The Sleeper Awakes

by H. G. Wells

  CHAPTER X

  THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS

  He was no longer in the hall. He was marching along a gallery overhangingone of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city.Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole concave of themoving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping tothe left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista,shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting asthey receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspectivedropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads. Tramp, tramp,tramp, tramp.

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

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

  He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast! He stopped again. Theguards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. He sawanxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had something to do withthe lights. He too looked up.

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

  Graham became aware that this strange behaviour of the lights had to dowith the people below. The appearance of the houses and ways, theappearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vividlights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude of shadows had sprung intoaggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growingwith steady swiftness--to leap suddenly back and return reinforced. Thesong and the tramping had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, wasarrested, 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 thearea of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. The hugewhite 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 vastobscurity. In ten seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there wasonly this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenlyswallowed up those glittering myriads of men.

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

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

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

  His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting, "Save the Sleeper. Take careof the Sleeper." A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by aninadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed and whirled abouthim, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment.Fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled awayfrom him as his mind reached out to grasp them. Voices seemed to beshouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. There were suddenly asuccession of piercing screams close beneath them.

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

  A crackling sound grew to distinctness, and therewith a leaping of faintflashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw theheads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of hisguards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began tocrackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, andabruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain.

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

  Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of red a little wayalong the vista caught his eye. He saw it was a dense mass of red-cladmen jammed on the higher further way, their backs against the pitilesscliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists.They were fighting. Weapons flashed and rose and fell, heads vanishedat the edge of the contest, and other heads replaced them, the littleflashes from the green weapons became little jets of smoky grey whilethe light lasted.

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

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

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

  Something struck the wall above his head. He looked up at the impact andsaw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felthis arm gripped. Then, pat, pat; he had been missed twice.

  For a moment he did not understand this. The street was hidden,everything was hidden, as he looked. The second flare had burned out.

  Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery."Before the next light!" he cried. His haste was contagious. Graham'sinstinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis of his incredulousastonishment. He became for a time the blind creature of the fear ofdeath. He ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness,blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. Haste was hisone desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. Athird glare came close on its predecessors. With it came a great shoutingacross the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. The red-coats below,he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. Their countless facesturned towards him, and they shouted. The white facade opposite wasdensely stippled with red. All these wonderful things concerned him,turned upon him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Councilattempting to recapture him.

  Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger fora hundred and fifty years. He heard bullets whacking over his head, felta splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without lookingthat the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, wascrowded and bawling and firing at him.

  Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop, leaptthe writhing body.

  In another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a black passage, andincontinently someone, coming, it may be, in a transverse direction,blundered vio
lently into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolutedarkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall withhis hands. He was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirledround, and thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He could notbreathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, andthen the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards thegreat theatre from which he had so recently come. There were moments whenhis feet did not touch the ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. Heheard shouts of "They are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. Hisfoot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream underfoot. 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 individualwill, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. He thrustand pressed back and writhed in the pressure, kicked presently against astep, and found himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces allabout him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished,terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare. One face, a young man's, wasvery near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time it was but apassing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back tohim in his dreams. For this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for atime, had been shot and was already dead.

  A fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. Itslight came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed Grahamthat he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed backacross the lower area of the great theatre. This time the picture waslivid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. He sawthat quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way throughthe people. He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked forLincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatresurrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up andstaring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himselfwas near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by abarrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden idea cameto him, and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. As he reachedit the glare came to an end.

  In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded hismovements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from hisshoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was scalingthe barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. Thenfeeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. In thedarkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voiceslulled. 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 tovivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the glare of the fifthwhite star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatre walls.

  He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting and the whirring rattleof weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceived that anumber of black-badged men were all about him firing at the reds below,leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload.Instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped thepneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames.Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the most plausibleway of escape for him so soon as the veil of darkness fell again.

  A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "Hullo!"he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouchingSleeper's face.

  He stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, andshouting, "To hell with the Council!" was about to fire again. Then itseemed to Graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A drop ofmoisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green weapon stopped half raised.For a moment the man stood still with his face suddenly expressionless,then he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and darkness felltogether. At the sound of his fall Graham rose up and ran for his lifeuntil a step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet,turned up the gangway and ran on.

  When the sixth star glared he was already close to the yawning throat ofa passage. He ran on the swifter for the light, entered the passage andturned a corner into absolute night again. He was knocked sideways,rolled over, and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a crowd ofinvisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one thought now wastheir 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 windingpassage, and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed down a longincline, and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place. Manypeople were shouting, "They are coming! The guards are coming. They arefiring. Get out of the fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safein Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!" There were women and childrenin the crowd as well as men.

  The crowd converged on an archway, passed through a short throat andemerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black figures about himspread out and ran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic seriesof steps. He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.... Heperceived that he was no longer in a crowd. He stopped near the higheststep. 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 abouthim panting.

  Everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great stepswere a series of platforms of the "ways," now motionless again. Theplatform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond,vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen,and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon ofpallid sky. A number of people hurried by. From their shouts and voices,it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting. Other less noisyfigures 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 thetheatre opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly dropped out ofsound and hearing. And they were fighting for him!

  For a space he was like a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid book,and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestionably. At that timehe had little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge astonishment.Oddly enough, while the flight from the Council prison, the great crowdin the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming peoplewere clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in hisawakening and to revive the meditative interval of the Silent Rooms. Atfirst his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade atPentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of thesunlit Cornish coast. The contrast touched everything with unreality. Andthen the gap filled, and he began to comprehend his position.

  It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the Silent Rooms.At least he had the strange, bare outline now. He was in some way theowner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possesshim. On the one hand was the Council, with its red police, setresolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps hismurder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with thisunseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole of this gigantic city wasconvulsed by their struggle. Frantic development of his world! "I do notunderstand," he cried. "I do not understand!"

  He had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty ofthe twilight. What would happen next? What was happening? He figured thered-clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black-badgedrevolutionists before them.

  At any rate chance had given him a breathing space. He could lurkunchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. His eyefollowed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and itcame to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun wasrising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light ofday. In a little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing hadalready dried upon him from the snow.

&nb
sp; 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 outof the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. Whereverthere were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he wasafraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down bythe middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower orhigher level. And though he came on no more fighting, the whole citystirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude ofmen that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the mostpart they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. Itseemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter ofthe city from which he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, theremote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his cautionand his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed, and hecontinued wandering away from the fighting--so far as he could judge. Hewent unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. After a time he ceased tohear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him,until at last the streets became deserted. The frontages of the buildingsgrew plain, and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacantwarehouses. Solitude crept upon him--his pace slackened.

  He became aware of a growing fatigue. At times he would turn aside andsit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways. But a feverishrestlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle,would not let him rest in any place for long. Was the struggle on hisbehalf alone?

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

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

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

  The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In actual fact hehad made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again.And that fact realised, he had been prepared. His mind had, as it were,seated itself for a spectacle. And no spectacle unfolded itself, but agreat vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness.Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. Wouldhe, after all, be killed before he saw? It might be that even at the nextcorner his destruction ambushed. A great desire to see, a great longingto know, arose in him.

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

  He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when he lookedagain he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerablealtitude of edifice gone. Suppose he were to discover the whole story ofthese last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darknessand 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 thepeople fighting for him? Why should this saner world regard him as Ownerand Master?

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

  "It is no dream," he said, "no dream." And he bowed his face uponhis hands.