 Chapter 7 of the Sleeper Awakes. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells. In the Silent Rooms. Presently Graham resumed his examination of his apartments. Curiosity kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. The inner room he perceived was high, and its ceiling dome shaped with an oblong aperture in the center, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vein seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. The faint humming note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. As these veins sprang up one after the other, Graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. He was surprised to see a star. This drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices. There were no windows. And he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with Howard, he had observed no windows at all. Had there been windows? There were windows on the street indeed. But were they for light? Or was the whole city lit day and night forevermore so that there was no night there? And another thing dawned upon him. There was no fireplace in either room. Was the season summer? And were these merely summer apartments? Or was the whole city uniformly heated or cooled? He became interested in these questions, beginning examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labor of bedroom service was practically abolished. And over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and color that he found very pleasing to the eye. There were several very comfortable chairs, a light table and silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. Then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. The world has changed indeed, he said. He observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the center of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. A chair faced this. He had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so. The lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. At first sight it seemed like Russian, then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated English about certain of the words. The man who'd be kin forced itself on him as the man who would be king. Phenetic spelling, he said. He remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world, but this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. He puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. The Heart of Darkness he had never heard of before, nor the Madonna of the future. He'd out if they were indeed stories they were by post-Victorian authors. He puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. Then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. He opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bow. He pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. He became aware of voices and music and noticed a play of color on the smooth front face. He suddenly realized what this might be and stepped back to regard it. On the flat surface was now a little picture very vividly colored, and in this picture were figures that moved. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham. I have worked, said the man, but what have you been doing? Ah, said Graham. He forgot everything else and sat down on the chair. Within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard when the sleeper wakes used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed himself by, a thing remote and incredible. But in a little while he knew those two people like intimate friends. At last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again. It was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see. Unscrupulous, pleasure-seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle. There were illusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. The blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. He had no doubt the story was contemporary and its intense realism was undeniable, and the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. He sat staring at the blankness. He started and rubbed his eyes. He had been so absorbed in a latter-day substitute for a novel that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening. He stood up and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland, the clearness of the Kinetoscope drama past, and the struggle on the vast place of streets, the ambiguous council. The swift phases of his waking hour came back. These people had spoken of the council with suggestions of a vague universality of power, and they had spoken of the sleeper. It had not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the sleeper. He had to recall precisely what they had said. He walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals of the revolving fan. As the fan swept around, a dim turmoil like the noise of machinery came in rhythmic eddies. All else was silence. Though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the little intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue, black almost, with the dust of little stars. He resumed his examination of the rooms. He could find no way of opening the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. His feeling of wonder was in abeyance, but he was curious, anxious for information. He wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. He tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. Presently, he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh sensations. He went back to the apparatus in the other room and had soon puzzled out the method of replacing the cylinders by others. As he did so, it came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so that it was still clear and understandable after 200 years. The haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. At first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. He presently recognized what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of Tanhauser. The music was unfamiliar, but the rendering was realistic and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. Tanhauser did not go to a Venusburg, but to a pleasure city. What was a pleasure city? A dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic voluptuous writer. He became interested, curious. The story developed with a flavor of strangely twisted sentimentality. Suddenly he did not like it. He liked it less as it proceeded. He had a revulsion of feeling. These were no pictures, no idealizations, but photographed realities. He wanted no more of the 22nd century Venusburg. He forgot the part played by the model in 19th century art and gave way to an archaic indignation. He rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. He pulled forward the apparatus and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. Something snapped. A violet spark, stunning, convulsed his arm and the thing was still. When he attempted next day to replace these Tanhauser cylinders by another pair, he found the apparatus broken. He struck out a path, a bleach to the room and paced to and fro, struggling with intolerable, vast impressions. The things he had derived from the cylinders and the things he had seen conflicted, confused him. It seemed to him the most amazing thing of all that in his 30 years of life he had never tried to shape a picture of these coming times. We were making the future, he said, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making, and here it is. What have they got to? What has been done? How do I come into the midst of it all? The vastness of street and house he was prepared for, the multitudes of people, but conflicts in the city ways, and the systematized sensuality of a class of rich men. He thought of Bellamy, the hero of whose socialistic utopia had so oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no utopia, no socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realize that the ancient antithesis of luxury waste and sensuality on the one hand and abject poverty on the other still prevailed. He knew enough of the essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness of Howard, the very atmosphere spoke of gigantic discontent, what country was he in? Still England it seemed, and yet strangely un-English. His mind glanced at the rest of the world and saw only an enigmatic veil. He prodded about his apartment examining everything as a caged animal might do. He was very tired with that feverish exhaustion that does not admit of rest. He listened for long spaces under the ventilator to catch some distant echo of the tummels he felt must be proceeding in the city. He began to talk to himself. Two hundred and three years, he said to himself over and over again, laughing stupidly, that I am two hundred and thirty-three years old, the oldest inhabitant. Surely they haven't reversed the tendency of our time and gone back to the rule of the oldest. My claims are indisputable, mumble, mumble. I remember the Bulgarian atrocities as though it was yesterday. To the great age. He was surprised at first to hear himself laughing, and then laughed again deliberately and louder. Then he realized that he was behaving foolishly. Steady, he said. Steady. His pacing became more regular. This new world, he said, I don't understand it. Why? But it is all why. I suppose they can fly and do all sorts of things. Let me try and remember just how it began. He was surprised at first to find how vague the memories of his first thirty years had become. He remembered fragments. For the most part, trivial moments. Things of no great importance that he had observed. His boyhood seemed the most accessible at first. He recalled school books and certain lessons and menstruation. Then he revived the more salient features of his life. Memories of the wife long since dead. Her magic influence now gone beyond corruption. Of his rivals and friends and betrayers. Of the decision of this issue and that. And then of his last years of misery. Of fluctuating resolves. And at last of his strenuous studies. And a little while he perceived he had it all again. Damn perhaps. Like metal long laid aside. But in no way defective or injured. Capable of repolishing. And the hue of it was a deepening misery. Was it worth repolishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out of a life that had become intolerable. He reverted to his present condition. He wrestled with the facts in vain. It became an inextricable tangle. Who saw the sky through the ventilator pink with dawn. An old persuasion came out of the dark recesses of his memory. I must sleep he said. It appeared as a delightful relief from this mental distress. And from the growing pain and heaviness of his limbs. He went to the strange little bed lay down. And was presently asleep. He was destined to become very familiar indeed with these apartments before he left them. For he remained imprisoned for three days. During that time no one except Howard entered the rooms. The marvel of his fate mingled with and in some way minimized the marvel of his survival. He had awakened to mankind it seemed. Only to be snatched away into this unaccountable solitude. Howard came regularly with subtly sustaining and nutritive fluids. And light and pleasant foods quite strange to Graham. He always closed the door carefully as he entered. On matters of detail he was increasingly obliging. But the bearing of Graham on the great issues that were evidently being contested so closely beyond the soundproof walls that enclosed him. He would not elucidate. He evaded as politely as possible every question on the position of affairs in the outer world. And in those three days Graham's incessant thoughts went far and wide. All that he had seen all this elaborate contrivance to prevent him seeing. Worked together in his mind. Almost every possible interpretation of his position he debated. Even as it chanced the right interpretation. Things that presently happened to him came to him at last credible by virtue of this seclusion. When at length the moment of his release arrived it found him prepared. Howard's bearing went far to deep in Graham's impression of his own strange importance. The door between its opening and closing seemed to admit with him a breath of momentous happening. His inquiries became more definite in searching. Howard retreated through protests and difficulties. The awakening was unforeseen he repeated. It happened to have fallen in with the trend of a social convulsion. To explain it I must tell you the history of a gross and a half years, protested Howard. The thing is this said Graham. You are afraid of something I shall do. In some way I am arbitrator. I might be arbitrator. It is not that. But you have. I may tell you this much. The automatic increase of your property puts great possibilities of interference in your hands. And in certain other ways you have influence with your 18th century notions. 19th century, correct Graham? With your old world notions anyhow ignorant as you are of every feature of our state. Am I a fool? Certainly not. Do I seem to be the sort of man who would act rashly? You were never expected to act at all. No one counted on your awakening. No one dreamt you would ever awake. No one had surrounded you with antiseptic conditions. As a matter of fact we thought that you were dead. A mere arrest of decay. But it is too complex. We dare not suddenly. While you are still half awake. It won't do said Graham. Suppositives as you say. Why am I not being crammed night and day with facts and warnings and all the wisdom of the time to fit me for my responsibilities? Am I any wiser now than two days ago, if it is two days, when I awoke? Howard pulled his lip. I am beginning to feel. Every hour I feel more clearly. A system of concealment of which you are the faves. Is this council or committee or whatever they are cooking the accounts of my estate? Is that it? That note of suspicion said Howard. Ugh! said Graham. Now mark my words. It will be ill for those who have put me here. It will be ill. I am alive. Make no doubt of it. I am alive. Every day my pulse is stronger and my mind clear and more vigorous. No more quiescence. I am a man come back to life and I want to live. Live! Howard's face lit with an idea. He came towards Graham and spoke in an easy, confidential tone. The council secludes you here for your good. You are restless. Naturally, an energetic man. You find it dull here. But we are anxious that everything you may desire, every desire, every sort of desire, there may be something. Is there any sort of company? He paused meaningly. Yes, said Graham thoughtfully. There is. Ah, now we have treated you neglectfully. The crowds and yonder streets of yours. That, said Howard. I am afraid. But Graham began pacing the room. Howard stood near the door watching him. The implication of Howard's suggestion was only half evident to Graham. Company? Suppose you were to accept the proposal, demand some sort of company. Would there be any possibilities of gathering from the conversation of this additional person some vague inkling of the struggle that had broken out so vividly at his waking moment? He meditated again and the suggestion took color. He turned on Howard abruptly. What do you mean by company? Howard raised his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. Human beings, he said with a curious smile on his heavy face. Our social ideas, he said, have a certain increased liberality, perhaps, in comparison with your times. If a man wishes to relieve such a tedium as this, by feminine society, for instance, we think it no scandal. We have cleared our minds of formulae. There is in our city a class, a necessary class, no longer despised, discreet. Graham stopped dead. It would pass the time, said Howard. It is a thing I should perhaps have thought of before, but as a matter of fact, so much is happening, he indicated the exterior world. Graham hesitated. For a moment the figure of a possible woman dominated his mind with an intense attraction. Then he flashed into anger. No, he shouted. He began striding rapidly up and down the room. Everything you say, everything you do convinces me of some great issue in which I am concerned. I do not want to pass the time, as you call it, yes, I know. Desire and indulgence are life in a sense, and death, extinction, and my life before I slept I had worked out that pitiful question. I will not begin again. There is a city, a multitude, and meanwhile I am here like a rabbit in a bag. His rage surged high. He choked for a moment and began to wave his clenched fists. He gave way to an anger fit. He swore archaic curses. His gestures had the quality of physical threats. I do not know who your party may be. I am in the dark and you keep me in the dark. But I know this, that I am secluded here for no good purpose. For no good purpose. I warn you, I warn you of the consequences. Once I come at my power, he realized that to threaten thus might be a danger to himself. He stopped. Howard stood regarding him with a curious expression. I take it this is a message to the council, said Howard. Graham had a momentary impulse to leap upon the man, fell or stunned him. It must have shown upon his face. At any rate Howard's movement was quick. In a second the noiseless door had closed again. And the man from the 19th century was alone. For a moment he stood rigid with clenched hands half raised. Then he flung them down. What a fool I have been, he said, and gave way to his anger again, stamping about the room and shouting curses. For a long time he kept himself in a sort of frenzy, raging at his position, at his own folly, at the knaves who had imprisoned him. He did this because he did not want to look calmly at his position. He clung to his anger because he was afraid of fear. Presently he found himself reasoning with himself. This imprisonment was unaccountable, but no doubt the legal forms, new legal forms of the time permitted it. It must of course be legal. These people were 200 years further on in the march of civilization and the Victorian generation. It was not likely they would be less humane. Yet they had cleared their minds of formulae. Was humanity a formula as well as chastity? His imagination set to work to suggest things that might be done to him. The attempts of his reason to dispose of these suggestions, though for the most part logically valid, were quite unveiling. Why should anything be done to me? If the worst comes to the worst, he found himself saying at last, I can give up what they want. But what do they want? And why don't they ask me for it instead of cooping me up? He returned to his former preoccupation with the council's possible intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behavior, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then for a time his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms. But whether could he escape into this vast crowded world? He would be worse off than a Saxon yeoman suddenly dropped into 19th century London. And besides, how could anyone escape from these rooms? How can it benefit anyone if harm should happen to me? He thought of the tumble, the great social trouble of which he was so unaccountably the Axis. A text, irrelevant enough, and yet curiously insistent, came floating up out of the darkness of his memory. This also a council had said. It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people. End of Chapter 7 CHAPTER VIII. THE ROOF SPACES As the fans in the circular aperture of the inner room rotated, and permitted glimpses of the night, dim sounds drifted in thereby, and Graham, standing underneath, was startled by the sound of a voice. He peered up and saw in the intervals of the rotation, dark and dim, the face and shoulders of a man regarding him. Then a dark hand was extended, the swift veins struck it, swung round and beat on with a little brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to fall there from upon the floor, dripping silently. Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked up again in a strange excitement, the figure had gone. He remained motionless, his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness. He became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air, that came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him. Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He saw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering, then a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the veins stopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room and vanished before they touched the floor. Don't be afraid, said a voice. Graham stood under the vein. Who are you? he whispered. For a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. His face appeared nearly inverted to Graham. His dark hair was wet, with dissolving flakes of snow upon it. His arm went up into the darkness holding something unseen. He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his forehead were swollen. He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his position. For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke. You were the sleeper? said the stranger at last. Yes, said Graham, what do you want with me? I come from Ostrog, Sire. Ostrog? The man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was toward Graham. He appeared to be listening. Suddenly there was a hasty exclamation and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the sweep of the released fan, and when Graham peered up there was nothing visible but the slowly falling snow. It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator, but at last came the same metallic interference again. The fan stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time in the same place alert and tremulously excited. Who are you? What do you want? he said. We want to speak to you, Sire, said the intruder. We want—I can't hold the thing—we've been trying to find—we've been trying to find a way to you these three days. Is it rescue? whispered Graham. Escape? Yes, Sire, if you will. You are my party, the party of the sleeper? Yes, Sire. What am I to do? said Graham. There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared and his hand was bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. Stand away from me, he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and one shoulder at Graham's feet. The released ventilator whirled noisily. The stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to bruise shoulder, with his bright eyes on Graham. You are indeed the sleeper, he said. I saw you asleep. When it was the law that anyone might see you. I am the man who was in the trance, said Graham. They've imprisoned me here. I've been here since I awoke, at least three days. The intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly at the door, and suddenly left Graham and ran towards it, shouting quick incoherent words. A bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and he began to tap-tap a quick succession of blows upon the hinges. Mind! cried a voice. Oh! the voice came from above. Graham glanced up, saw the soles of two feet, ducked, was struck on the shoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. He fell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. He knelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him. I did not see you, Sire, panted the man. He rose and assisted Graham to rise. Are you hurt, Sire? He panted. A succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began. Something fell close to Graham's face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay flat upon the floor. What is this? cried Graham, confused, and looking at the ventilator. Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing. Stand back, said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily. We want you to come, Sire, panted the newcomer, and Graham glancing at his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood started there from. Your people call for you. Come where? My people? To the hall, about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have spies. We learned, but just in time. The council has decided this very day, either to drug or kill you, and everything is ready. The people are drilled. The wind vane police, the engineers, and half the wageeers are with us. We have the halls crowded, shouting. The whole city shouts against the council. We have arms. He wiped the blood with his hand. Your life here is not worth—but why arms? The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What? He turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves and move as if to hide behind the opening door. As he did so, Howard appeared, a little tray in one hand, and his heavy face downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the tray tilted sideways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. He went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell a thwart the floor of the outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for a moment, rose and returned to his work at the door. Your poison! said a voice in Graham's ear. Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights had been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly snow whirling above it, and dark figures moving hastily. Three knelt on the vein, some dim thing, a ladder, was being lowered through the opening, and a hand appeared, holding a fitful yellow light. He had a moment of hesitation, but the manner of these men, their swift alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the Council, with his idea in hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment. And his people awaited him. I do not understand, he said. I trust. Tell me what to do. The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm. Clammer up the ladder, he whispered. Quick! they will have heard. Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the lower rung, and turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest man, the yellow flicker of the light, the first comeer astride over Howard, and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor, and helped up, helped by those above. And then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel. He shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Half a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and face and melted. For a moment it was dark. Then for a flash, a ghastly violet white, and then everything was dark again. He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets, and open spaces of Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying a-thwarted in every direction. The circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. Some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow-eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent specter in the night, and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks. All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood about him. Someone threw a thick, soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward. Before his mind was yet clear, a dark shape gripped his arm. This way, said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Graham across the flat roof in the direction of a dim, semi-circular haze of light. Graham obeyed. Mind! said a voice as Graham stumbled across a cable. Between them and not across them, said the voice, and we must hurry. Where are the people? said Graham. The people you said awaited me. The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew narrower and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a minute he found himself running. Are the others coming? he panted, but received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on. They came to a sort of pathway of open metalwork, transversed to the direction they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. Graham looked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others. Come on! said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill spinning high in the air. Stoop! said Graham's guide, and they avoided an endless band running, roaring up to the shaft of the vein. This way! And they were ankle-deep in a gutter full of drifted, thawing snow between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. I will go first, said the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed. Then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the side once, and the gulf was black. For a moment he regretted his flight. He dared not look again, and his brain spun as he waded through the half-liquid snow. Then out of the gutter they clamored, and hurried across a wide, flat space, damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstable-looking substance, but his guide ran on unheating, and so they came to and clamored up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass. Round this they went, far below a number of people seemed to be dancing, and music filtered through the dome. Graham fancied. He heard a shouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new spurt of haste. They clamored panting to a space of huge windmills. One so vast that only the lower edge of its veins came rushing into sight and rushed up again, and was lost in the night in the snow. They hurried for a time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and came at last above a place of moving platforms like the place into which Graham had looked from the balcony. They crawled across the sloping transparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on hands and knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall. For the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon it all. For a while, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way to vertigo, and lay spread eagled on the glass, sick and paralyzed. Far below, mere stirring specks and dots went the people of the unsleeping city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now, to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he could not move. Come on! cried his guide with terror in his voice. Come on! Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort. Over the ridge, following his guide's example, he turned about and slid backward down the opposite slope very swiftly amid a little avalanche of snow. While he was sliding, he thought of what would happen if some unbroken gap should come in his way. At the edge, he stumbled to his feet, ankle deep in a slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was already clamoring up a metal screen to a level expanse. Through the spare snowflakes above this, loomed another line of vast windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels was pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling of extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every point of the compass. They've missed us already, cried Graham's guide in an accent of terror, and suddenly with a blinding flash the night became day. Above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared vast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in inimitable vistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate, the snowfall, they glared. Get on this! cried Graham's conductor, and thrust him forward to a long grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly sloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham's benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it. Come on! shouted his guide ten yards off, and without waiting ran swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the next range of wind-wheels. Graham, recovering from his astonishment, followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture. In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and vanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge support. In another moment Graham was beside him. They cowered, panting, and stared out. The scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow had now almost ceased, only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture, but the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes, and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast, as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves, steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze. Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution passed upward and downward into the black, and with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible alpine snow field. They will be chasing us, cried the leader. We're scarcely halfway there yet, cold as it is, we must hide here for a space, at least until it snows more thickly again. His teeth chattered in his head. Where are the markets? asked Graham, staring out. Where are all the people? The other made no answer. Look! whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still. The snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something vague and large and very swift. It came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide wings extended, and a trail of white, condensing steam behind it, rose with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide curve and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow. And through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him as it seemed to him, with field classes. For a second they were clear, then hazy, through a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone. Now, cried his companion, come! He pulled Graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of ironwork beneath the wind-wheels. Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It extended as far as he could see, right and left. It seemed to cut off their progress in either direction. Do as I do, whispered his guide. He laid down and crawled to the edge, thrust his head over, and twisted until one leg hung. He seemed to feel for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the gulf. His head reappeared. It is a ledge, he whispered, in the dark, all the way along. Do as I did. Graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and peered into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courage neither to go on nor retreat. Then he sat, and hung his leg down, felt his guide's hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding over the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a slushy gutter, impenetrably dark. This way, whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion, and a little while he ceased to feel his hands and feet. The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that there were now many feet below the edge of the buildings, rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of blind, drawn windows, rows above them. They came to the end of a cable, fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible, and dropping into impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against his guides. Still, whispered the latter, very softly. He looked up with a start, and saw the huge wings of the flying machine gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead to thwart the broad band of snowflaked gray-blue sky. In a moment it was hidden again. Keep still! They were just turning. For a while both were motionless. Then Graham's companion stood up, and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable, fumbled with some indistinct tackle. What is that? asked Graham. The only answer was a faint cry. The man crouched motionless. Graham peered and saw his face dimly. He was staring down the long ribbon of sky, and Graham, following his eyes, saw the flying machine small and faint and remote. Then he saw that the wings spread on either side, that it headed towards them, that every moment it grew larger. It was following the edge of the chasm towards them. The man's movements became convulsive. He thrust two crossbars into Graham's hand. Graham could not see them. He ascertained their form by feeling. They were slung by thin cords to the cable. On the cord were hand grips of some soft elastic substance. Put the cross between your legs, whispered the guide hysterically, and gripped the hold vests. Grip tightly. Grip! Graham did as he was told. Jump! said the voice in Heaven's name. Jump! For one momentous second Graham could not speak. He was glad afterwards that darkness hid his face. He said nothing. He began to tremble violently. He looked sideways at the swift shadow that swallowed up the sky as it rushed upon him. Jump! Jump in God's name or they will have us! cried Graham's guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward. Graham tottered convulsively, gave a sobbing cry, a cry in spite of himself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forward into the pit of that darkness seated on the crosswood and holding the ropes with the clutch of death. Something cracked, something wrapped smartly against a wall. He heard the pulley of the cradle hum on its rope. He heard the aeronauts shout. He felt a pair of knees digging into his back. He was sweeping headlong through the air, falling through the air. All his strength was in his hands. He would have screamed, but he had no breath. He shot into a blinding light that made him grip the tighter. He recognized the great passage with the running ways, the hanging lights and interlacing girders. They rushed upward and by him. He had a momentary impression of a great round mouth yawning to swallow him up. He was in the dark again. Falling. Falling, gripping with aching hands and behold, a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. The people. His people. A proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. He felt he was travelling slower and suddenly very much slower. He distinguished shouts of, SAVED! THE MASTER! HE'S SAFE! The stage rushed up toward him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. Then he heard the man clanging behind him shout as if suddenly terrified, and this shout was echoed by a shout from below. He felt that he was no longer gliding along the cable but falling with it. There was a tumult of yells, screams, and cries. He felt something soft against his extended hand and the impact of a broken fall quivering through his arm. He wanted to be still, and the people were lifting him. He believed afterwards he was carried to the platform and given some drink, but he was never sure. He did not notice what became of his guide. When his mind was clear again he was on his feet. Eager hands were assisting him to stand. He was in a big alcove occupying the position that in his previous experience had been devoted to the lower boxes, if this was indeed a theatre. A mighty tumult was in his ears. A thunderous roar. The shouting of a countless multitude. It is the sleeper. The sleeper is with us. The sleeper is with us. The master. The owner. The master is with us. He is safe. Graham had a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. He saw no individuals. He was conscious of a froth of pink faces of waving arms and garments. He felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. There were balconies, galleries, great archways given, remote perspectives and everywhere. People. A vast arena of people densely packed and cheering. Across the nearest space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. It had been cut by the men of the flying machine at its upper end and had crumpled down into the hall. Men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. But the whole effect was vague. The very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of the voices. He stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. Someone supported him by one arm. Let me go into a little room, he said, weeping. A little room. And could say no more. A man in black stepped forward, took his disengaged arm. He was aware of a vicious man opening a door before him. Someone guided him to a seat. He staggered. He sat down heavily and covered his face with his hands. He was trembling violently. His nervous control was at an end. He was relieved of his cloak. He could not remember how. His purple hose he saw were black with wet. People were running about him. Things were happening, but for some time he gave no heed to them. He had escaped. A myriad of cries told him that. He was safe. These were the people who were on his side. For a space he sobbed for breath and then he sat still with his face covered. The air was full of the shouting of innumerable men. End of Chapter 8 Recording by Ryan Sutter RyanSutter.net Chapter 9 of The Sleeper Awakes This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ryan Sutter The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells Chapter 9 The People March He became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon his attention, looked up, and discovered this was a dark young man in a yellow garment. He took the dose forthwith, and in a moment he was glowing. A tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder and pointed to the half-open door into the hall. This man was shouting close to his ear, and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the great theatre. Behind the man was a girl in a silvery-gray robe, whom Graham, even in this confusion, perceived to be beautiful. Her dark eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, were fixed on him. Her lips trembled apart. A partially open door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall, and admitted a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping, and shouting that died away and began again, and rose to a thunderous pitch, and so continued intermittently all the time that Graham remained in the little room. He watched the lips of the man in black, and gathered that he was making some explanation. He stared stupidly for some moments at these things, and then stood up abruptly. He grasped the arm of this shouting person. Tell me, he cried, who am I? Who am I? The others came nearer to hear his words. Who am I? His eyes searched their faces. They have told him nothing, cried the girl. Tell me, tell me, cried Graham. You are the master of the earth. You are owner of the world. He did not believe he heard a right. He resisted the persuasion. He pretended not to understand, not to hear. He lifted his voice again. I've been awake three days, a prisoner, three days. I judge there's some struggle between a number of people in this city. It is London. Yes, said the younger man. And those who meet in the Great Hall with the White Atlas, how does it concern me? In some way it has to do with me. Why, I don't know. Drugs? It seems to me that while I've slept the world has gone mad. I have gone mad. Who are these counsellors under the Atlas? Why should they try to drug me? To keep you insensible, said the man in yellow, to prevent your interference. But why? Because you are the Atlas sire, said the man in yellow. The world is on your shoulders. They rule it in your name. The sounds from the hall had died into a silence, threaded by one monotonous voice. Now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer, crowded on cheer, voices, hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted, the people in the little room could not hear each other's shout. Graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard. The council? He repeated blankly, and then snatched at a name that had struck him. But who is Ostrug, he said? He's the organiser, the organiser of the revolt, our leader in your name. In my name? And you? Why is he not here? He has deputed us. I am his brother, his half-brother, Lincoln. He wants you to show yourself to these people, and then come on to him. That is why he has sent. He's at the wind-vane offices directing. The people are marching. In your name? shouted the younger man. They have ruled, crushed, tyrannized, at last even. In my name? My name? Master? The young man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder. Indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy mustache. No one expected you to wake! No one expected you to wake! They were cunning! Damn tyrants! But they were taken by surprise! They did not know whether to drug you, hypnotize you, kill you! Again, the hall dominated everything. Ostrog is at the wind-vane offices, ready. Even now there's a rumor of fighting beginning. The man who had called himself Lincoln came close to him. Ostrog has it planned. Trust him. We have our organizations ready. We shall seize the flying stages, even now he may be doing that. Then, this public theater, bald the man in yellow, it's only a contingent. We have five myriads of drilled men. We have arms, cried Lincoln. We have plans. A leader. Their police have gone from the streets and are masked in the inaudible. It is now or never. The council is rocking. They cannot trust even their drilled men. Hear the people calling to you! Graham's mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds. Now dark and hopeless, now clear and ghastly. He was master of the earth. He was a man sodden with thawing snow. Of all his fluctuating impressions, the dominant ones presented an antagonism. On the one hand was the White Council. Powerful, disciplined, few. The White Council, from which he had just escaped. And on the other hand, monstrous crowds, packed masses of indistinguishable people, clamoring his name, hailing him master. The other side had imprisoned him, debated his death. These shouting thousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him. But why these things should be so? He could not understand. The door opened. Lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned. And a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. These intruders came towards him and Lincoln, gesticulating. The voices without explained their soundless lips. Show us the sleeper! Show us the sleeper! was the burden of the uproar. Men were bawling for order! Silence! Graham glanced towards the open doorway, saw a tall, oblong picture of the hall beyond. A waving, incessant confusion of crowded, shouting faces, men and women together, waving pale blue garments, extended hands. Many were standing, one man in rags of dark brown, a gaunt figure, stood on the seat and waved a black cloth. He met the wonder and expectation of the girl's eyes. What did these people expect from him? He was dimly aware that the tumult outside had changed its character, was in some way beating, marching. His own mind, too, changed. For a space he did not recognize the influence that was transforming him, but a moment that was near to panic passed. He tried to make audible inquiries of what was required of him. Lincoln was shouting in his ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others saved the woman, gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song. The voices were gathered together and up-born by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music of an organ, a woven texture of sounds full of trumpets, full of flaunting banners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war, and the feet of the people were beating time. Tramp! Tramp! He was urged towards the door. He obeyed mechanically. The strength of that chant took hold of him, stirred him, emboldened him. The hall opened to him, a vast welter of fluttering colors swaying to the music. Wave your arm to them, said Lincoln, wave your arm to them. This, said a voice on the other side, he must have this. Arms were about his neck detaining him in the doorway, and a black, subtly folded mantle hung from his shoulders. He threw his arm free of this and followed Lincoln. He perceived the girl in gray close to him, her face lit, her gesture onward. For the instant she became to him flushed and eager as she was, an embodiment of the song. He emerged in the alcove again. Incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon his appearing and flashed up into a foam of shouting. Guided by Lincoln's hand, he marched obliquely across the center of the stage facing the people. The hall was a vast and intricate space. Galleries, balconies, broad spaces of amphitheatral steps, and great archways. Far away, high up, seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity. The whole multitude was swaying in congested masses. Individual figures sprang out of the tumult, impressed him momentarily, and lost definition again. Close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman, carried by three men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. Next to this group, an old, care-worn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, a great cavity of toothless mouth, a voice called, with enigmatical word, Ostrog. All his impressions were vague, saved the massive emotion of that trampling song. The multitude were beating time with their feet, marking time. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The great weapons waved, flashed and slanted. Then he saw those nearest to him on a level space before the stage were marching in front of him, passing towards a great archway, shouting, To the council! Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. He raised his arm, and the roaring was redoubled. He remembered he had to shout, March! His mouth shaped in audible, heroic words. He waved his arm again and pointed to the archway, shouting, Onward! They were no longer marking time. They were marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. In that host were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering, robed, bare-armed women, girls, men and women of the new age, rich robes, gray rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue. A monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. He perceived a blue-clad negro, a shriveled woman in yellow, then a group of tall, fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. He noted to China men, a tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth, white-clad from top to toe, clamored up towards the platform, shouting loyally, and sprang down again and receded looking backward. Heads, shoulders, hands, clutching weapons all were swinging with those marching cadences. Faces came out of the confusion to him, as he stood there. Faces, and past, and vanished. Men gesticulated to him, shouted in audible personal things. Most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastly white, and disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean. Men and women of the new age, strange and incredible meeting, as the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! The unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages. Men and women mingled in the ranks. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! His brain was tramping. The garments waved onward. The faces poured by more abundantly. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! At Lincoln's pressure, he turned toward the archway, walking unconsciously in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture and song, all moved in that direction. The flow of people smote downward until the upturned faces were below the level of his feet. He was aware of a path before him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and Lincoln on his right hand. Attendance intervened, and ever and again blotted out the sight of the multitude to the left. Before him went the backs of the guards in black, he was marching along a little railed way and crossed above the archway with the torrent dipping to flow beneath and shouting up at him. He did not know whether he went. He did not want to know. He glanced back across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! End of Chapter 9 Recording by Ryan Sutter RyanSutter.net Chapter 10 Of the Sleeper Awakes This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells Chapter 10 The Battle of the Darkness He was no longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traverse the city. Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of the moving ways below was the congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped down, it seemed, and hid the swarming bareheads. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp! The song roared up to Graham now, no longer up-born by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwoven with the thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways. Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on the opposite side of the way seemed deserted. The cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind that these also should have swarmed with people. He felt a curious emotion, throbbing very fast. He stopped again. The guards before him marched on, those about him stopped as he did. He saw anxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had something to do with the lights. He too looked up. At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply. An isolated phenomenon, a huge globe of blinding whiteness, was as it were clutched, compressed an assistol that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again, assistol, like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, and rapid alternation. Graham became aware that this strange behavior of the lights had to do with the people below. The appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vivid lights and leaping shadows. The pursuit of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing with steady swiftness to leap suddenly back and return reinforced. The song and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested. There were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of the lights. Voices were crying together one thing, the lights cried these voices, the lights. The airy of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes became purple white, purple with a reddish glow, flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light and extinction, ceased to flicker, and became mere fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenly swallowed up the stirring myriads of men. He felt invisible forms about him, his arms were gripped, something wrapped sharply against his shin, a voice bawled in his ear, it's all right, all right. Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. He struck his forehead against Lincoln's and bawled, what is this darkness? The council has cut the currents that light the city, we must wait, stop, the people will go on, they will, his voice was drowned, the sleeper, take care of the sleeper. A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing as it seemed louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments of recognizable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him as his mind reached out to grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. There was suddenly a succession of embarrassing screams close beneath them. A voice bawled in his ear, the red police, and receded forthwith beyond his questions. A crackling sound grew to distinctness and therewith a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men armed with weapons like those of his guards leap into an instance dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle to flash with little instantaneous and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain. A glare of light dazzled his eyes. A vast seething expanse of struggling men confused his mind. A shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. He looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung far overhead from the upper part of a cable holding by a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness back. Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of red a little way along the vista caught his eye. Now it was a dense mass of red clad men jammed on the higher further way their backs against the pitiless cliff of building and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed and rose and fell. Heads vanished at the edge of the contest and other heads replaced them. The little flashes from the green weapons became little jets of smoky gray while the light lasted. Abruptly the flame was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness once more. A tumultuous mystery he felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along the gallery. Someone was shouting. It might be at him. He was too confused to hear. He was thrust against the wall and a number of people blundered past him. It seemed to him that his guards were struggling with one another. Suddenly the cable hung star holder appeared again and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The band of red coats seemed broader and nearer. Its apex was halfway down the ways and raising his eyes Graham saw that a number of these men had also appeared now in the darkened lower galleries of the opposite building and were firing over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning of these things dawned upon him. The march of the people had come upon an ambush at the very outset. Thrown into confusion by the extension of the lights they were now being attacked by the red police. Then he became aware that he were along the gallery in the direction along which he had come before the darkness fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly running back towards him. A great shouting came from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red clad men and they were pointing over to him and shouting, the sleeper, save the sleeper, shouted a multitude of throats. Something struck the wall above at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him, felt his arm gripped, then pat pat he had been missed twice. For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden, everything was hidden as he looked. The second flare had burned out. Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery. Before the next light he cried. His taste was contagious. Graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis and credulous astonishment. He became for a time the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was his one desire to escape his perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare came close on its predecessors. With it came a great shouting across the ways and answering tumult from the ways. The police's turned towards him and they shouted. The white facade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the council attempting to recapture him. Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking was crowding and bawling and firing at him. Down went one of his guards before him and Graham, unable to stop, leapt the writhing body. In another second he had plunged unhurt into a black passage and incontinently someone coming it may be in a traversed direction blundered violently into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He reeled and was struck again and came against a wall with his hands. He was down and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe. His ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation and then the whole mass of people moving together bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. The sleeper! But he was too confused to speak. He heard the green weapons crackling. For a space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrust and pressed back and writhed in the pressure, kicked presently against the step and found himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces all about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly white and astonished, terrified, and faced a young man's was very near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time it was but a passing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back to him in his dreams. For this young man wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot and was already dead. A fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Graham that he was in the lower area of the great theater. This time the picture was livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through the people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theater, surrounded in a rough, was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him separated by a barrier sloped the now vacant seats of the theater. A sudden idea came to him and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came to an end. In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his movements but made him conspicuous and had slipped it from his shoulders. He heard someone trip in its other side. Then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to vivid light again. The uproar surged louder and the glare of the fifth white and the whirring rattle of weapons struggled up and was knocked back again. Perceived that a number of black badged men were all about him firing at the reds below leaping from sea to sea crouching among the seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats as stray shots ripped pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames. Instinctively he marked the ground. A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. Hello! he said with his feet flying within six inches of the crouching sleeper's face. He stared without any sign of recognition turned to fire fired and shouting to hell with the council was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. He began to slant forward his knees bent. Man and darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ran for his life until a step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet turned up the gangway and ran on. When the six-star glared he was already close to the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the swifter for the light entered the passage and turned a corner into absolute darkness. He found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one thought now was their thought also to escape out of this fighting. He thrust and struck staggered ran was wedged tightly lost ground and then was clear again. For some minutes he was running through the darkness along a winding passage and then he crossed some wide and open passage. The guards are coming the guards are coming they're firing get out of the fighting the guards are firing it will be safe in seventh way along here to seventh way there were women and children in the crowd as well as men. The crowd converged on an archway passed through a short throat and emerged on a wider space again lit dimly. The black figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic gap that he was no longer in a crowd. He stopped near the highest step before him on that level were groups of seats and a little kiosk. He went up to this and stopping in the shadow of its eaves looked about him panting. Everything was vague and gray but he recognized that these great steps were a series of platforms of the ways now motionless again. The platforms slanted up on the screen and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by from their shouts and voices it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows. From very far away down the street he could hear the sound of a struggle but it was evident to him that this was not the street into which the theater opened that former fight it him. For a space he was like a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid book and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestionably. At that time he had little mind for details and the whole effect was a huge astonishment. Oddly enough while the flight from the council prison the great crowd in the hall and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind and his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at Pintarjun quivering in the wind and all the somber splendors of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality and then the gap filled and he began to comprehend his position. It was no longer absolutely a riddle as it had been in the silent rooms at least he had the strange bear outline now. The one hand was the council with its red police set resolutely it seemed on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder on the other the revolution that had liberated him with this unseen awestruck as its leader and the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle frantic development of his world I do not understand he cried I do not understand he had slipped out between the contending parties that was happening he figured the red clad men as busily hunting him driving the black badge revolutionist before them at any rate chance had given him a breathing space he could lurk unchallenged by the passersby and watch the course of things his eyes followed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful that above there the sun he had recovered his breath his clothing had already dried upon him from the snow he wandered for miles along these twilight ways speaking to no one accosted by no one a dark figure among dark figures the coveted man out of the past the inestimal unintentional owner of the world wherever there were lights or dense crowds or exceptional excitement he was afraid of recognition and watched and turned back or went up and down the stairs at a lower or higher level and though he came on no more fighting the whole city stirred with battle once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of men that swept the street everyone abroad seemed involved for the most part they were men and they carried what he judged were weapons it seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came ever and again a little bit of confusion and his curiosity struggled together but his caution prevailed and he continued wandering away from the fighting so far as he could judge he went unmolested unsuspected through the dark after a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle fewer and fewer people passed him until at last the streets became deserted the frontages of the buildings grew plain and harsh he became aware of a growing fatigue at times he would turn aside and sit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways but a feverish restlessness the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle would not let him rest in any place for long was the struggle on his behalf alone and then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake a roaring and thundering a mighty wind of mass the slip and thud of falling masonry a series of gigantic concussions a mass of glass and iron work fell from the remote roofs into the middle gallery not a hundred yards away from him and in the distance were shouts and running he too was startled into an aimless activity and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back a man came running towards him his self-control returned what have they blown up asked the man breathlessly the program could speak he had hurried on the great buildings rose dimly veiled by a perplexing twilight albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day he noted many strange features understanding none at the time he even spelt out many of the inscriptions and phonetic lettering but what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd looking letters resolving itself after painful strain of eye Grotesque thought that all these cliff-like houses were his. The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as Romancers have imagined again and again, and that fact realized he had been prepared. His mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle, and no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. Long were through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. Would he, after all, be killed before he saw? It might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him. He became fearful of corners. It seemed to him that there was safety in concealment. Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned? At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there. He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone. Suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream. It must be a dream. It was so inconsecutive, so reasonless. Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this saner world regard him as owner and master? So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half-hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see perhaps the little harbour of boss-castle about him, the cliffs of Pentargin, or the bedroom of his home. But fact takes no heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a black banner tramped a thwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face. It is no dream, he said, no dream, and he bowed his face upon his hands. Reaper Awakes by H. G. Wells Chapter 11 The Old Man Who Knew Everything He was startled by a cough close at hand. He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure. "'Have you any news?' asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man. Graham hesitated. "'None,' he said. "'I stay here till the lights come again,' said the old man. "'These blue scoundrels are everywhere, everywhere!' Graham's answer was inarticulate assent. He tried to see the old man, but the darkness hid his face. He wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin. "'Dark and damnable,' said the old man suddenly. "'Dark and damnable! Turned out of my room among all these dangers!' "'That's hard,' ventured Graham. "'That's hard on you!' "'Darkness! An old man lost in darkness! And all the world gone mad! War and fighting! The police beaten and rogues abroad! Why don't they bring some Negroes to protect us? No more dark passages for me. I fell over a dead man.' "'You're safer with company,' said the old man. "'If it's company of the right sort,' and peered frankly. He rose suddenly and came towards Graham. Apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. The old man sat down, as if relieved, to be no longer alone. "'Hey,' he said, "'but this is a terrible time. War and fighting, and the dead lying there. Men, strong men, dying in the dark. Sons, I have three sons. God knows where they are to-night!' The voice ceased. Then repeated, quavering, "'God knows where they are to-night!' Graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance. Again the old man's voice ended the pause. "'This ostrog will win,' he said. "'He will win, and what the world will be like under him no one can tell. My sons are under the wind veins, all three. One of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a while, his mistress. We are not common people. Though they sent me to wander to-night and take my chance, I knew what was going on before most people. But this darkness, and to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!' His wheezing breathing could be heard. "'Ostrog,' said Graham, "'the greatest boss the world has ever seen,' said the voice. Graham ransacked his mind. The council has few friends among the people,' he hazarded. "'Few friends, and poor ones at that. They've had their time, eh? They should have kept to the clever ones. But twice they held election, and ostrog. And now it has burst out, and nothing can stay it. Nothing can stay it. Twice they rejected ostrog, ostrog the boss. I heard of his rages at the time. He was terrible. Heaven save them! For nothing on earth can. Now he has raised the labour-companies upon them. No one else would have dared. Oh, the blue canvas, armed and marching! He will go through with it. He will go through!' He was silent for a little while. "'This sleeper,' he said, and stopped. "'Yes,' said Graham, well. The senile voice sank to a confidential whisper. The dim pale face came close. "'The real sleeper?' "'Yes,' said Graham. "'Died years ago.' "'What?' said Graham sharply. "'Years ago. Died years ago.' "'You don't say so,' said Graham. "'I do. I do say so. He died. "'This sleeper who's woke up. They changed in the night. A poor, drugged, insensible creature. But I mustn't tell all I know. For a little while he muttered inaudibly. His secret was too much for him. "'I don't know the ones that put him to sleep. That was before my time. But I know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again. It was ten to one, wake or kill, wake or kill!' Ostrog's way. Graham was so astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he had heard. And his awakening had not been natural. Was that an old man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed a while and spat, and then the piping reminiscent voice resumed. The first time they rejected him. I followed it all. Rejected whom, said Graham, the sleeper? Sleeper? No, Ostrog. He was terrible, terrible. And he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. Fools they were, not to be more afraid of him. Now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it, dust ground upon it. Until he set to work, the workers cut each other's throats, and murdered a Chinaman or a labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. Dead bodies, robbing, darkness. Such a thing hasn't been this gross of years, eh? But this ill on small folks, when the great fall out, it's ill. Did you say there had not been what for a gross of years? Hey! said the old man. The old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat this a third time. Fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools bawling freedom and the like, said the old man. Not in all my life has there been that. These are like the old days, for sure, when the Paris people broke out, three gross of years ago. That's what I mean, has it been? But it's the world's way. It had to come back. I know, I know. This five years Ostrog has been working, and there has been trouble, and trouble, and hunger, and threats, and high talk, and arms. No canvas and murmurs. No one's safe. Everything sliding and slipping. And now here we are, revolt and fighting, and the Council come to its end. You are rather well informed on these things, said Graham. I know what I hear. It isn't all babble machine with me. No, said Graham, wondering what babble machine might be. And are you certain, this Ostrog? You are certain Ostrog organized this rebellion, and arranged for the waking of the sleeper, just to assert himself, because he was not elected to the Council? Everyone knows that, I should think, said the old man, except just fools. He meant to be master somehow, in the Council or not. Everyone who knows anything knows that. And here we are with dead bodies lying in the dark. Why, where have you been if you haven't heard all about the trouble between Ostrog and the Verneys? And what do you think the troubles are about? The sleeper? Hey! You think the sleeper's real and woke of his own accord? Hey! I'm a dull man, older than I'd look, and forgetful, said Graham. Lots of things that have happened, especially of late years. If I was the sleeper, to tell you the truth, I couldn't know less about them. Hey! said the voice. Hold, are you? You don't sound very old, but it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life, truly. But these notorious things. But you're not so old as me, not nearly so old as me. Well, I ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. I'm young, for so old a man. Maybe you're old, for so young. That's it, said Graham. And I've a queer history. I know very little. And history, practically I know no history. The sleeper and Julius Caesar are all the same to me. It's interesting to hear you talk of these things. I know a few things, said the old man. I know a thing or two. But, hark! The two men became silent, listening. There was a heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. The passer's by stopped, shouted to one another. The old man was full of questions. He shouted to a man who passed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. None knew what had happened. He returned to the seat and found the old man muttering vague interrogations in an undertone. For a while they said nothing to one another. The sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed Graham's imagination. Was this old man right? Was the report of the people right? And were the revolutionaries winning? Or were they all in error? And were the red guards driving all before them? At any time the flood of warfare might pour into this silent quarter of the city and seize upon him again. He behoved him to learn all he could while there was time. He turned suddenly to the old man with a question and left it unsaid. But his motion moved the old man to speech again. Hey, but how things work together, said the old man. This sleeper that all the fools put their trust in. I have the whole history of it. I was always a good one for histories. When I was a boy, I'm that old, I used to read printed books. You'd hardly think it. Likely you've seen none. They rot and dust so, and the sanitary company burns them to make ashlarite. But they were convenient in their dirty way. One learned a lot. These new fangled babble machines. They don't seem new-fangled to you, eh? They're easy to hear, easy to forget. But I've traced all the sleeper business from the first. You will scarcely believe it, said Graham slowly. I'm so ignorant. I've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs. My circumstances have been so odd. I know nothing of this sleeper's history. Who was he? Hey, said the old man. I know, I know. He was a poor nobody, and sat on a playful woman, poor soul. And he fell into a trance. There's the old things they had, those brown things, silver photographs, still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago, a gross and a half of years. Set on a playful woman, poor soul, said Graham softly to himself, and then allowed. Yes, well, go on. You must know he had a cousin named Warming, a solitary man without children, who made a big fortune speculating in Rhodes, the first Edomite Rhodes. But surely you've heard. No, why? He bought all the patent rights and made a big company. In those days they were grosses of grosses of separate businesses and business companies. Grosses of grosses. His Rhodes killed the railroads, the old things, in two dozen years. He bought them up and Edomited the tracks. And because he didn't want to break up his great property, or let in shareholders, he left it all to the sleeper, and put it under a board of trustees that he had picked and trained. He knew then the sleeper wouldn't wake, that he would go on sleeping, sleeping till he died. He knew that quite well. And plump, a man in the United States who had lost two sons in a boat accident, followed that up with another great bequest. His trustees found themselves with a dozen myriads of Lyonsworth or more of property at the very beginning. What was his name? Graham. No, I mean the Americans. Isbister. Isbister, cried Graham. Why, I don't even know the name. Of course not, said the old man. Of course not. People don't learn much in the schools nowadays. But I know all about him. He was a rich American who went from England and he left the sleeper even more than warming. How he made it? That I don't know. Something about pictures by machinery. But he made it and left it, and so the council had its start. It was just a council of trustees at first. And how did it grow? Hey, but you're not up to things. Money attracts money, and twelve brains are better than one. They played it cleverly. They worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. They grew, they grew. And for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the sleeper's estate under double names and company titles and all that. The council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper they bought. If you listen to the old stories you will see the council growing and growing. Billions and billions of lions at last. The sleeper's estate. And all growing out of a whim, out of this warming's will, and an accident to his best's sons. Men are strange, said the old man. The strange thing to me is how the council worked together so long, as many as twelve. They worked in cliques from the first, and they've slipped back. In my young days speaking of the council was like an ignorant man speaking of God. We didn't think they could do wrong. We didn't know of their women and all that. Or else I've got wiser. Men are strange, said the old man. Here are you, young and ignorant, and me, seventy years old, and I might reasonably before getting, explaining it all to you, short and clear. Seventy, he said. Seventy, and I hear and see, hear better than I see. And reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of things. Seventy. Life is strange. I was twenty before Usdrog was a baby. I remember him long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the Wind Veins control. I've seen many changes, eh? I've worn the blue. And at last I've come to see this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heaps on the ways. And all he is doing. All he is doing. His voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of Usdrog. Graham thought. Let me see, he said, if I have it right. He extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. The sleeper has been asleep. Changed, said the old man. Perhaps. And meanwhile the sleeper's property grew in the hands of twelve trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of the world. The twelve trustees, by virtue of this property, have become masters of the world, because they are the paying power, just as the old English parliament used to be. Hey! said the old man. That's so. That's a good comparison. You're not so. And now this Usdrog has suddenly revolutionized the world by waking the sleeper, whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt would wake again, raising the sleeper to claim his property from the council after all these years. The old man endorsed the statement with a cough. It's strange, he said, to meet a man who learns these things for the first time tonight. I said, Graham, it's strange. Have you ever been in a pleasure city? said the old man. Oh, my life, I've longed. He laughed. Even now, he said, I could enjoy a little fun, enjoy seeing things anyhow. He mumbled a sentence Graham did not understand. The sleeper, when did he awake? said Graham suddenly. Three days ago. Where is he? Usdrog has him. He escaped from the council not four hours ago. My dear sir, where were you at the time? He was in the hall of the markets, where the fighting has been. All the city was screaming about it. All the babble machines. Everywhere it was shouted. Even the fools who speak for the council were admitting it. Everyone was rushing off to see him. Everyone was getting arms. Were you drunk or asleep? And even then. But you're joking. Surely you're pretending. It was to stop the shouting of the babble machines and prevent the people from gathering that they turned off the electricity and put this damn darkness upon us. Do you mean to say? I heard the sleeper was rescued, said Graham. But to come back a minute, are you sure Usdrog has him? He won't let him go, said the old man. And the sleeper, are you sure he's not genuine? I have never heard. So all fools think, so they think, as if there wasn't a thousand things that were never heard. I know Usdrog too well for that. Did I tell you, in a way, I'm a sort of relation of Usdrogs. A sort of relation, through my daughter-in-law. I suppose, well, I suppose there's no chance of this sleeper asserting himself. I suppose he's certain to be a puppet, in Usdrog's hands, or the council's, as soon as the struggle is over. In Usdrog's hands, certainly. Why shouldn't he be a puppet? Look at his position. Everything done for him, every pleasure possible. Why should he want to assert himself? What are these pleasure-cities, said Graham abruptly? The old man made him repeat the question. When at last he was assured of Graham's words, he nudged him violently. That's too much, said he. You're poking fun at an old man. I've been suspecting you know more than you pretend. Perhaps I do, said Graham. But no. Why should I go on acting? No, I do not know what a pleasure-city is. The old man laughed in an intimate way. What is more, I do not know how to read your letters. I do not know what money you use. I do not know what foreign countries there are. I do not know where I am. I cannot count. I do not know where to get food, nor drink, nor shelter. Come, come, said the old man. If you had a glass of drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye? I want you to tell me all these things. He, he, well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun. A withered hand caressed Graham's arm for a moment. Silk, well, well. But all the same. I wish I was the man who was put up as the sleeper. He'll have a fine time of it. All the pomp and pleasure. He's a queer-looking face. When they used to let anyone go to see him, I've got tickets and bin. The image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this substitute used to be yellow. But he'll get fed up. It's a queer world. Think of the luck of it. The luck of it. I expect he'll be sent to Capri. It's the best fun for a greener. His cough overtook him again. Then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. The luck of it, the luck of it. All my life I've been in London hoping to get my chance. But you don't know that the sleeper died, said Graham suddenly. The old man made him repeat his words. Man don't live beyond ten dozen. It's not in the order of things, said the old man. I'm not a fool. Fools may believe it, but not me. Graham became angry with the old man's assurance. Whether you're a fool or not, he said, it happens you are wrong about the sleeper. Hey! You are wrong about the sleeper. I haven't told you before, but I will tell you now. You are wrong about the sleeper. How do you know? I thought you didn't know anything, not even about pleasure cities. Graham paused. You don't know, said the old man. How are you to know? It's very few men. I am the sleeper. He had to repeat it. There was a brief pause. There's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll excuse me. It might get you into trouble at a time like this, said the old man. Graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion. I was saying I was the sleeper. That years and years ago I did, indeed, fall asleep in a little stone-built village in the days when there were hedgerows and villages and inns and all the countryside cut up into little pieces, little fields. Have you never heard of those days? And it is I, I who speak to you who awakened again these four days since. Four days since the sleeper, but they've got the sleeper. They have him and they won't let him go. Nonsense! You've been talking sensibly enough up to now. I can see it as though I was there. There will be Lincoln like a keeper just behind him. They won't let him go about alone. Trust them. You're a queer fellow, one of these funpokers. I see now why you've been clipping your words so oddly. But he stopped abruptly and Graham could see his gesture. As if Ostrog would let the sleeper run about alone. No, you're telling that to the wrong man altogether. Eh, as if I should believe. What's your game? And besides, we've been talking of the sleeper. Graham stood up. Listen, he said, I am the sleeper. You're an odd man, said the old man, to sit here in the dark talking clipped and telling a lie of that sort, but... Graham's exasperation fell to laughter. It is preposterous, he cried. Preposterous. The dream must end. It gets wilder and wilder. Here am I, in this damned twilight. I never knew a dream in twilight before. An anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that I am myself. And meanwhile, ug! He moved in gusty irritation and went striding. In a moment the old man was pursuing him. Hey, but don't go, cried the old man. I'm an old fool, I know. Don't go. Don't leave me in all this darkness. Graham hesitated, stopped. Suddenly the folly of telling his secret flashed into his mind. I didn't mean to offend you, disbelieving you, said the old man, coming near. It's no manner of harm. You call yourself the sleeper if it pleases you. That is a foolish trick. Graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way. For a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy cries receding. But at last the darkness swallowed him and Graham saw him no more.