throb--beat, of theaeropile's flight, that had seemed so potent and so swift, suddenlyappeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. How great themonster seemed, how swift and steady! It passed quite closely beneaththem, driving along silently, a vast spread of wirenetted translucentwings, a thing alive. Graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows androws of wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behindwind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the galealong a ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of thewhirling wind screw, and of a wide waste of wing. He exulted in thesight. And in an instant the thing had passed. 

It rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of itsflight. 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. Infair 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'senlarged ideas, and Beachy Head rose greyly to the left of them. 

"Land, " called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling ofthe air over the wind-screen. 

"Not yet, " bawled Graham, laughing. "Not land yet. I want to learn moreof 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 chairand taken a step along the guarded rail between them. He stopped for amoment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. Another step andhe 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 windcame in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers pasthis cheek. The aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting ofthe centres of gravity and pressure. 

"I want to have these things explained, " said Graham. "What do you dowhen 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 ofthis novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air. 

The aeropile curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across Graham'sface and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to thewest. 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 evera chance. They come as passengers--"

"I have heard something of the sort. But I'm not going to argue thesepoints. 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 itsnose 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 clamberby this to come and share your seat. Steady! I mean to fly of my ownaccord if I smash at the end of it. I will have something to pay formy 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 aeropileswayed. 

"Am I Master of the earth?" he said. "Or is your Society? Now. Take yourhands off those levers, and hold my wrists. Yes--so. And now, how do weturn 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 aerialnavigation. "It's clearly to your advantage, this journey, " he said witha loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly andwell. Do I pull this? Ah! So! Hullo!"

"Back, Sire! Back!"

"Back--right. One--two--three--good God! Ah! Up she goes! But this isliving!"

And now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. Nowit would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, nowit would rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it highagain. In one of these descents it seemed driving straight at thedrifting park of balloons in the southeast, and only curved aboutand cleared them by a sudden recovery of dexterity. The extraordinaryswiftness and smoothness of the motion, the extraordinary effect of therarefied air upon his constitution, threw Graham into a careless fury. 

But at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying downonce 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 adrop of rain. Then as he went on down he saw something like a white ragwhirling down in his wake. "What was that?" he asked. "I did not see. "

The aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, forthey were sweeping down. When the aeropile was rising again he drew adeep breath and replied. "That, " and he indicated the white thing stillfluttering down, "was a swan. "

"I never saw it, " said Graham. 

The aeronaut made no answer, and Graham saw little drops upon hisforehead. 

They drove horizontally while Graham clambered back to the passenger'splace 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 stagegrowing broad and dark before them. The sun, sinking over the chalkhills 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 tomeet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, andsaw that the roofs about the flying stage were dark with his peoplerejoicing over his safe return. A dark mass was crushed together underthe stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quiveringwith the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and wavinghands. 

CHAPTER XVII. THREE DAYS

Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. Heseemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of theextraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying Grahamwas in a mood of enthusiasm. "I must learn to fly, " he cried. "Imust master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without thisopportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience inthe world. "

"You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences, " saidLincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music thatmay seem novel. "

"For the present, " said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more ofthat. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection toone'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 aeronauttomorrow. "

Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for awhile. "And as for affairs, " he asked abruptly. "How are things goingon?"

Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that tomorrow, " hesaid. "Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itselfall over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course;but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog'shands. "

"Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you callit, forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be atit the very first thing tomorrow again. 

"It would be possible, " said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible. Indeed, it shall be done. " He laughed. "I came prepared to suggestamusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to theaeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments inthe Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts willbe able to come. You don't think that after you have dined, you mightprefer--?" He paused. 

"Yes, " said Graham. 

"We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from theCapri 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 thematter 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 someexpert--about your machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions. "

"You have the world to choose from, " said Lincoln; "whatever you want isyours. "

Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returnedthrough the city streets to Graham's apartments. Far larger crowds hadassembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, andthe shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drownedLincoln's answers to the endless questions Graham's aerial journey hadsuggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and criesof the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such arecognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, alreadya little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for theremainder of his public progress. 

Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in searchof kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincolndespatched Graham's commands for models of machines and small machinesto illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attractedthe Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served bya number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habitof smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when heexpressed a wish for that indulgence, inquiries were made and someexcellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him bypneumatic dispatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwardscame the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of alatter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity ofcounting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinatingto Graham than any bayadere. "We were savages, " was his refrain, "wewere savages. We were in the stone age--compared with this.... And whatelse have you?"

There came also practical psychologists with some very interestingdevelopments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell, Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, borea value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Severalpractical applications of psychology were now in general use; it hadlargely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anaesthetics in medicine; wasemployed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. Areal enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in thisdirection. The feats of "calculating boys, " the wonders, as Graham hadbeen wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range ofanyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long agothe old examination methods in education had been destroyed by theseexpedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a fewweeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simplyto repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding asuggestion of the post hypnotic recollection of these points. In processmathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and itwas now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manualdexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conductedunder finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were nowsystematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion, and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children ofthe labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age tobe hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual andtrustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, longthoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street werehypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyonedesired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, itcould 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 thusforgotten, amorous 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 transferencewere yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositionswith some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency ofa troupe of pale-faced children in blue. 

Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted thehypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of manypainful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln's assurances he held tothe old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender ofhis personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderfulexperiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remainabsolutely himself. 

The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in suchinterests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the gloriousentertainment of flying. On the third day he soared across middleFrance, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercisesgave him restful sleep, and each day saw a great stride in his healthfrom the spiritless anaemia of his first awakening. And whenever he wasnot in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of hisamusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention wasbrought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nighglutted. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strangethings they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an houror so. He speedily found his interest in his contemporaries becomingpersonal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly forunfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, anydiscordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status andmanners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon thatstrangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it, disappeared; howsoon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and seethe old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found himself particularlyamused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the EuropeanPiggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of alatter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And afterthat, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved tosuggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but thisGraham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists inhis aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London;he found a perpetual wonder in topographical identifications that hewould have missed abroad. "Here--or a hundred feet below here, " he couldsay, "I used to eat my midday cutlets during my London Universitydays. Underneath here was Waterloo and the perpetual hunt for confusingtrains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and staredup into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I shouldwalk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky thatwas once a grey smoke canopy, I circle in an aeropile. "

During those three days Graham was so occupied with such distractionsthat the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters hadbut 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 littletrouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" inthat. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he neverlearned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all thegreat emotions of the crow's nest slumbered in his mind. 

But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spiteof his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by, reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girlHelen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper'sgathering. The impression she had made was a deep one, albeit theincessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from broodingupon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. Hewondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences;the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became morevivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her beauty came compellinglybetween him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But hedid 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 WindVane Offices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long andnarrow, with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration thatlooked upon a court of palms. He came upon her suddenly in one ofthese recesses. She was seated. She turned her head at the sound ofhis footsteps and started at the sight of him. Every touch of colourvanished from her face. She rose instantly, made a step toward him asif 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 thisplace. 

He felt a regal impulse to assist her. "I have wanted to see you, " hesaid. "A few days ago you wanted to tell me something--you wanted totell 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. Ihave meant to, I have wanted to. And now--I cannot. I am not ready withwords. But about you--there is something. It is Wonder. Your sleep--yourawakening. These things are miracles. To me at least--and to all thecommon people. You who lived and suffered and died, you who were acommon citizen, wake again, live again, to find yourself Master almostof the earth. "

"Master of the earth, " he said. "So they tell me. But try and imaginehow little I know of it. "

"Cities--Trusts--the Labour Company--"

"Principalities, powers, dominions--the power and the glory. Yes, I haveheard 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 takethe responsibility. The people look to you. "

She spoke softly. "Listen! For at least half the years of your sleep--inevery generation--multitudes of people, in every generation greatermultitudes 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 knowthat you have been to myriads--King Arthur, Barbarossa--the King whowould 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 layinsensible and motionless there--thousands came. Thousands. Every firstof the month you lay in state with a white robe upon you and the peoplefiled by you. When I was a little girl I saw you like that, with yourface white and calm. "

She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at the painted wallbefore her. Her voice fell. "When I was a little girl I used to lookat your face.... It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience ofGod. "

"That is what we thought of you, " she said. "That is how you seemed tous. "

She turned shining eyes to him, her voice was clear and strong. "In thecity, in the earth, a myriad myriad men and women are waiting to seewhat 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. Sheseemed at first to have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herselfby speaking. 

"Do you think, " she said, "that you who have lived that little life sofar away in the past, you who have fallen into and risen out of thismiracle of sleep--do you think that the wonder and reverence and hopeof half the world has gathered about you only that you may live anotherlittle life?... That you may shift the responsibility to any other man?"

"I know how great this kingship of mine is, " he said haltingly. "I knowhow great it seems. But is it real? It is incredible--dreamlike. Is itreal, 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 illusionin the minds of men. "

"If you dare!" she said. 

"But--"

"Countless men, " she said, "and while it is in their minds--they willobey. "

"But I know nothing. That is what I had in mind. I know nothing. Andthese others--the Councillors, Ostrog. They are wiser, cooler, they knowso much, every detail. And, indeed, what are these miseries of which youspeak? 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 worldseems full of wretchedness. The world has altered since your day, altered very strangely. I have prayed that I might see you and tell youthese things. The world has changed. As if a canker had seized it--androbbed life of--everything worth having. "

She turned a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly. "Your days were thedays of freedom. Yes--I have thought. I have been made to think, for mylife--has not been happy. Men are no longer free--no greater, no betterthan 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? Isthat 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 asyou find about you, is separated by just a little from a life ofwretchedness beyond any telling Yes, the poor know it--they know theysuffer. These countless multitudes who faced death for you two nightssince--! 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 citieswas scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny--a tyranny. In your days thefeudal war lords had gone, and the new lordship of wealth had stillto come. Half the men in the world still lived out upon the freecountryside. The cities had still to devour them. I have heard thestories out of the old books--there was nobility! Common men led livesof love and faithfulness then--they did a thousand things. And you--youcome 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 knowyou do not know. They will keep things from you, they will take youpresently to a Pleasure City. But you have noticed men and women andchildren 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 LabourCompany you own. "

"The Labour Company! 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 struckyou. Nearly a third of our people wear it--more assume it now every day. This Labour Company has grown imperceptibly. "

"What is this Labour Company?" 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 remembernow. The Labour Company ousted the workhouse. It grew--partly--outof something--you, perhaps, may remember it--an emotional religiousorganisation called the Salvation Army--that became a business company. In the first place it was almost a charity. To save people fromworkhouse rigours. Now I come to think of it, it was one of the earliestproperties your Trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation Army andreconstructed it as this. The idea in the first place was to give workto starving homeless people. "

"Yes. "

"Nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing butthat Company. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is its colour. And any man, woman or child who comes to be hungry and weary and withneither home nor friend nor resort, must go to the Company in theend--or seek some way of death. The Euthanasy is beyond their means--forthe poor there is no easy death. And at any hour in the day or nightthere is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers--that is thefirst condition of the Company's incorporation--and in return for aday's shelter the Company extracts a day's work, and then returns thevisitor's proper clothing and sends him or her out again. "

"Yes?"

"Perhaps that does not seem so terrible to you. In your days men starvedin your streets. That was bad. But they died--men. These people inblue--. The proverb runs: 'Blue canvas once and ever. ' The Companytrades in their labour, and it has taken care to assure itself of thesupply. People come to it starving and helpless--they eat and sleep fora night and day, they--work for a day, and at the end of the day they goout again. If they have worked well they have a penny or so--enoughfor a theatre or a cheap dancing place, or a kinematograph story, ora dinner or a bet. They wander about after that is spent. Begging isprevented by the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives. They comeback again the next day or the day after--brought back by the sameincapacity that brought them first. At last their proper clothing wearsout, or their rags get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they mustwork for months to get fresh. If they want fresh. A great number ofchildren are born under the Company's care. The mother owes them amonth thereafter--the children they cherish and educate until theyare fourteen, and they pay two years' service. You may be sure thesechildren are educated for the blue canvas. And so it is the Companyworks. "

"And none are destitute in the city?"

"None. They are either in blue canvas or in prison. "

"If they will not work?"

"Most people will work at that pitch, and the Company has powers. Thereare stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a man orwoman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking systemin the Company's offices all over the world. Besides, who can leave thecity poor? To go to Paris costs two Lions. And for insubordinationthere are the prisons--dark and miserable--out of sight below. There areprisons 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 theirshameful lives, their privations and hardships. Too poor even for theEuthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life. Dumb, crippled millions, countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything butlimitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born, they are thwartedand 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 bechanged. " Ostrog--"

"That is our hope. That is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will notdo 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 theinfluential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries forgranted. They use the people in their politics, they live in ease bytheir degradation. But you--you who come from a happier age--it is toyou the people look. To you. "

He looked at her face. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felta 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 herbeauty. 

"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 happinessof men. For you might rule it--you could rule it. 

"The people are stirring. All over the world the people are stirring. Itwants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. Eventhe middle sort of people are restless unhappy. 

"They are not telling you the things that are happening. The people willnot go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. Ostrog hasawakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes. "

His heart was beating fast. He tried to seem judicial, to weighconsiderations. 

"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? Couldone man--one man--?" His voice sank and ceased. 

"Not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desireof 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 strengthfor that--but something rather right than wrong. It will bring nomillennium, but I am resolved now that I will rule. What you have saidhas awakened me.... You are right. Ostrog must know his place. And Iwill learn--.... One thing I promise you. This Labour slavery shallend. "

"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 whetherI will help you?" she said. 

She stood before him, beautiful, worshipful, and her enthusiasm and thegreatness of their theme was like a great gulf fixed between them. Totouch her, to clasp her hand, was a thing beyond hope. "Then I will ruleindeed, " he said slowly. "I will rule-" He paused. "With you. "

There came a tense silence, and then the beating a clock striking thehour. She made him no answer. 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 whichyou have spoken. And when I return--?"

"I shall know of your going and coming. I will wait for you here again. "

He stood for a moment regarding her. 

"I knew, " she said, and stopped. 

He waited, but she said no more. 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'sstewardship. On previous occasions he had passed over this ceremony asspeedily as possible, in order to resume his aerial experiences, but nowhe began to ask quick short questions. He was very anxious to takeup his empire forthwith. Ostrog brought flattering reports of thedevelopment of affairs abroad. In Paris and Berlin, Graham perceivedthat he was saying, there had been trouble, not organised resistanceindeed, but insubordinate proceedings. "After all these years, " saidOstrog, when Graham pressed enquiries, "the Commune has lifted its headagain. That is the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit. " Butorder had been restored in these cities. Graham, the more deliberatelyjudicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had beenany fighting. "A little, " said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But theSenegalese division of our African agricultural police--the ConsolidatedAfrican Companies have a very well drilled police--was ready, and sowere the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continentalcities, and in America. But things are very quiet in America. They aresatisfied 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 Company?"

"You are learning, " said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It ischiefly the discontent with the Labour Company. It was that discontentsupplied 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 menequal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas thathave slumbered for two hundred years. You know that? We had to revivethese ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the Council. And now--"

"Well?"

"Our revolution is accomplished, and the Council is overthrown, andpeople whom we have stirred up remain surging. There was scarcelyenough fighting... We made promises, of course. It is extraordinary howviolently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revivedand 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 ageneral strike. Half the factories are empty and the people are swarmingin the Ways. They are talking of a Commune. Men in silk and satin havebeen insulted in the streets. The blue canvas is expecting all sorts ofthings from you.... Of course there is no need for you to trouble. Weare setting the Babble Machines to work with counter suggestions in thecause of law and order. We must keep the grip tight; that is all. "

Graham thought. He perceived a way of asserting himself. But he spokewith restraint. 

"Even to the pitch of bringing a negro police, " he said. 

"They are useful, " said Ostrog. "They are fine loyal brutes, with nowash of ideas in their heads--such as our rabble has. The Councilshould have had them as police of the Ways, and things might havebeen different. Of course, there is nothing to fear except rioting andwreckage. You can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away toCapri if there is any smoke or fuss. We have the pull of all the greatthings; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades unionin the world, and so are the engineers of the wind vanes. We have theair, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. No one ofany ability is organising against us. They have no leaders--only thesectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your veryopportune awakening. Mere busy bodies and sentimentalists they are andbitterly jealous of each other. None of them is man enough for acentral figure. The only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. Tobe frank--that may happen. But it won't interrupt your aeronautics. Thedays when the People could make revolutions are past. "

"I suppose they are, " said Graham. "I suppose they are. " He mused. "Thisworld of yours has been full of surprises to me. In the old days wedreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would beequal and happy. "

Ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past, " hesaid. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it endedwhen marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win thebattles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategicrailways became the means of power. To-day is the day of wealth. Wealthnow is power as it never was power before--it commands earth and sea andsky. All power is for those who can handle wealth.... You must acceptfacts, 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 hasonly one believer--a multiplex, silly one--the mall in the Crowd. "

Graham did not answer immediately. He stood lost in sombrepreoccupations. 

"No, " said Ostrog. "The day of the common man is past. On the opencountryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. Theearlier 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 inwith castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. Butthis is the second aristocracy. The real one. Those days of gunpowderand democracy were only an eddy in the stream. The common man now is ahelpless unit. In these days we have this great machine of the city, andan organisation complex beyond his understanding. "

"Yet, " said Graham, "there is something resists, something you areholding down--something that stirs and presses. "

"You will see, " said Ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush thesedifficult questions aside. "I have not roused the force to destroymyself--trust me. "

"I wonder, " said Graham. 

Ostrog stared. 

"Must the world go this way?" said Graham, with his emotions at thespeaking point. "Must it indeed go in this way? Have all our hopes beenvain?"

"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"

"I came 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 thatchange has always travelled. Aristocracy, the prevalence of thebest--the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to betterthings. "

"But aristocracy! those people I met--"

"Oh! not those!" said Ostrog. "But for the most part they go to theirdeath. Vice and pleasure! They have no children. That sort of stuff willdie out. If the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turningback. An easy road to excess, convenient Euthanasia for the pleasureseekers 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. Willthat die out? That will not die out. And it suffers, its suffering is aforce that even you--"

Ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenlythan before. 

"Don't you trouble about these things, " he said. "Everything will besettled in a few days now. The Crowd is a huge foolish beast. What ifit does not die out? Even if it does not die, it can still be tamedand driven. I have no sympathy with servile men. You heard those peopleshouting and singing two nights ago. They were taught that song. If youhad taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he couldnot have told you. They think they are shouting for you, that they areloyal and devoted to you. Just then they were ready to slaughter theCouncil. To-day--they are already murmuring against those who haveoverthrown 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 tohope? They work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. Thehope 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 oreliminated. Subdued if not eliminated. The world is no place for thebad, the stupid, the enervated. Their duty--it's a fine duty too!--is todie. The death of the failure! That is the path by which the beast roseto manhood, by which man goes on to higher things. "

Ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on Graham. "I canimagine how this great world state of ours seems to a VictorianEnglishman. You regret all the old forms of representativegovernment--their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councilsand parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery You feelmoved against our Pleasure Cities. I might have thought of that, --hadI not been busy. But you will learn better. The people are mad withenvy--they would be in sympathy with you. Even in the streets now, theyclamour to destroy the Pleasure Cities. But the Pleasure Cities are theexcretory organs of the State, attractive places that year after yeardraw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious andlazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. Theygo there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty sillylascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. If the peoplewere sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. And you wouldemancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try tomake their lives easy and pleasant again. Just as they have sunk to whatthey are fit for. " He smiled a smile that irritated Graham oddly. "Youwill learn better. I know those ideas; in my boyhood I read your Shelleyand dreamt of Liberty. There is no liberty, save wisdom and selfcontrol. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair. Suppose--which is impossible--that these swarming yelping fools in blueget the upper hand of us, what then? They will only fall to othermasters. So long as there are sheep Nature will insist on beasts ofprey. It would mean but a few hundred years' delay. The coming of thearistocrat is fatal and assured. The end will be the Over-man--for allthe mad protests of humanity. Let them revolt, let them win and kill meand my like. Others will arise--other masters. The end will be thesame. "

"I wonder, " said Graham doggedly. 

For a moment he stood downcast. 

"But I must see these things for myself, " he said, suddenly assuminga tone of confident mastery. "Only by seeing can I understand. I mustlearn. That is what I want to tell you, Ostrog. I do not want to be Kingin a Pleasure City; that is not my, pleasure. I have spent enough timewith aeronautics--and those other things. I must learn how people livenow, how the common life has developed. Then I shall understand thesethings better. I must learn how common people live--the labour peoplemore especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--"

"You get that from our realistic novelists, " suggested Ostrog, suddenlypreoccupied. 

"I want reality, " said Graham, "not realism. "

"There are difficulties, " said Ostrog, and thought. 

"On the whole perhaps--

"I did not expect--. 

"I had thought--. And yet, perhaps--. You say you want to go through theWays 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 yourpresence among them might create a fearful tumult. Still this wish ofyours to go into this city--this idea of yours--. Yes, now I think thething over it seems to me not altogether--. It can be contrived. If youwould really find an interest in that! You are, of course, Master. Youcan go soon if you like. A disguise for this excursion Asano will beable to manage. He would go with you. After all it is not a bad idea ofyours. "

"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 anyrate, " 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 peopleintend any hostility to me, and, after all, I am the Master. I do notwant any negroes brought to London. It is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but I have peculiar feelings about Europeans and the subject races. Evenabout Paris--"

Ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "I am notbringing negroes to London, " he said slowly. "But if--"

"You are not to bring armed negroes to London, whatever happens, " saidGraham. "In that matter I am quite decided. "

Ostrog, after a pause, decided not to speak, and bowed deferentially. 

CHAPTER XX. IN THE CITY WAYS

And that night, unknown and unsuspected, Graham, dressed in the costumeof an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied byAsano in Labour Company canvas, surveyed the city through which hehad wandered when it was veiled in darkness. But now he saw it lit andwaking, a whirlpool of life. In spite of the surging and swaying of theforces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutteringsof the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude, the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. He knew nowsomething of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was notprepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrentof 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 thepublic theatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had beena movement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that allhis previous experiences had revolved immediately about the question ofhis 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, he common habits of the newtime. 

They emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowdedwith the blue canvas liveries. This swarm Graham saw was a portion of aprocession--it was odd to see a procession parading the city seated Theycarried banners of coarse red stuff with red letters. "No disarmament, "said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed letters andwith variant spelling, and "Why should we disarm?" "No disarming. " "Nodisarming. " Banner after banner went by, a stream of banners flowingpast, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt and a noisy band ofstrange instruments. "They all ought to be at work, " said Asano. "Theyhave had no food these two days, or they have stolen it. "

Presently Asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gapedupon 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 vastexcitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded Graham;his mind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the criesand enigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yetonly beginning. Everywhere festoons and banners of black and strangedecorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. Everywhere hecaught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterateclass, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, intheir common-place intercourse. Everywhere this trouble of disarmamentwas in the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had noinkling during his seclusion in the Wind-Vane quarter. He perceived thatas soon as he returned he must discuss this with Ostrog, this and thegreater issues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusiveway than he had so far done. Perpetually that night, even in the earlierhours of their wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest andrevolt swamped his attention, to the exclusion of countless strangethings he might otherwise have observed. 

This preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. Yet amidst so muchthat was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent, could exert undivided sway. There were spaces when the revolutionarymovement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtainfrom before some startling new aspect of the time. Helen had swayed hismind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times whenshe, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. At one moment, forexample, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, forthe easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways renderedsporadic churches and chapels no longer necessary--and his attention wasvividly arrested by the facade of one of the Christian sects. 

They were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the placeleapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. It wascovered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, save where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented arealistic New Testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to showthat the popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across thelettering Graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writingand these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for themost part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were"Salvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right. " "Put your Money onyour Maker. " "The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! LookSlippy!" "What Christ would say to the Sleeper;--Join the Up-to-dateSaints!" "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 ofmercantile piety towered above them. 

"What is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainlyfor 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 thetone of one who makes a discovery. "I suppose it would, of course. I hadforgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and peoplesimply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as theyused to do. " He smiled. "In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and thecountryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that--"

"But, _that_, " said Graham, glancing back at the receding blue andwhite. "That is surely not the only--"

"There are hundreds of different ways. But, of course, if a sect doesn'ttell it doesn't pay. Worship has moved with the times. There are highclass sects with quieter ways--costly incense and personal attentionsand all that. These people are extremely popular and prosperous. Theypay several dozen lions for those apartments to the Council--to you, Ishould say. "

Graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention ofa dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. In a moment thescreaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this newinterest. A turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the ideathat gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which hadbegun its reign amidst the merchants of Phoenicia was at last dethroned. The change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extensionof the system of cheques that had even in his previous life alreadypractically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. Thecommon traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world, was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink councilcheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. Asano had severalwith him, and at the first opportunity he supplied the gaps in hisset. They were printed not on tearable paper, but on a semi-transparentfabric of silken, flexibility, interwoven with silk. Across them allsprawled a facsimile of Graham's signature, his first encounter with thecurves and turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and threeyears. 

Some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid toprevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again;a blurred picture of a Theosophist temple that promised MIRACLES inenormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, butthen came the view of the dining hall in Northumberland Avenue. Thatinterested him very greatly. 

By the energy and thought of Asano he was able to view this place froma little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. Thebuilding was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalleda certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption ofthe lights on the night of his solitary wandering. 

He had grown accustomed now to vastness and great numbers of people, nevertheless this spectacle held him for a long time. It was as hewatched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersedwith many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisationof the full significance of the feast of several thousand people came tohim. 

It was his constant surprise to find that points that one might haveexpected to strike vividly at the very outset never occurred to himuntil some trivial detail suddenly shaped as a riddle and pointed to theobvious thing he had overlooked. In this matter, for instance, it hadnot occurred to him that this continuity of the city, this exclusion ofweather, these vast halls and ways, involved the disappearance of thehousehold; that the typical Victorian "home, " the little brick cellcontaining kitchen and scullery, living rooms and bedrooms, had, savefor the ruins that diversified the countryside, vanished as surely asthe wattle hut. But now he saw what had indeed been manifest fromthe first, that London, regarded as a living place, was no longer anaggregation of houses but a prodigious hotel, an hotel with a thousandclasses of accommodation, thousands of dining halls, chapels, theatres, markets and places of assembly, a synthesis of enterprises, of which hechiefly was the owner. People had their sleeping rooms, with, it mightbe, antechambers, rooms that were always sanitary at least whatever thedegree of comfort and privacy, and for the rest they lived much as manypeople had lived in the new-made giant hotels of the Victorian days, eating, reading, thinking, playing, conversing, all in places of publicresort, going to their work in the industrial quarters of the city ordoing business in their offices in the trading section. 

He perceived at once how necessarily this state of affairs had developedfrom the Victorian city. The fundamental reason for the modern city hadever been the economy of co-operation. The chief thing to prevent themerging of the separate households in his own generation was simply thestill imperfect civilisation of the people, the strong barbaric pride, passions, and prejudices, the jealousies, rivalries, and violence of themiddle and lower classes, which had necessitated the entire separationof contiguous households. But the change, the taming of the people, hadbeen in rapid progress even then. In his brief thirty years of previouslife he had seen an enormous extension of the habit of consuming mealsfrom home, the casually patronised horse-box coffee-house had givenplace to the open and crowded Aerated Bread Shop for instance, women'sclubs had had their beginning, and an immense development of readingrooms, lounges and libraries had witnessed to the growth of socialconfidence. These promises had by this time attained to their completefulfillment. 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 theVictorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that itsmembers, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, wouldusually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militantdemeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeitvivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered andcertainly 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 theconfusion, the broadcast crumbs, the splashes of viand and condiment, the overturned drink and displaced ornaments, which would have markedthe stormy progress of the Victorian meal. The table furniture wasvery different. There were no ornaments, no flowers, and the table waswithout a cloth, being made, he learnt, of a solid substance havingthe texture and appearance of damask. He discerned that this damasksubstance was patterned with gracefully designed trade advertisements. 

In a sort of recess before each diner was a complete apparatus ofporcelain and metal. There was one plate of white porcelain, and bymeans of taps for hot and cold volatile fluids the diner washed thishimself between the courses; he also washed his elegant white metalknife and fork and spoon as occasion required. 

Soup and the chemical wine that was the common drink were deliveredby similar taps, and the remaining covers travelled automatically intastefully arranged dishes down the table along silver rails. The dinerstopped these and helped himself at his discretion. They appeared ata little door at one end of the table, and vanished at the other. Thatturn of democratic sentiment in decay, that ugly pride of menial souls, which renders equals loth to wait on one another, was very strong hefound among these people. He was so preoccupied with these details thatit was only just as he was leaving the place that he remarked the hugeadvertisement dioramas that marched majestically along the upper wallsand proclaimed the most remarkable commodities. 

Beyond this place they came into a crowded hall, and he discovered thecause of the noise that had perplexed him. They paused at a turnstile atwhich 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 said vociferately. "He is in excellent health. He is going to devotethe rest of his life to aeronautics. He says women are more beautifulthan ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes himbeyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop. He puts great trust in BossOstrog, absolute confidence in Boss Ostrog. Ostrog is to be his chiefminister; is authorised to remove or reinstate public officers--allpatronage will be in his hands. All patronage in the hands of BossOstrog! The Councillors have been sent back to their own prison abovethe Council House. "

Graham stopped at the first sentence, and, looking up, beheld afoolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the GeneralIntelligence Machine. For a space it seemed to be gathering breath, and a regular throbbing from its cylindrical body was audible. Then ittrumpeted "Galloop, Galloop, " and broke out again. 

"Paris is now pacified. All resistance is over. Galloop! The blackpolice hold every position of importance in the city. They fought withgreat bravery, singing songs written in praise of their ancestors bythe poet Kipling. Once or twice they got out of hand, and tortured andmutilated wounded and captured insurgents, men and women. Moral--don'tgo rebelling. Haha! Galloop, Galloop! They are lively fellows. Livelybrave fellows. Let this be a lesson to the disorderly banderlog of thiscity. Yah! Banderlog! Filth of the earth! Galloop, Galloop!"

The voice ceased. There was a confused murmur of disapproval among thecrowd. "Damned niggers. " A man began to harangue near them. "Is this theMaster'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 anotherof these mechanisms I screamed deafeningly and gave tongue in a shrillvoice. "Yahaha, Yahah, Yap! Hear a live paper yelp! Live paper. Yaha!Shocking outrage in Paris. Yahahah! The Parisians exasperated by theblack police to the pitch of assassination. Dreadful reprisals. Savagetimes come again. Blood! Blood! Yaha!" The nearer Babble Machine hootedstupendously, "Galloop, Galloop, " drowned the end of the sentence, andproceeded in a rather flatter note than before with novel comments onthe horrors of disorder. "Law and order must be maintained, " said thenearer Babble Machine. 

"But, " began Graham. 

"Don't ask questions here, " said Asano, "or you will be involved in anargument. "

"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 thatswarmed beneath these voices, towards the exit, Graham conceived moreclearly the proportion and features of this room. Altogether, greatand small, there must have been nearly a thousand of these erections, piping, hooting, bawling and gabbling in that great space, each withits crowd of excited listeners, the majority of them men dressed in bluecanvas. There were all sizes of machines, from the little gossippingmechanisms that chuckled out mechanical sarcasm in odd corners, througha number of grades to such fifty-foot giants as that which had firsthooted over Graham. 

This place was unusually crowded, because of the intense public interestin the course of affairs in Paris. Evidently the struggle had been muchmore savage than Ostrog had represented it. All the mechanisms werediscoursing upon that topic, and the repetition of the people made thehuge hive buzz with such phrases as "Lynched policemen, " "Women burntalive, " "Fuzzy Wuzzy. " "But does the Master allow such things?" asked aman 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 hehad left the place, the hooting, whistling and braying of the machinespursued him; "Galloop, Galloop, " "Yahahah, Yaha, Yap! Yaha!" Is this thebeginning of the Master's rule?

Directly they were out upon the ways he began to question Asano closelyon the nature of the Parisian struggle. "This disarmament! What wastheir trouble? What does it all mean?" Asano seemed chiefly anxious toreassure him that it was "all right. " "But these outrages!" "You cannothave an omelette, " said Asano, "without breaking eggs. It is only therough 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 womenalive!"

"A Commune!" said Asano. "They would rob you of your property. Theywould do away with property and give the world over to mob rule. You areMaster, the world is yours. But there will be no Commune here. There isno need for black police here. 

"And every consideration has been shown. It is their own negroes--Frenchspeaking 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 atangent to ask for information about these Babble Machines. For the mostpart, the crowd present had been shabbily or even raggedly dressed, andGraham learnt that so far as the more prosperous classes were concerned, in all the more comfortable private apartments of the city were fixedBabble Machines that would speak directly a lever was pulled. The tenantof the apartment could connect this with the cables of any of the greatNews Syndicates that he preferred. When he learnt this presently, hedemanded the reason of their absence from his own suite of apartments. Asano stared. "I never thought, " he said. "Ostrog must have had themremoved. "

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 aninterval. 

He found a difficulty in understanding that this news room and thedining hall were not great central places, that such establishments wererepeated almost beyond counting all over the city. But ever and againduring the night's expedition his ears, in some new quarter would pickout from the tumult of the ways the peculiar hooting of the organ ofBoss Ostrog, "Galloop, Galloop!" or the shrill "Yahaha, Yaha, Yap!--Heara live paper yelp!" of its chief rival. 

Repeated, too, everywhere, were such _creches_ as the one he nowentered. It was reached by a lift, and by a glass bridge that flungacross the dining hall and traversed the ways at a slight upward angle. To enter the first section of the place necessitated the use of hissolvent signature under Asano's direction. They were immediatelyattended to by a man in a violet robe and gold clasp, the insignia ofpractising medical men. He perceived from this man's manner that hisidentity was known, and proceeded to ask questions on the strangearrangements of the place without reserve. 

On either side of the passage, which was silent and padded, as ifto deaden the footfall, were narrow little doors, their size andarrangement suggestive of the cells of a Victorian prison. But the upperportion of each door was of the same greenish transparent stuff thathad enclosed him at his awakening, and within, dimly seen, lay, in everycase, a very young baby in a little nest of wadding. Elaborate apparatuswatched the atmosphere and rang a bell far away in the central office atthe slightest departure from the optimum of temperature and moisture. Asystem of such _creches_ had almost entirely replaced the hazardousadventures of the old-world nursing. The attendant presently calledGraham'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 inthe place of features a flat disc bearing advertisements likely to be ofinterest to mothers. 

Of all the strange things that Graham came upon that night, none jarredmore upon his habits of thought than this place. The spectacle of thelittle pink creatures, their feeble limbs swaying uncertainly in vaguefirst movements, left alone, without embrace or endearment, was whollyrepugnant to him. The attendant doctor was of a different opinion. Hisstatistical evidence showed beyond dispute that in the Victorian timesthe most dangerous passage of life was the arms of the mother, thatthere human mortality had ever been most terrible. On the other handthis _creche_ company, the International Creche Syndicate, lost notone-half per cent of the million babies or so that formed its peculiarcare. But Graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures. 

Along one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon ayoung couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparencyand laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. Graham'sface must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceasedand they looked abashed. But this little incident accentuated his suddenrealisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways ofthe new age. He passed on to the crawling rooms and the Kindergarten, perplexed and distressed. He found the endless long playrooms wereempty! the latter-day children at least still spent their nights insleep. As they went through these, the little officer pointed out thenature of the toys, developments of those devised by that inspiredsentimentalist Froebel. There were nurses here, but much was done bymachines that sang and danced and dandled. 

Graham was still not clear upon many points. "But so many orphans, " hesaid perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt againthat they were not orphans. 

So soon as they had left the _creche_ he began to speak of the horrorthe babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "Is motherhoodgone?" he said. "Was it a cant? Surely it was an instinct. This seems sounnatural--abominable almost. "

"Along here we shall come to the dancing place, " said Asano by way ofreply. "It is sure to be crowded. In spite of all the political unrestit will be crowded. The women take no great interest in politics--excepta few here and there. You will see the mothers--most young women inLondon are mothers. In that class it is considered a creditable thing tohave one child--a proof of animation. Few middle class people have morethan one. With the Labour Company it is different. As for motherhoodThey still take an immense pride in the children. They come here to lookat them quite often. "

"Then do you mean that the population of the world--?"

"Is falling? Yes. Except among the people under the Labour Company. Theyare reckless--. "

The air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approachedobliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst, flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries andlaughter. He saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricateflutter 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. Weshall see those yonder again very soon. "

They ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slowerone. As they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near andfull and splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they coulddistinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. They made a paymentat a turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked thedancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight. 

"Here, " said Asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little ones yousaw. "

The hall was not so richly decorated as that of the Atlas, but savingthat, it was, for its size, the most splendid Graham had seen. Thebeautiful white limbed figures that supported the galleries remindedhim once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemedto writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. The source of themusic that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floorwas 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 screenthat cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall thatshowed 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 majoritywearing the blue uniform of the Labour Company that was now so familiarto Graham. Too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they wereyet unable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. Some of themeven had cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags inthe air. Some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions Grahamdid not understand. Once someone began whistling the refrain of therevolutionary song, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptlysuppressed. The corner was dark and Graham could not see. He turned tothe hall again. Above the caryatidae were marble busts of men whom thatage esteemed great moral emancipators and pioneers; for the most parttheir names were strange to Graham, though he recognised Grant Allen, Le Gallienne, Nietzsche, Shelley and Goodwin. Great black festoonsand eloquent sentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partiallydefaced the upper end of the dancing place, and asserted that "TheFestival of the Awakening" was in progress. 

"Myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quiteapart from the labourers who refuse to go back, " said Asano. "Thesepeople are always ready for holidays. "

Graham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at thedancers. Save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolenapart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. A warm breath ofscent and vitality came up to him. Both men and women below were lightlyclad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the citypermitted. The hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or colouredcheeks. Many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed withelaborate coquetry. As they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces witheyes half closed in pleasure. 

"What sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly. 

"Workers--prosperous workers. What you would have called the middleclass. Independent tradesmen with little separate businesses havevanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers ofa hundred sorts. Tonight is a holiday of course, and every dancing placein 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 hadthe beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. Most womenare independent now. Most of these are married more or less--there area number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, andenables them to enjoy themselves. "

"I see, " said Graham looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirlof movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helplesslimbs. "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 themodern way of seeing things. I have old habits of mind clinging aboutme--habits based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with. Ofcourse, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them--allthe essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother. Orwent without. Quite a number, I admit, went without. Nowadays, clearly, there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies. I seethat! Only there was an ideal--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--tolove 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 a act, they arenecessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness isman's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature nowfor all practical purposes--his political affairs are managed by Bosseswith 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. Andin my own time I should have passed as middle-aged. "

"They are young. There are few old people in this class in the workcities. "

"How is that?"

"Old people's lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless theyare rich to hire lovers and helpers. And we have an institution calledEuthanasy. "

"Ah! that Euthanasy!" said Graham. "The easy death?"

"The easy death. It is the last pleasure. The Euthanasy Company does itwell. People will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, veryweary. "

"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 sourrestraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, thePuritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days manwas armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies thedifference. Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off--forwell-to-do people. And only well-to-do people matter now. I have beenasleep two hundred years. "

For a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricateevolution of the dance. Indeed the scene was very beautiful. 

"Before God, " said Graham, suddenly, "I would rather be a woundedsentinel 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--Palaeolithic. Their fountain of rage and fear and angeris sealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful andeasy and delightful. You must bear with my nineteenth century shocks anddisgusts. These people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. Andwhile these dance, men are fighting--men are dying in Paris to keep theworld--that they may dance. "

Asano smiled faintly. "For that matter, men are dying in London, " hesaid. 

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 underarms. Half these people are keeping holiday. But we will go to the workplaces if you wish it. "

For a time Graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "Iwant to see the workers. I have seen enough of these, " he said. 

Asano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. Presentlythey came to a transverse passage that brought a breath of fresher, colder air. 

Asano glanced at this passage as they went past, stopped, went backto it, and turned to Graham with a smile. "Here, Sire, " he said, "issomething--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. But I will nottell you. Come!"

He led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. Thereverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. Theycame into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather, and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though Grahamcould not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. In this was aladder--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which theywent, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almostvertical ladder. This they ascended, Graham still perplexed. 

But at the top he understood, and recognized the metallic bars to whichhe clung. He was in the cage under the ball of St. Paul's. The dome rosebut a little way above the general contour of the city, into the stilltwilight, 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 sawthe starry constellations all unchanged. Capella hung in the west, Vegawas rising, and the seven glittering points of the Great Bear sweptoverhead in their stately circle about the Pole. 

He saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. To the east and south thegreat circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out theheavens, so that the glare about the Council House was hidden. To thesouth-west hung Orion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery ofiron-work and interlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights. A bellowing and siren screaming that came from the flying stages warnedthe world that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. He remained fora space gazing towards the glaring stage. Then his eyes went back to thenorthward constellations. 

For a long time he was silent. "This, " he said at last, smiling in theshadow, "seems the strangest thing of all. To stand in the dome of SaintPaul's and look once more upon these familiar, silent stars!"

Thence Graham was taken by Asano along devious ways to the greatgambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in thecity were lost and made. It impressed him as a well-nigh interminableseries of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleriesinto which opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicatedmultitude of bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze andcable leaps. And here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. Everywhere was violentadvertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. And Babble Machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filledthe air with strenuous squealing and an idiotic slang. "Skin your eyesand slide, " "Gewhoop, Bonanza, " "Gollipers come and hark!"

The place seemed to him to be dense with people either profoundlyagitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the placewas comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the lastfew days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. In onehuge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited, undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping Babel of white-facedwomen and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares ofan absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes, paid a dividend of ten per cent and cancelled a certain proportion ofits shares by means of a lottery wheel. 

These business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readilypassed into violence, and Graham approaching a dense crowd found at itscentre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teethand nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. Something stillremained in life to be fought for. Further he had a shock at a vehementannouncement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the heightof 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 insuringyour life. Dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lionsare 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 screensuddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "Anueteson the Propraiet'r--x 5 pr. G. " The people began to boo and shoutat this, a number of hard breathing, wildeyed men came running past, clawing with hooked fingers at the air. There was a furious crush abouta little doorway. 

Asano did a brief calculation. "Seventeen per cent per annum is theirannuity on you. They would not pay so much per cent if they could seeyou now, Sire. But they do not know. Your own annuities used to be avery safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course. This isprobably a desperate bid. I doubt if people will get their money. "

The crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for sometime they could move neither forward no backward. Graham noticed whatappeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded again of the economical independence of their sex. Theyseemed 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, lookedsteadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognized him, andthen, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm ina scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient asChaldea 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 themin a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "x 5 pr. G. "

"I want to get out of this, " said Graham to Asano. "This is not whatI came to see. Show me the workers. I want to see the people in blue. These parasitic lunatics--"

He found himself wedged in a struggling mass c people, and this hopefulsentence went unfinished. 

CHAPTER XXI. THE UNDER SIDE

From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways intoa remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures wasdone. On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed ina broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the cityfrom the North. In both cases his impression was swift and in bothvery vivid. The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into a blacknessstarred with receding lights. A string of black barges passed seaward, manned by blue-clad men. The road was a long and very broad and hightunnel, along which big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, the distinctive blue of the Labour Company was in abundance. The smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightnessof the big pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struckGraham most vividly. One lank and very high carriage with longitudinalmetallic rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheeparrested his attention unduly. Abruptly the edge of the archway cut andblotted out the picture. 

Presently they left the way and descended by a lift and traversed apassage that sloped downward, and so came to a descending lift again. The appearance of things changed. Even the pretence of architecturalornament disappeared, the lights diminished in number and size, thearchitecture became more and more massive in proportion to the spaces asthe factory quarters were reached. And in the dusty biscuit-making placeof the potters, among the felspar mills in the furnace rooms of themetal workers, among the incandescent lakes of crude Eadhamite, the bluecanvas clothing was on man, woman and child. 

Many of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues ofmachinery, endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to therevolutionary dislocation, but wherever there was work it was beingdone by slow-moving workers in blue canvas. The only people not inblue canvas were the overlookers of the work-places and the orange-cladLabour Police. And fresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary vigours of the business quarter, Graham could notethe pinched faces, the feeble muscles, and weary eyes of many of thelatter-day workers. Such as he saw at work were noticeably inferiorin physique to the few gaily dressed managers and forewomen who weredirecting their labours. The burly labourers of the Victorian timeshad followed the dray horse and all such living force producers, toextinction; the place of his costly muscles was taken by somedexterous machine. The latter-day labourer, male as well as female, wasessentially a machine-minder and feeder, a servant and attendant, or anartist under direction. 

The women, in comparison with those Graham remembered, were as a classdistinctly plain and flat-chested. Two hundred years of emancipationfrom the moral restraints of Puritanical religion, two hundred yearsof city life, had done their work in eliminating the strain of femininebeauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliantphysically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, hadbeen and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a lineof escape to the Pleasure City and its splendours and delights, andat last to the Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against suchinducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. Inthe young cities of Graham's former life, the newly aggregated labouringmass had been a diverse multitude, still stirred by the tradition ofpersonal honour and a high morality; now it was differentiating into adistinct class, with a moral and physical difference of its own--evenwith 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 ofwhite lights between the transverse slits. The factories that were notworking were sparsely lighted; to Graham they and their shrouded aislesof giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was goingon the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways. 

Beyond the blazing lakes of Eadhamite he came to the warren of thejewellers, and, with some difficulty and by using his signature, obtained admission to these galleries. They were high and dark, andrather cold. In the first a few men were making ornaments of goldfiligree, each man at a little bench by himself, and with a littleshaded light. The long vista of light patches, with the nimble fingersbrightly lit and moving among the gleaming yellow coils, and the intentface like the face of a ghost, in each shadow had the oddest effect. 

The work was beautifully executed, but without any strength of modellingor drawing, for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing ofthe changes on a geometrical motif. These workers wore a peculiar whiteuniform without pockets or sleeves. They assumed this on coming towork, but at night they were stripped and examined before they leftthe premises of the Company. In spite of every precaution, theLabour policeman told them in a depressed tone, the Company was notinfrequently robbed. 

Beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs ofartificial ruby, and next these were men and women busied together uponthe slabs of copper net that formed the basis of cloisonne tiles. Manyof these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a diseasecaused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion. Asano apologised to Graham for the offence of their faces, but excusedhimself on the score of the convenience of this route. "This is what Iwanted to see, " said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see, " trying toavoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement that suddenlystared him in the face. 

"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 werenearer the barbaric by two hundred years. "

They continued along one of the lower galleries of this cloisonnefactory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. Lookingover the parapet, Graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet moretremendous archings than any he had seen. Three barges, smothered infloury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felsparby a multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dustfilled the place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glareyellow. The vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about theirfeet, 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, broughtto Graham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries andlifts, that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. Themen worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police;their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they wentto and fro. And as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in thedarkness 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 therehad taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly, the Song ofthe Revolt. The feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of thesong, tramp, tramp, tramp. The policeman who had shouted glanced athis fellow, and Graham saw him shrug his shoulders. He made no furthereffort to stop the singing. 

And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing manypainful and grim things. But why should the gentle reader be depressed?Surely to a refined nature our present world is distressing enoughwithout bothering ourselves about these miseries to come. We shall notsuffer anyhow. Our children may, but what is that to us? That walk lefton Graham's mind a maze of memories, fluctuating pictures of swathedhalls, and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust, of intricatemachines, the racing threads of looms, the heavy beat of stampingmachinery, the roar and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-litsubterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-pointlights. And here the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a breweryand here, unprecedented reeks. And everywhere were pillars and crossarchings of such a massiveness as Graham had never before seen, thickTitans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight ofthat complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushedby 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 therevolt during his long, unpleasant research in these places, and oncehe saw a confused struggle down a passage, and learnt that a number ofthese serfs had seized their bread before their work was done. Grahamwas ascending towards the ways again when he saw a number of blue-cladchildren running down a transverse passage, and presently perceivedthe reason of their panic in a company of the Labour Police armed withclubs, trotting towards some unknown disturbance. And then came a remotedisorder. But for the most part this remnant that worked, workedhopelessly. All the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above inthe streets that night, calling for the Master, and valiantly andnoisily keeping its arms. 

They emerged from these wanderings and stood blinking in the brightlight of the middle passage of the platforms again. They became awareof the remote hooting and yelping of the machines of one of the GeneralIntelligence Offices, and suddenly came men running, and along theplatforms and about the ways everywhere was a shouting and crying. Thena woman with a face of mute white terror, and another who gasped andshrieked as she ran. 

"What has happened now?" said Graham, puzzled, for he could notunderstand their thick speech. Then he heard it in English and perceivedthat the thing that everyone was shouting, that men yelled to oneanother, that women took up screaming, that was passing like the firstbreeze of a thunderstorm, chill and sudden through the city, was this:"Ostrog has ordered the Black Police to London. The Black Police arecoming from South Africa.... The Black Police. The Black Police. "

Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham'sface, 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 aswarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping downthe platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "Thisis Ostrog's doing, Ostrog, the Knave! The Master is betrayed. " His voicewas hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. Heyelled 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 thatthese things were a dream. He looked up at the great cliff of buildingson either side, vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights, anddown to the roaring tiers of platforms, and the shouting, running peoplewho were gesticulating past. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "TheMaster is betrayed!"

Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. Hisheart 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 massabout the Council House. There you will find their leaders. Yourstrength 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 CouncilHouse, " he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins maybe impassable. "

Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him. 

They went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one, and there Asanoaccosted 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 havearrived here before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-VaneOffices Learnt. He said a girl. "

"A girl? Not?"

"He said a girl--he did not know who she was. Who came out from theCouncil House crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins. "

And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimlesstumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street. "To your Wards, to your Wards. Every man get arms. Every man to hisWard!"

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 WardsTo your Wards!" Everywhere men and women in blue were hurrying fromunknown subterranean employments, up the staircases of the middlepath--at one place Graham saw an arsenal of the revolutionary committeebesieged by a crowd of shouting men, at another a couple of men in thehated yellow uniform of the Labour Police, pursued by a gatheringcrowd, fled precipitately along the swift way that went in the oppositedirection. 

The cries of "To your Wards!" became at last a continuous shoutingas they drew near the Government quarter. Many of the shouts wereunintelligible. "Ostrog has betrayed us, " one man bawled in a hoarsevoice, again and again, dinning that refrain into Graham's ear untilit haunted him. This person stayed close beside Graham and Asano on theswift way, shouting to the people who swarmed on the lower platforms ashe rushed past them. His cry about Ostrog alternated with someincomprehensible orders Presently he went leaping down and disappeared. 

Graham's mind was filled with the din. His plans were vague andunformed. He had one picture of some commanding position from which hecould address the multitudes, another of meeting Ostrog face to face. Hewas full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, hislips were pressed together. 

The way to the Council House across the ruins was impassable, but Asanomet that difficulty and took Graham into the premises of the centralpost-office. The post-office was nominally at work, but the blue-clothedporters moved sluggishly or had stopped to stare through the arches oftheir galleries at the shouting men who were going by outside. "Everyman to his Ward! Every man to his Ward!" Here, by Asano's advice, Grahamrevealed his identity. 

They crossed to the Council House by a cable cradle. Already in thebrief interval since the capitulation of the Councillors a great changehad been wrought in the appearance of the ruins. The spurting cascadesof the ruptured sea water-mains had been captured and tamed, and hugetemporary pipes ran overhead along a flimsy looking fabric of girders. The sky was laced with restored cables and wires that served the CouncilHouse, and a mass of new fabric with cranes and other building machinesgoing 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 foronce running under the open sky. These were the ways that Graham hadseen from the little balcony in the hour of his awakening, not nine dayssince, and the hall of his Trance had been on the further side, wherenow shapeless piles of smashed and shattered masonry were heapedtogether. 

It was already high day and the sun was shining brightly. Out of theirtall caverns of blue electric light came the swift ways crowded withmultitudes of people, who poured off them and gathered ever denserover the wreckage and confusion of the ruins. The air was full oftheir shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the centralbuilding. For the most part that shouting mass consisted of shapelessswarms, but here and there Graham could see that a rude disciplinestruggled to establish itself. And every voice clamoured for order inthe chaos. "To your Wards! Every man to his Ward!"

The cable carried them into a hall which Graham recognised as theante-chamber to the Hall of the Atlas, about the gallery of which he hadwalked days ago with Howard to show himself to the vanished Council, anhour from his awakening. Now the place was empty except for two cableattendants. These men seemed hugely astonished to recognise the Sleeperin the man who swung down from the cross seat. 

"Where is Helen Wotton?" he demanded. "Where is Helen Wotton?"

They did not know. 

"Then where is Ostrog? I must see Ostrog forthwith. He has disobeyed me. I have come back to take things out of his hands. " Without waiting forAsano, he went straight across the place, ascended the steps at thefurther end, and, pulling the curtain aside, found himself facing theperpetually labouring Titan. 

The hall was empty. Its appearance had changed very greatly sincehis first sight of it. It had suffered serious injury in the violentstruggle of the first outbreak. On the right hand side of the greatfigure the upper half of the wall had been torn away for nearly twohundred feet of its length, and a sheet of the same glassy film thathad enclosed Graham at his awakening had been drawn across the gap. Thisdeadened, but did not altogether exclude the roar of the people outside. "Wards! Wards! Wards!" they seemed to be saying. Through it there werevisible the beams and supports of metal scaffoldings that rose andfell according to the requirements of a great crowd of workmen. An idlebuilding machine, with lank arms of red painted metal that caughtthe still plastic blocks of mineral paste and swung them neatly intoposition, stretched gauntly across this green tinted picture. On it werestill a number of workmen staring at the crowd below. For a moment hestood regarding these things, and Asano overtook him. 

"Ostrog, " said Asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there. " Thelittle man looked livid now and his eyes searched Graham's face. 

They had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a littlepanel to the left of the Atlas rolled up, and Ostrog, accompanied byLincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appearedcrossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that wasraised and open. "Ostrog, " shouted Graham, and at the sound of his voicethe little party turned astonished. 

Ostrog said something to Lincoln and advanced alone. 

Graham was the first to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "Whatis this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes here--to keep thepeople down?"

"It is none too soon, " said Ostrog. "They have been getting out of handmore 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 onyourself, Ostrog. "

Ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer. 

"These negroes must not come to London, " said Graham. "I am Master andthey shall not come. "

Ostrog glanced at Lincoln, who at once came towards them with his twoattendants 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--anaccident. You are Owner perhaps of half the property in the world. Butyou are not Master. You do not know enough to be Master. "

He glanced at Lincoln again. "I know now what you think--I can guesssomething of what you mean to do. Even now it is not too late to warnyou. You dream of human equality--of a socialistic order--you have allthose worn-out dreams of the nineteenth century fresh and vivid in yourmind, and you would rule this age that you do not understand. "

"Listen!" said Graham. "You can hear it--a sound like the sea. Notvoices--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! Thesenegroes 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 arehere--. It was kind of you to come here. "

Lincoln laid his hand on Graham's shoulder. Abruptly Graham realizedthe enormity of his blunder in coming to the Council House. He turnedtowards the curtains that separated the hall from the antechamber. The clutching hand of Asano intervened. In another moment Lincoln hadgrasped Graham's cloak. 

He turned and struck at Lincoln's face, and incontinently a negrohad him by collar and arm. He wrenched himself away, his sleeve torenoisily, and he stumbled back, to be tripped by the other attendant. Then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distantceiling of the hall. 

He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant'sleg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet. 

Lincoln appeared before him, went down heavily again with a blow underthe 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 fewviolent efforts he ceased to struggle and lay staring at Ostrog'sheaving throat. 

"You--are--a prisoner, " panted Ostrog, exulting. "You--were rather afool--to come back. "

Graham turned his head about and perceived through the irregulargreen window in the walls of the hall the men who had been working thebuilding cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them. Theyhad seen!

Ostrog followed his eyes and started. He shouted something to Lincoln, but Lincoln did not move. A bullet smashed among the mouldings abovethe Atlas The two sheets of transparent matter that had been stretchedacross this gap were rent, the edges of the torn aperture darkened, curved, ran rapidly towards the framework, and in a moment the Councilchamber 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 theMaster?" "The Master is betrayed!"

And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was distracted, thatOstrog's grip had relaxed, and, wrenching his arms free, he struggledto his knees. In another moment he had thrust Ostrog back, and he wason one foot, his hand gripping Ostrog's throat, and Ostrog's handsclutching the silk about his neck. But now men were coming towards themfrom the dais--men whose intentions he misunderstood. He had aglimpse of someone running in the distance towards the curtains of theantechamber, and then Ostrog had slipped from him and these newcomerswere upon him. To his infinite astonishment, they seized him. Theyobeyed the shouts of Ostrog. 

He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were notfriends--that they were dragging him towards the open panel. When he sawthis he pulled back, he tried to fling himself down, he shouted for helpwith all his strength. And this time there were answering cries. 

The grip upon his neck relaxed, and behold! in the lower corner of therent upon the wall, first one and then a number of little black figuresappeared shouting and waving arms. They came leaping down from the gapinto the light gallery that had led to the Silent Rooms. They ran alongit, 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 oncemore he was struggling with all his strength against their endeavours tothrust him towards the opening that yawned to receive him. "They can'tcome down, " panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire. It's all right. " "We'llsave him from them yet. "

For long minutes as it seemed to Graham that inglorious strugglecontinued. His clothes were rent in a dozen places, he was covered indust, one hand had been trodden upon. He could hear the shouts of hissupporters, and once he heard shots. He could feel his strength givingway, 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 greyhead receding and perceived that he was no longer held. He turned aboutand came full into a man in black. One of the green weapons crackedclose to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steelblade flashed. The huge chamber span about him. 

He saw a man in pale blue stabbing one of the black and yellowattendants not three yards from his face. Then hands were upon himagain. 

He was being pulled in two, directions now. It seemed as though peoplewere shouting to him. He wanted to understand and could not. Someonewas clutching about his thighs, he was being hoisted in spite of hisvigorous efforts. He understood suddenly, he ceased to struggle. He waslifted 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 Ostrogitesand firing. Lifted up, he saw now across the whole expanse of the hallbeneath the Atlas image, saw that he was being carried towards theraised platform in the centre of the place. The far end of the hall wasalready full of people running towards him. They were looking at him andcheering. 

He became aware that a sort of body-guard surrounded him. Activemen about him shouted vague orders. He saw close at hand the blackmoustached man in yellow who had been among those who had greeted himin the public theatre, shouting directions. The hall was already denselypacked with swaying people, the little metal gallery sagged with ashouting load, the curtains at the end had been torn away, and theante-chamber was revealed densely crowded. He could scarcely make theman near him hear for the tumult about them. "Where has Ostrog gone?" heasked. 

The man he questioned pointed over the heads towards the lower panelsabout the hall on the side opposite the gap. They stood open andarmed men, blue clad with black sashes, were running through them andvanishing into the chambers and passages beyond. It seemed to Grahamthat a sound of firing drifted through the riot. He was carried in astaggering curve across the great hall towards an opening beneath thegap. 

He perceived men working with a sort of rude discipline to keep thecrowd off him, to make a space clear about him. He passed out of thehall, and saw a crude, new wall rising blankly before him topped by bluesky. He was swung down to his feet; someone gripped his arm and guidedhim. He found the man in yellow close at hand. They were taking him upa narrow stairway of brick, and close at hand rose the great red paintedmasses, the cranes and levers and the still engines of the big buildingmachine. 

He was at the top of the steps. He was hurried across a narrow railedfootway, and suddenly with a vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruinsopened again before him. "The Master is with us! The Master! TheMaster!" The shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, brokeagainst 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 hewas standing upon a little temporary platform of white metal, part ofa flimsy seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass of theCouncil House. Over all the huge expanse of the ruins, swayed andeddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners ofthe revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare nuclei oforganisation in the chaos. Up the steep stairs of wall and scaffoldingby which his rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber, clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging topillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested massesto stir. Behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number ofmen struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down uponthe packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distantflying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought neareras it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. A solitary aeropilebeat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming aeroplanes. 

"What had become of Ostrog?" asked Graham, and even as he spoke he sawthat all eyes were turned from him towards the crest of the CouncilHouse building. He looked also in this direction of universal attention. For a moment he saw nothing but the jagged corner of a wall, hard andclear against the sky. Then in the shadow he perceived the interior of aroom and recognised with a start the green and white decorations of hisformer prison. And coming quickly across this opened room and up to thevery verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figurefollowed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. Heheard the man beside him exclaim "Ostrog, " and turned to ask a question. But he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another ofthose who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. He looked, and behold the aeropile that had been rising from the flying stage whenlast he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. Theswift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention. 

Nearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger, until it had sweptover the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudesbelow. It drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, risingto clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape withthe solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyondthe skyline of the ruins. 

Graham transferred his attention to Ostrog. He was signalling with hishands, and his attendants busy breaking down the wall beside him. Inanother moment the aeropile came into view again, a little thing faraway, coming round in a wide curve and going slower. 

Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What are they doing? What arethe people doing? Why is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? Theywill lift him--the aeropile will lift him! Ah!"

The exclamation was echoed by a shout from the ruins. The rattling soundof the green weapons drifted across the intervening gulf to Graham, and, looking down, he saw a number of black and yellow uniforms running alongone of the galleries that lay open to the air below the promontoryupon which Ostrog stood. They fired as they ran at men unseen, and thenemerged a number of pale blue figures in pursuit. These minute fightingfigures had the oddest effect; they seemed as they ran like little modelsoldiers in a toy. This queer appearance of a house cut open gave thatstruggle amidst furniture and passages a quality of unreality. It wasperhaps two hundred yards away from him, and very nearly fifty abovethe heads in the ruins below. The black and yellow men ran into anopen archway, and turned and fired a volley. One of the blue pursuersstriding forward close to the edge, flung up his arms, staggeredsideways, seemed to Graham's sense to hang over the edge for severalseconds, and fell headlong down. Graham saw him strike a projectingcorner, fly out, head over heels, head over heels, and vanish behind thered arm of the building machine. 

And then a shadow came between Graham and the sun. He looked up and thesky was clear, but he knew the aeropile had passed. Ostrog had vanished. The man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and perspiring, pointingand blatent. 

"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "They are grounding. Tellthe people to fire at him. Tell them to fire at him!"

Graham could not understand. He heard loud voices repeating theseenigmatical orders. 

Suddenly over the edge of the ruins he saw the prow of the aeropile comegliding and stop with a jerk. In a moment Graham understood that thething had grounded in order that Ostrog might escape by it. He saw ablue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below himwere now firing up at the projecting stem. 

A man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebelshad gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black andyellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along theopen passage. 

And suddenly the aeropile slipped over the edge of the Council Houseand fell. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, anddropping so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to mostof these below, that it could not possibly rise again. 

It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching theguides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-facedaeronaut wrenching over the lever that drove the engine along itsguides. He heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below. 

Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed anage. The lower fan of the aeropile passed within an ace of touching thepeople, 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 oppositecliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel thatrotated 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 theswarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belatedactivity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar, until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with thethin smoke of their weapons. 

Too late! The aeropile dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved aboutand swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had solately risen. Ostrog had escaped. 

For a while a confused babblement arose from the ruins, and thenthe universal attention came back to Graham, perched high among thescaffolding. He saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heardtheir shouts at his rescue. From the throat of the ways came the song ofthe 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 hadstood beside him whenever he had faced that shouting multitude before, was beyond there--the antagonist. There was no one to rule for him anylonger. Even the people about him, the leaders and organisers of themultitude, looked to see what he would do, looked to him to act, awaitedhis 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 nervesand muscles were quivering, his mind was perhaps a little confused, but he felt neither fear nor anger. His hand that had been trodden uponthrobbed and was hot. He was a little nervous about his bearing. He knewhe was not afraid, but he was anxious not to seem afraid. In his formerlife he had often been more excited in playing games of skill. He wasdesirous of immediate action, he knew he must not think too much indetail of the huge complexity of the struggle about him lest he shouldbe paralysed by the sense of its intricacy. Over there those square blueshapes, the flying stages, meant Ostrog; against Ostrog he was fightingfor the world. 

CHAPTER XXIII. WHILE THE AEROPLANES WERE COMING

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 himand were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that pouredacross his being. These things were definite, the aeroplanes werecoming, Helen Wotton had warned the people of their coming, and he wasMaster of the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling for completepossession of his thoughts. They protruded from a background of swarminghalls, elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in councilkinematograph and telephone rooms, and windows looking out on a seethingsea of marching men. The man in yellow, and men whom he fancied werecalled Ward Leaders, were either propelling him forward or followinghim obediently; it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were doing a little ofboth. Perhaps some power unseen and unsuspected, propelled them all. Hewas aware that he was going to make a proclamation to the People of theEarth, aware of certain grandiose phrases floating in his mind as thething he meant to say. Many little things happened, and then he foundhimself with the man in yellow entering a little room where thisproclamation of his was to be made. 

This room was grotesquely latter-day in its appointments. In the centrewas a bright oval lit by shaded electric lights from above. The restwas in shadow, and the double finely fitting doors through which he camefrom the swarming Hall of the Atlas made the place very still. The deadthud of these as they closed behind him, the sudden cessation of thetumult in which he had been living for hours, the quivering circle oflight, the whispers and quick noiseless movements of vaguely visibleattendants in the shadows, had a strange effect upon Graham. The hugeears of a phonographic mechanism gaped in a battery for his words, theblack eyes of great photographic cameras awaited his beginning, beyondmetal rods and coils glittered dimly, and something whirled about with adroning hum. He walked into the centre of the light, and his shadow drewtogether 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 sudden withdrawal from thatcontagious crowd, this silent audience of gaping, glaring machineshad not been in his anticipation. All his supports seemed withdrawntogether; he seemed to have dropped into this suddenly, suddenly to havediscovered himself. In a moment he was changed. He found that he nowfeared to be inadequate, he feared to be theatrical, he feared thequality of his voice, the quality of his wit, astonished, he turned tothe 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 thething I have to say. "

While he was still hesitating there came an agitated messenger with newsthat the foremost aeroplanes were passing over Arawan. 

"Arawan?" he said. "Where is that? But anyhow, they are coming. Theywill be here. When?"

"By twilight. "

"Great God! In only a few hours. What news of the flying stages?" heasked. 

"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 certainlythe thing that should be said! Aeroplanes at Arawan! They must havestarted before the main fleet. And the people only ready! Surely... "

"Oh! what does it matter whether I speak well or ill?" he said, and feltthe light grow brighter. 

He had framed some vague sentence of democratic sentiment when suddenlydoubts overwhelmed him. His belief in his heroic quality and callinghe found had altogether lost its assured conviction. The picture of alittle strutting futility in a windy waste of incomprehensible destiniesreplaced it. Abruptly it was perfectly clear to him that this revoltagainst Ostrog was premature, foredoomed to failure, the impulse ofpassionate inadequacy against inevitable things. He thought of thatswift flight of aeroplanes like the swoop of Fate towards him. He wasastonished that he could have seen things in any other light. In thatfinal emergency he debated, thrust debate resolutely aside, determinedat all costs to go through with the thing he had undertaken. And hecould find no word to begin. Even as he stood, awkward, hesitating, withan indiscrete apology for his inability trembling on his lips, came thenoise of many people crying out, the running to and fro of feet. "Wait, "cried someone, and a door opened. "She is coming, " said the voices. Graham turned, and the watching lights waned. 

Through the open doorway he saw a slight grey figure advancing acrossa spacious hall. His heart leapt. It was Helen Wotton. Behind and abouther marched a riot of applause. The man in yellow came out of the nearershadows into the circle of light. 

"This is the girl who told us what Ostrog had dune, " he said. 

Her face was aflame, and the heavy coils of her black hair fell abouther shoulders. The folds of the soft silk robe she wore streamed fromher and floated in the rhythm of her advance. She drew nearer andnearer, and his heart was beating fast. All his doubts were gone. Theshadow of the doorway fell athwart her face and she was near him. "Youhave not betrayed us?" she cried. "You are with us?"

"Where have you been?" said Graham. 

"At the office of the south-west wards. Until ten minutes since I didnot know you had returned. I went to the office of the south-west wardsto find the Ward Leaders in order that they might tell the people. "

"I came back so soon as I heard--. "

"I knew, " she cried, "knew you would be with us. And it was I--it wasI that told them. They have risen. All the world is rising. The peoplehave awakened. Thank God that I did not act in vain! You are Masterstill. "

"You told them" he said slowly, and he saw that in spite of her steadyeyes her lips trembled and her throat rose and fell. 

"I told them. I knew of the order. I was here. I heard that the negroeswere to come to London to guard you and to keep the people down--to keepyou a prisoner. And I stopped it. I came out and told the people. Andyou are Master still. "

Graham glanced at the black lenses of the cameras, the vast listeningears, and back to her face. "I am Master still, " he said slowly, and theswift rush of a fleet of aeroplanes passed across his thoughts. 

"And you did this? You, who are the niece of Ostrog. "

"For you, " she cried. "For you! That you for whom the world has waitedshould not be cheated of your power. "

Graham stood for a space, wordless, regarding her. His doubts andquestionings had fled before her presence. He remembered the things thathe had meant to say. He faced the cameras again and the light about himgrew brighter. He turned again towards her. 

"You have saved me, " he said; "you have saved my power. And the battleis beginning. God knows what this night will see--but not dishonour. "

He paused. He addressed himself to the unseen multitudes who stared uponhim through those grotesque black eyes. At first he spoke slowly. "Menand women of the new age, " he said; "You have arisen to do battle forthe race... There is no easy victory before us. "

He stopped to gather words. The thoughts that had been in his mindbefore she came returned, but transfigured, no longer touched with theshadow of a possible irrelevance. "This night is a beginning, " he cried. "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 nothought though I am beaten, though I am utterly overthrown. "

He found the thing in his mind too vague for words. He pausedmomentarily, and broke into vague exhortations, and then a rush ofspeech came upon him. Much that he said was but the humanitariancommonplace of a vanished age, but the conviction of his voice touchedit to vitality. He stated the case of the old days to the people of thenew age, to the woman 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 ofdreams--of beginnings, an age of noble hopes; throughout the worldwe had made an end of slavery; throughout the world we had spread thedesire and anticipation that wars might cease, that all men and womenmight live nobly, in freedom and peace. ... So we hoped in the days thatare past. And what of those hopes? How is it with man after two hundredyears?

"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 thelittle lives that make up this greater life? How is it with the commonlives? As it has ever been--sorrow and labour, lives cramped andunfulfilled, lives tempted by power, tempted by wealth, and gone towaste and folly. The old faiths have faded and changed, the new faith--. Is there a new faith?"

Things that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. Heplunged at belief and seized it, and clung for a time at her level. Hespoke gustily, in broken incomplete sentences, but with all his heartand strength, of this new faith within him. He spoke of the greatness ofself-abnegation, of his belief in an immortal life of Humanity in whichwe live and move and have our being. His voice rose and fell, and therecording appliances hummed their hurried applause, dim attendantswatched him out of the shadow. Through all those doubtful places hissense of that silent spectator beside him sustained his sincerity. For afew glorious moments he was carried away; he felt no doubt of his heroicquality, 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 worldI give to the people of the world. All that is mine in the world I giveto the people of the world. I give it to you, and myself I give to you. And as God wills, I will live for you, or I will die. "

He ended with a florid gesture and turned about. He found the light ofhis present exaltation reflected in the face of the girl. Their eyesmet; her eyes were swimming with tears of enthusiasm. They seemed to beurged towards each other. They clasped hands and stood gripped, facingone another, in an eloquent silence. She whispered. "I knew, " shewhispered. "I knew. " He could not speak, he crushed her hand in his. Hismind was the theatre of gigantic passions. 

The man in yellow was beside them. Neither had noted his coming. He wassaying that the south-west wards were marching. "I never expected it sosoon, " he cried. "They have done wonders. You must send them a word tohelp them on their way. "

Graham dropped Helen's hand and stared at him absent-mindedly. Thenwith a start he returned to his previous preoccupation about the flyingstages. 

"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 hisstruggle between conflicting ideas. "We must capture the flying stages, "he explained. "Unless we can do that they will land negroes. At allcosts we must prevent that. "

He felt even as he spoke that this was not what had been in his mindbefore the interruption. He saw a touch of surprise in her eyes. Sheseemed about to speak and a shrill bell drowned her voice. 

It occurred to Graham that she expected him to lead these marchingpeople, that that was the thing he had to do. He made the offerabruptly. He addressed the man in yellow, but he spoke to her. He sawher 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 mustwait, he insisted no other course was possible. "We must know where youare, " he said. "At any moment a crisis may arise needing your presenceand decision. " The room was a luxurious little apartment with newsmachines and a broken mirror that had once been en _rapport_ with thecrow's nest specula. It seemed a matter of course to Graham that Helenshould stop with him. 

A picture had drifted through his mind of such a vast dramatic struggleas the masses in the ruins had suggested. But here was no spectacularbattle-field such as he imagined. Instead was seclusion--and suspense. It was only as the afternoon wore on that he pieced together a truerpicture of the fight that was raging, inaudibly and invisibly, within four miles of him, beneath the Roehampton stage. A strange andunprecedented contest it was, a battle that was a hundred thousandlittle battles, a battle in a sponge of ways and channels, fought outof sight of sky or sun under the electric glare, fought out in a vastconfusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition oftwo hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised bylives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on eitherside was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture andsudden distribution in enormous quantities had been one of Ostrog'sculminating moves against the Council. Few had had any experience withthis weapon, many had never discharged one, many who carried it cameunprovided with ammunition; never was wilder firing in the history ofwarfare. It was a battle of amateurs, a hideous experimental warfare, armed rioters fighting armed rioters, armed rioters swept forward bythe words and fury of a song, by the tramping sympathy of their numbers, pouring in countless myriads towards the smaller ways, the disabledlifts, the galleries slippery with blood, the halls and passages chokedwith smoke, beneath the flying stages, to learn there when retreat washopeless the ancient mysteries of warfare. And overhead save for a fewsharpshooters upon the roof spaces and for a few bands and threads ofvapour that multiplied and darkened towards the evening, the day was aclear serenity. Ostrog it seems had no bombs at command and in allthe earlier phases of the battle the aeropiles played no part. Not thesmallest cloud was there to break the empty brilliance of the sky. Itseemed as though it held itself vacant until the aeroplanes should come. 

Ever and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from thisMediterranean port and then that, and presently from the south ofFrance. But of the new guns that Ostrog had made and which were known tobe in the city came no news in spite of Graham's urgency, nor any reportof successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flyingstages. Section after section of the Labour Societies reported itselfassembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge intothe labyrinth of that warfare What was happening there? Even the busyward leaders did not know. In spite of the opening and closing ofdoors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetualclitter-clack of recording implements, Graham felt isolated, strangelyinactive, inoperative. 

Their isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected ofall the things that had happened since his awakening. It had somethingof the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. A tumult, thestupendous realisation of a world struggle between Ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bellsand broken mirror!

Now the door would be closed and they were alone together; they seemedsharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm thatrushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concernedwith one another. Then the door would open again, messengers wouldenter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was likea window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to ahurricane. The dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of thebattle rushed in and overwhelmed them. They were no longer personsbut 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 onlyrealities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonderin a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurlinginexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world. 

At first their mood had been one of exalted confidence, a great pridehad possessed them, a pride in one another for the greatness of theissues they had challenged. At first he had walked the room eloquentwith a transitory persuasion of his tremendous destiny. But slowlyuneasy intimations of their coming defeat touched his spirit. There camea long period in which they were alone. He changed his theme, becameegotistical, spoke of the wonder of his sleep, of the little life of hismemories, remote yet minute and clear, like something seen through aninverted opera-glass, and all the brief play of desires and errors thathad made his former life. She said little, but the emotion in her facefollowed the tones in his voice, and it seemed to him he had at last aperfect understanding. He reverted from pure reminiscence to that senseof greatness she imposed upon him. "And through it all, this destiny wasbefore me, " he said; "this vast inheritance of which I did not dream. "

Insensibly their heroic preoccupation with the revolutionary strugglepassed to the question of their relationship. He began to questionher. She told him of the days before his awakening, spoke with a briefvividness of the girlish dreams that had given a bias to her life, ofthe incredulous emotions his awakening had aroused. She told him tooof a tragic circumstance of her girlhood that had darkened her life, quickened her sense of injustice and opened her heart prematurely tothe wider sorrows of the world. For a little time, so far as hewas concerned, the great war about them was but the vast ennoblingbackground to these personal things. 

In an instant these personal relations were submerged. There camemessengers to tell that a great fleet of aeroplanes was rushing betweenthe sky and Avignon. He went to the crystal dial in the corner andassured himself that the thing was so. He went to the chart room andconsulted a map to measure the distances of Avignon, New Arawan, andLondon. He made swift calculations. He went to the room of the WardLeaders to ask for news of the fight for the stages--and there was noone there. After a time he came back to her. 

His face had changed. It had dawned upon him that the struggle wasperhaps more than half over, that Ostrog was holding his own, thatthe arrival of the aeroplanes would mean a panic that might leave himhelpless. A chance phrase in the message had given him a glimpse of thereality that came. Each of these soaring giants bore its thousandhalf savage negroes to the death grapple of the city. Suddenly hishumanitarian enthusiasm showed flimsy. Only two of the Ward Leaders werein their room, when presently he repaired thither, the Hall of the Atlasseemed empty. He fancied a change in the bearing of the attendants inthe outer rooms. A sombre disillusionment darkened his mind. She lookedat him anxiously when he returned to her. 

"No news, " he said with an assumed carelessness in answer to her eyes. 

Then he was moved to frankness. "Or rather--bad news. We are losing. Weare gaining no ground and the aeroplanes draw nearer and nearer. "

He walked the length of the room and turned. 

"Unless we can capture those flying stages in the next hour--there willbe horrible things. We shall be beaten. 

"No!" she said. "We have justice--we have the people. We have God on ourside. "

"Ostrog has discipline--he has plans. Do you know, out there just now Ifelt--. When I heard that these aeroplanes were a stage nearer. I feltas if I were fighting the machinery of fate. "

She made no answer for a while. "We have done right, " she said at last. 

He looked at her doubtfully. "We have done what we could. But does thisdepend upon us? Is it not an older sin, a wider sin?"

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

"These blacks are savages, ruled by force, used as force. And they havebeen under the rule of the whites two hundred years. Is it not a racequarrel? The race sinned--the race pays. "

"But these labourers, these poor people of London--!"

"Vicarious atonement. To stand wrong is to share the guilt. "

She looked keenly at him, astonished at the new aspect he presented. 

Without came the shrill ringing of a bell, the sound of feet and thegabble of a phonographic message. The man in yellow appeared. "Yes?"said Graham. 

"They are at Vichy. "

"Where are the attendants who were in the great Hall of the Atlas?"asked Graham abruptly. 

Presently the Babble Machine rang again. "We may win yet, " said the manin yellow, going out to it. "If only we can find where Ostrog has hiddenhis guns. Everything hangs on that now. Perhaps this--"

Graham followed him. But the only news was of the aeroplanes. They hadreached Orleans. 

Graham returned to Helen. "No news, " he said "No news. "

"And we can do nothing?"

"Nothing. "

He paced impatiently. Suddenly the swift anger that was his nature sweptupon him. "Curse this complex world!" he cried, "and all the inventionsof men! That a man must die like a rat in a snare and never see his foe!Oh, for one blow!... "

He turned with an abrupt change in his manner. "That's nonsense, " hesaid. "I am a savage. "

He paced and stopped. "After all London and Paris are only two cities. All the temperate zone has risen. What if London is doomed and Parisdestroyed? These are but accidents. " Again came the mockery of news tocall him to fresh enquiries. He returned with a graver face and sat downbeside her. 

"The end must be near, " he said. "The people it seems have fought anddied in tens of thousands, the ways about Roehampton must be like asmoked beehive. And they have died in vain. They are still only at thesub stage. The aeroplanes are near Paris. Even were a gleam of successto come now, there would be nothing to do, there would be no time to doanything before they were upon us. The guns that might have saved us aremislaid. Mislaid! Think of the disorder of things! Think of this foolishtumult, that cannot even find its weapons! Oh, for one aeropile--justone! For the want of that I am beaten. Humanity is beaten and our causeis lost! My kingship, my headlong foolish kingship will not last anight. And I have egged on the people to fight--. "

"They would have fought anyhow. "

"I doubt it. I have come among them--"

"No, " she cried, "not that. If defeat comes--if you die--. But even thatcannot be, it cannot be, after all these years. "

"Ah! We have meant well. But--do you indeed believe--?"

"If they defeat you, " she cried, "you have spoken. Your word has gonelike a great wind through the world, fanning liberty into a flame. Whatif the flame sputters a little! Nothing can change the spoken word. Yourmessage will have gone forth.... "

"To what end? It may be. It may be. You know I said, when you told meof these things dear God! but that was scarcely a score of hours ago!--Isaid that I had not your faith. Well--at any rate there is nothing to donow.... "

"You have not my faith! Do you mean--? You are sorry?"

"No, " he said hurriedly, "no! Before God--no!" His voice changed. "But--. I think--I have been indiscreet. I knew little--I grasped toohastily.... "

He paused. He was ashamed of this avowal. "There is one thing that makesup for all. I have known you. Across this gulf of time I have come toyou. The rest is done. It is done. With you, too, it has been somethingmore--or something less--"

He paused with his face searching hers, and without clamoured theunheeded message that the aeroplanes were rising into the sky of Amiens. 

She put her hand to her throat, and her lips were white. She staredbefore her as if she saw some horrible possibility. Suddenly herfeatures changed. "Oh, but I have been honest!" she cried, and then, "Have I been honest? I loved the world and freedom, I hated cruelty andoppression. Surely it was that. "

"Yes, " he said, "yes. And we have done what it lay in us to do. We havegiven our message, our message! We have started Armageddon! But now--. Now that we have, it may be our last hour, together, now that all thesegreater things are done.... "

He stopped. She sat in silence. Her face was a white riddle. 

For a moment they heeded nothing of a sudden stir outside, a runningto and fro, and cries. Then Helen started to an attitude of tenseattention. "It is--, " she cried and stood up, speechless, incredulous, triumphant. And Graham, too, heard. Metallic voices were shouting"Victory!" Yes it was "Victory!" He stood up also with the light of adesperate hope in his eyes. 

Bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled anddishevelled with excitement. "Victory, " he cried, "victory! The peopleare winning. Ostrog's people have collapsed. "

She rose. "Victory?" And her voice was hoarse and faint. 

"What do you mean?" asked Graham. "Tell me! What?"

"We have driven them out of the under galleries at Norwood, Streathamis afire and burning wildly, and Roehampton is ours. Ours!--and we havetaken the aeropile that lay thereon. "

For an instant Graham and Helen stood in silence, their hearts werebeating fast, they looked at one another. For one last moment theregleamed in Graham his dream of empire, of kingship, with Helen by hisside. It gleamed, and passed. 

A shrill bell rang. An agitated grey-headed man appeared from the roomof the Ward Leaders. "It is all over, " he cried. 

"What matters it now that we have Roehampton? The aeroplanes have beensighted at Boulogne!"

"The Channel!" said the man in yellow. He calculated swiftly. "Half anhour. "

"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 hundredaeroplanes in the first fleet. "

"Another hour?" asked Graham. 

"To be so near!" said the Ward Leader. "Now that we have found thoseguns. To be so near--. If once we could get them out upon the roofspaces. "

"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 one chance. You said there was anaeropile--?"

"On the Roehampton stage, Sire. "

"Smashed?"

"No. It is lying crossways to the carrier. It might be got upon theguides--easily. But there is no aeronaut--. "

Graham glanced at the two men and then at Helen. He spoke after a longpause. "We have no aeronauts?"

"None. "

"The aeroplanes are clumsy, " he said thoughtfully, "compared with theaeropiles. "

He turned suddenly to Helen. His decision was made. "I must do it. "

"Do what?"

"Go to this flying stage--to this aeropile. "

"What do you mean?"

"I am an aeronaut. After all--. Those days for which you reproached mewere not wasted. "

He turned to the old man in yellow. "Put the aeropile upon the guides. "

The man in yellow hesitated. 

"What do you mean to do?" cried Helen. 

"This aeropile--it is a chance--. "

"You don't mean--?"

"To fight--yes. To fight in the air. I have thought before--. Anaeroplane 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--sendthem my message--to put it upon the guides. "

The old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow, nodded, and hurriedout. 

Helen made a step towards Graham. Her face was white. "But--How can onefight? You will be killed. "

"Perhaps. Yet, not to do it--or to let someone else attempt it--. "

He stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by agesture, and they stood looking at one another. 

"You are right, " she said at last in a low tone. "You are right. If itcan be done... Must go. "

Those days for not altogether

He moved a step towards her, and she stepped back, her white facestruggled against him and resisted him. "No, " she gasped. "I cannotbear--. Go now. "

He extended his hands stupidly. She clenched her fists. "Go now, " shecried. "Go now. "

He hesitated and understood. He threw his hands up in a queerhalf-theatrical gesture. He had no word to say. He turned from her. 

The man in yellow moved towards the door with clumsy belated tact. ButGraham stepped past him. He went striding through the room where theWard Leader bawled at a telephone directing that the aeropile should beput upon the guides. 

The man in yellow glanced at Helen's still figure, hesitated and hurriedafter him. Graham did not once look back, he did not speak until thecurtain of the ante-chamber of the great hall fell behind him. Then heturned his head with curt swift directions upon his bloodless lips. 

CHAPTER XXIV. THE COMING OF THE AEROPLANES

Two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretchedalong the edge of the captured Roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage calledWimbledon Park. Now and then they spoke to one another. They spoke themutilated English of their class and period. The fire of the Ostrogiteshad dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for sometime. But the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below inthe lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between thestaccato of shots from the popular side. One of these men was describingto the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind agirder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged toofar "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 smolderingin a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him awounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless faceand watched the progress of that burning. Gigantic behind them, athwartthe carrier lay the captured aeropile. 

"I can't see him now, " said the second man in a ton of provocation. 

The marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnestendeavour to make things plain And suddenly, interrupting him, came anoisy shouting from the substage. 

"What's going on now, " he said, and raised himself on one arm to stareat the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of bluefigures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage to theaeropile. 

"We don't want all these fools, " said his friend. "They only crowd upand spoil shots. What are they after?"

"Ssh!--they're shouting something. "

The two men listened. The swarming new-comers had crowded densely aboutthe aeropile. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles andbadges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and fileflung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until theentire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. Oneof the marksmen knelt up. "They're putting it on the carrier--that'swhat they're after. "

He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said hisfriend. "We've got no aeronauts. "

"That's what they're doing anyhow. " He looked at his rifle, looked atthe struggling crowd, and suddenly turning to the wounded man. "Mindthese, mate, " he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in amoment he was running towards the aeropile. For a quarter of an hour hewas a perspiring Titan, lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts, and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of otherscheering their own achievement. By this time he knew, what indeedeveryone in the city knew, that the Master, raw learner though hewas, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to takecontrol of it, would let no other man attempt it. "He who takes thegreatest 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 disorderof his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitfulsnatches the beat and impulse of the revolutionary song. He saw througha gap in the people that a thick stream of heads still poured upthe stairway. "The Master is coming, " shouted voices, "the Master iscoming, " and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. He began tothrust himself towards the central groove. "The Master is coming!" "TheSleeper, the Master!" "God and the Master!" roared the Voices. 

And suddenly quite close to him were the black uniforms of therevolutionary guard, and for the first and last time in his life he sawGraham, saw him quite nearly. A tall, dark man in a flowing black robe, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a manwho for all the little things about him held neither ears nor eyesnor thoughts.... For all his days that man remembered the passing ofGraham's bloodless face. In a moment it had gone and he was fightingin the swaying crowd. A lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling "Clear for the aeropile!" Thebell that clears the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging. 

With that clanging in his ears Graham drew near the aeropile, marchedinto the shadow of its tilting wing. He became aware that a number ofpeople about him were offering to accompany him, and waved their offersaside. He wanted to think how one started the engine. The bell clangedfaster and faster, and the feet of the retreating people roared fasterand louder. The man in yellow was assisting him to mount through theribs of the body. He clambered into the aeronaut's place, fixing himselfvery carefully and deliberately. What was it? The man in yellow waspointing to two aeropiles driving upward in the southern sky. No doubtthey were looking for the coming aeroplanes. That--presently--the thingto do now was to start. Things were being shouted at him, questions, warnings. They bothered him. He wanted to think about the aeropile, torecall every item of his previous experience. He waved the people fromhim, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowdcleft down the line of the girders by his gesture. 

For a moment he was motionless, staring at the levers, the wheel bywhich the engine shifted, and all the delicate appliances of which heknew so little. His eye caught a spirit level with the bubble towardshim, and he remembered something, spent a dozen seconds in swinging theengine forward until the bubble floated in the centre of the tube. He noted that the people were not shouting, knew they watched hisdeliberation. A bullet smashed on the bar above his head. Who fired? Wasthe line clear of people? He stood up to see and sat down again. 

In another second the propeller was spinning, and he was rushing downthe guides. He gripped the wheel and swung the engine back to lift thestem. Then it was the people shouted. In a moment he was throbbing withthe quiver of the engine, and the shouts dwindled swiftly behind, rusheddown to silence. The wind whistled over the edges of the screen, and theworld sank away from him very swiftly. 

Throb, throb, throb--throb, throb, throb; up he drove. He fanciedhimself free of all excitement, felt cool and deliberate. He lifted thestem still more, opened one valve on his left wing and swept round andup. He looked down with a steady head, and up. One of the Ostrogiteaeropiles was driving across his course, so that he drove obliquelytowards it and would pass below it at a steep angle. Its littleaeronauts were peering down at him. What did they mean to do? His mindbecame active. One, he saw held a weapon pointing, seemed prepared tofire. What did they think he meant to do? In a moment he understoodtheir tactics, and his resolution was taken. His momentary lethargy waspast. He opened two more valves to his left, swung round, end on to thishostile machine, closed his valves, and shot straight at it, stem andwind-screen shielding him from the shot. They tilted a little as if toclear him. He flung up his stem. 

Throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his faceinto an involuntary grimace, and crash! He struck it! He struck upwardbeneath the nearer wing. 

Very slowly the wing of his antagonist seemed to broaden as the impetusof his blow turned it up. He saw the full breadth of it and then it sliddownward out of his sight. 

He felt his stem going down, his hands tightened on the levers, whirledand rammed the engine back. He felt the jerk of a clearance, the noseof the machine jerked upward steeply, and for a moment he seemed to belying on his back. The machine was reeling and staggering, it seemed tobe dancing on its screw. He made a huge effort, hung for a moment on thelevers, and slowly the engine came forward again. He was driving upwardbut no longer so steeply. He gasped for a moment and flung himself atthe levers again. The wind whistled about him. One further effort andhe was almost level. He could breathe. He turned his head for the firsttime to see what had become of his antagonists. Turned back to thelevers for a moment and looked again. For a moment he could havebelieved they were annihilated. And then he saw between the two stagesto the east was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge, fellswiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a crack. 

At first he did not understand, and then a wild joy possessed him. Heshouted at the top of his voice, an inarticulate shout, and drove higherand higher up the sky. Throb, throb, throb, pause, throb, throb, throb. "Where was the other aeropile?" he thought. "They too--. " As he lookedround the empty heavens he had a momentary fear that this machine hadrisen above him, and then he saw it alighting on the Norwood stage. Theyhad meant shooting. To risk being rammed headlong two thousand feet inthe air was beyond their latter-day courage. The combat was declined. 

For a little while he circled, then swooped in a steep descent towardsthe westward stage. Throb throb throb, throb throb throb. The twilightwas creeping on apace, the smoke from the Streatham stage that had beenso dense and dark, was now a pillar of fire, and all the laced curvesof the moving ways and the translucent roofs and domes and the chasmsbetween the buildings were glowing softly now, lit by the temperedradiance of the electric light that the glare of the way overpowered. The three efficient stages that the Ostrogites held--for Wimbledon Parkwas useless because of the fire from Roehampton, and Streatham was afurnace--were glowing with guide lights for the coming aeroplanes. Ashe swept over the Roehampton stage he saw the dark masses of the peoplethereon. He heard a clap of frantic cheering, heard a bullet from theWimbledon Park stage tweet through the air, and went beating up abovethe Surrey wastes. He felt a breath of wind from the south-west, andlifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upwardheeling into the rare swift upper air. Throb throb throb--throb throbthrob. 

Up he drove and up, to that pulsating rhythm, until the country beneathwas blue and indistinct, and London spread like a little map traced inlight, like the mere model of a city near the brim of the horizon. Thesouth-west was a sky of sapphire over the shadowy rim of the world, andever 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 anebulous 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 giganticphosphorescent shapes sweeping nearer through the lower air. He made aswift calculation of their pace, and spun the little wheel that broughtthe engine forward. He touched a lever and the throbbing effort of theengine ceased. He began to fall, fell swifter and swifter. He aimed atthe apex of the wedge. He dropped like a stone through the whistlingair. It seemed scarce a second from that soaring moment before he struckthe foremost aeroplane. 

No man of all that black multitude saw the coming of his fate, no manamong them dreamt of the hawk that struck downward upon him out ofthe sky. Those who were not limp in the agonies of air-sickness, werecraning their black necks and staring to see the filmy city that wasrising out of the haze, the rich and splendid city to which "Massa Boss"had brought their obedient muscles. Bright teeth gleamed and the glossyfaces shone. They had heard of Paris. They knew they were to have lordlytimes among the "poor white" trash. And suddenly Graham struck them. 

He had aimed at the body of the aeroplane, but at the very last instanta better idea had flashed into his mind. He twisted about and strucknear the edge of the starboard wing with all his accumulated weight. Hewas jerked back as he struck. His prow went gliding across its smoothexpanse towards the rim. He felt the forward rush of the huge fabricsweeping him and his aeropile along with it, and for a moment thatseemed an age he could not tell what was happening. He heard a thousandthroats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edgeof the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulderand saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. He had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, andhands clutching at the tilting guide bars. The fenestrations in thefurther float flashed open as the aeronaut tried to right her. Beyond, he saw a second aeroplane leaping steeply to escape the whirl of itsheeling fellow. The broad area of swaying wings seemed to jerk upward. He felt his aeropile had dropped clear, that the monstrous fabric, cleanoverturned, hung like a sloping wall above him. 

He did not clearly understand that he had struck the side float of theaeroplane and slipped off, but he perceived that he was flying free onthe down glide and rapidly nearing earth. What had he done? His heartthrobbed like a noisy engine in his throat and for a perilous instanthe could not move his levers because of the paralysis of his hands. Hewrenched the levers to throw his engine back, fought for two secondsagainst 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 rushingupward and outward; saw the one he had struck fall edgewise on andstrike like a gigantic knife-blade along the wind-wheels below it. 

He put down his stern and looked again. He drove up heedless of hisdirection as he watched. He saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabricstrike the earth, saw its downward vans crumple with the weight of itsdescent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down, upon the sloping wheels. Throb, throb, throb, pause. Suddenly fromthe heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards thezenith. And then he was aware of a huge mass flying through the airtowards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge--ifit was a charge--of a second aeroplane. It whirled by below, suckedhim down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the gust of its closepassage. 

He became aware of three others rushing towards him, aware of the urgentnecessity of beating above them. Aeroplanes were all about him, circlingwildly to avoid him, as it seemed. They drove past him, above, below, eastward and westward. Far away to the westward was the sound of acollision, and two falling flares. Far away to the southward a secondsquadron was coming. Steadily he beat upward. Presently all theaeroplanes were below him, but for a moment he doubted the height he hadof them, and did not swoop again. And then he came down upon a secondvictim and all its load of soldiers saw him coming. The big machineheeled and swayed as the fear maddened men scrambled to the sternfor their weapons. A score of bullets sung through the air, and thereflashed a star in the thick glass wind-screen that protected him. Theaeroplane slowed and dropped to foil his stroke, and dropped too low. Just in time he saw the wind-wheels of Bromley hill rushing up towardshim, and spun about and up as the aeroplane he had chased crashed amongthem. All its voices wove into a felt of yelling. The great fabricseemed to be standing on end for a second among the heeling andsplintering vans, and then it flew to pieces. Huge splinters came flyingthrough the air, its engines burst like shells. A hot rush of flame shotoverhead into the darkling sky. 

"_Two!_" he cried, with a bomb from overhead bursting as it fell, andforthwith he was beating up again. A glorious exhilaration possessedhim now, a giant activity. His troubles about humanity, about hisinadequacy, were gone for ever. He was a man in battle rejoicing in hispower. Aeroplanes seemed radiating from him in every direction, intentonly upon avoiding him, the yelling of their packed passengers came inshort gusts as they swept by. He chose his third quarry, struck hastilyand did but turn it on edge. It escaped him, to smash against the tallcliff of London wall. Flying from that impact he skimmed the darklingground so nearly he could see a frightened rabbit bolting up a slope. Hejerked up steeply, and found himself driving over south London with theair about him vacant. To the right of him a wild riot of signal rocketsfrom the Ostrogites banged tumultuously in the sky. To the south thewreckage of half a dozen air ships flamed, and east and west and norththe air ships 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 meantdisastrous collisions. He could scarcely realize the thing he had done. In every quarter aeroplanes were receding. They were receding. Theydwindled smaller and smaller. They were in flight!

He passed two hundred feet or so above the Roehampton stage. It wasblack with people and noisy with their frantic shouting. But why wasthe Wimbledon Park stage black and cheering, too? The smoke and flame ofStreatham now hid the three further stages. He curved about and roseto see them and the northern quarters. First came the square masses ofShooter's Hill into sight from behind the smoke, lit and orderly withthe aeroplane that had landed and its disembarking negroes. Then cameBlackheath, and then under the corner of the reek the Norwood stage. OnBlackheath no aeroplane had landed but an aeropile lay upon the guides. Norwood was covered by a swarm of little figures running to and fro in apassionate confusion. Why? Abruptly he understood. The stubborndefence of the flying stages was over, the people were pouring into theunder-ways of these last strongholds of Ostrog's usurpation. And then, from far away on the northern border of the city, full of gloriousimport to him, came a sound, a signal, a note of triumph, the leadenthud 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; "thepeople win!" The sound of a second gun came like an answer. And then hesaw the aeropile on Blackheath was running down its guides to launch. It lifted clean and rose. It shot up into the air, driving straightsouthward and away from him. 

In an instant it came to him what this meant. It must needs be Ostrogin flight. He shouted and dropped towards it. He had the momentum ofhis elevation and fell slanting down the air and very swiftly. It rosesteeply at his approach. He allowed for its velocity and drove straightupon it. 

It suddenly became a mere flat edge, and behold! he was past it, anddriving headlong down with all the force of his futile blow. 

He was furiously angry. He reeled the engine back along its shaft andwent circling up. He saw Ostrog's machine beating up a spiral beforehim. He rose straight towards it, won above it by virtue of the impetusof his swoop and by the advantage and weight of a man. He droppedheadlong--dropped and missed again! As he rushed past he saw the face ofOstrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in Ostrog's attitude a wincingresolution. Ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to the south. He realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. Belowhe saw the Croyden hills. He jerked upward and once more he gained onhis enemy. 

He glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested by a strangething. 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 anddust, jerked into the air. For a moment this cowled figure stoodmotionless, dropping huge masses of metal from its shoulders, and thenit 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 sprangup from the Norwood stage. And even as he stared at this came a deadreport, and the air wave of the first explosion struck him. He was flungup and sideways. 

For a moment the aeropile fell nearly edgewise with her nose down, and seemed to hesitate whether to overset altogether. He stood on hiswind-shield wrenching the wheel that swayed up over his head. And thenthe shock of the second explosion took his machine sideways. 

He found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the airwas blowing past him and upward. He seemed to be hanging quite still inthe air, with the wind blowing up past him. It occurred to him that hewas falling. Then he was sure that he was falling. He could not lookdown. 

He found himself recapitulating with incredible swiftness all that hadhappened since his awakening, the days of doubt the days of Empire, andat last the tumultuous discovery of Ostrog's calculated treachery, hewas beaten but London was saved. London was saved!

The thought had a quality of utter unreality. Who was he? Why was heholding so tightly with his hands? Why could he not leave go? In sucha fall as this countless dreams have ended. But in a moment he wouldwake.... 

His thoughts ran swifter and swifter. He wondered if he should see Helenagain. 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 earthwas very near.