The Sleeper Awakes

he whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into vi

he beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous

d deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were empty and sha

ore him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw anxiety and fear in

hings below. Each huge globe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a systole that was followed

ack and return reinforced. The song and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of "The lights!" Voices were crying together one thing. "The lights!" cried these voices. "The lights!" He looked down. In this dancing death of the lights the area of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. The huge white

pped. Something rapped sharply against his shin. A v

stonishment. He struck his forehead against L

at light the city. We must wait--sto

ld tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him

he red police," and receded f

ham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. Th

burst of cheering, came across the ways. He looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung far over

er 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, head

d and the ways were an inky darkne

ing--it might be at him. He was too confused to hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a numbe

below at the boiling confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning of these things dawned upon him. The march of the people had come upon an ambush at the very outset. Thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights they were now being attacked by the red police. Then he became aware that he was standing alone, that his guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in the direction a

and saw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near

street was hidden, everything was hidden, a

e of the uncertainty of the darkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare came close on its predecessors. With it came a great shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. The red

bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking t

fore him, and Graham, unable t

er, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. He heard shouts of "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. His foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under foot. He heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" but he was too confused to speak. He heard the green weapons crackling. For a space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrus

and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through the people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and st

d into the blackness on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected

him firing at the reds below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and

er the seats. "Hullo!" he said, with his flying fee

ed. A drop of moisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then he began to slant forward. His knees be

bsolute night again. He was knocked sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. Hi

nd came at last down a flight of steps to a level place. Many people were shouting, "They are coming! The guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of

in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.... He perceived that he was no longer in a crowd. He stopped near

the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pa

ent to him that this was not the street into which the theatre opened. That former fight,

ouncil prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memor

g to possess him. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated

ilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the red-clad m

ntricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was rising, and the world wa

e fighting, the whole city stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his caution and his curiosity st

ous benches of the upper ways. But a feverish restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication

e slip and thud of falling masonry--a series of gigantic concussions. A mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundr

at have they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was

g none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering. But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving i

d had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. And no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurit

Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned? At last he sat do

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

he little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home. But fact takes no heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a black banner tramped

, "no dream." And he bowe