The Sleeper Awakes

by H. G. Wells

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE UNDER-SIDE

  From the Business Quarter they presently passed by the running ways intoa remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures wasdone. On their way the platforms crossed the Thames twice, and passed ina broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city fromthe North. In both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid.The river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched bybuildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred withreceding lights. A string of black barges passed seaward, manned byblue-clad men. The road was a long and very broad and high tunnel, alongwhich big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. Here, too, thedistinctive blue of the Labour Department was in abundance. Thesmoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightness of thebig pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struck Grahammost vividly. One lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallicrods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested hisattention unduly. Abruptly the edge of the archway cut and blotted outthe picture.

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

  Many of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues of machinery,endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to the revolutionarydislocation, but wherever there was work it was being done by slow-movingworkers in blue canvas. The only people not in blue canvas were theoverlookers of the work-places and the orange-clad Labour Police. Andfresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary vigoursof the business quarter, Graham could note the pinched faces, the feeblemuscles, and weary eyes of many of the latter-day workers. Such as he sawat work were noticeably inferior in physique to the few gaily dressedmanagers and forewomen who were directing their labours. The burlylabourers of the old Victorian times had followed that dray horse and allsuch living force producers, to extinction; the place of his costlymuscles was taken by some dexterous machine. The latter-day labourer,male as well as female, was essentially a machine-minder and feeder, aservant and attendant, or an artist under direction.

  The women, in comparison with those Graham remembered, were as a classdistinctly plain and flat-chested. Two hundred years of emancipationfrom the moral restraints of Puritanical religion, two hundred years ofcity life, had done their work in eliminating the strain of femininebeauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. To be brilliantphysically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, hadbeen and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a lineof escape to the Pleasure City and its splendours and delights, and atlast to the Euthanasy and peace. To be steadfast against suchinducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. Inthe young cities of Graham's former life, the newly aggregated labouringmass had been a diverse multitude, still stirred by the tradition ofpersonal honour and a high morality; now it was differentiating into aninstinct class, with a moral and physical difference of its own--evenwith a dialect of its own.

  They penetrated downward, ever downward, towards the working places.Presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways,and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks ofwhite lights between the transverse slits. The factories that were notworking were sparsely lighted; to Graham they and their shrouded aislesof giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was goingon the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways.

  Beyond the blazing lakes of Eadhamite he came to the warren of thejewellers, and, with some difficulty and by using his signature, obtainedadmission to these galleries. They were high and dark, and rather cold.In the first a few men were making ornaments of gold filigree, each manat a little bench by himself, and with a little shaded light. The longvista of light patches, with the nimble fingers brightly lit and movingamong the gleaming yellow coils, and the intent face like the face of aghost, in each shadow, had the oddest effect.

  The work was beautifully executed, but without any strength of modellingor drawing, for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing of thechanges on a geometrical _motif_. These workers wore a peculiar whiteuniform without pockets or sleeves. They assumed this on coming to work,but at night they were stripped and examined before they left thepremises of the Department. In spite of every precaution, the Labourpoliceman told them in a depressed tone, the Department was notinfrequently robbed.

  Beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs ofartificial ruby, and next these were men and women working together uponthe slabs of copper net that formed the basis of _cloisonne_ tiles. Manyof these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a diseasecaused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion.Asano apologised to Graham for this offensive sight, but excused himselfon the score of the convenience of this route. "This is what I wanted tosee," said Graham; "this is what I wanted to see," trying to avoid astart at a particularly striking disfigurement.

  "She might have done better with herself than that," said Asano.

  Graham made some indignant comments.

  "But, Sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple,"said Asano. "In your days people could stand such crudities, they werenearer the barbaric by two hundred years."

  They continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonne_factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. Looking overthe parapet, Graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet moretremendous archings than any he had seen. Three barges, smothered infloury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar bya multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dust filledthe place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glare yellow. Thevague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their feet, and rushedto and fro against a long stretch of white-washed wall. Every now andthen one would stop to cough.

  A shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought toGraham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries andlifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. Themen worked in silence under the supervision of two of the Labour Police;their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went toand fro. And as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in thedarkness began to sing.

  "Stop that!" shouted one of the policemen, but the order was disobeyed,and first one and then all the white-stained men who were working therehad taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly--the Song of theRevolt. The feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the song,tramp, tramp, tramp. The policeman who had shouted glanced at his fellow,and Graham saw him shrug his shoulders. He made no further effort to stopthe singing.

  And so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing manypainful and grim things. That walk left on Graham's mind a maze ofmemories, fluctuating pictures of swathed halls, and crowded vaults seenthrough clouds of dust, of intricate machines, the racing threads oflooms, the heavy beat of stamping machinery, the roar and rattle of beltand armature, of ill-lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places,illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. Here was the smell of tanning,and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. Everywherewere pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as Graham had neverbefore seen, thick Titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneaththe vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millionswere crushed by its complexity. And everywhere were pale features, leanlimbs, disfigurement and degradation.

  Once and again, and
again a third time, Graham heard the song of therevolt during his long, unpleasant research in these places, and once hesaw a confused struggle down a passage, and learnt that a number of theseserfs had seized their bread before their work was done. Graham wasascending towards the ways again when he saw a number of blue-cladchildren running down a transverse passage, and presently perceived thereason of their panic in a company of the Labour Police armed with clubs,trotting towards some unknown disturbance. And then came a remotedisorder. But for the most part this remnant that worked, workedhopelessly. All the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above inthe streets that night, calling for the Master, and valiantly and noisilykeeping its arms.

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

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

  Asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at Graham'sface, and told him the thing he already knew. "But how can they know?"asked Asano.

  Graham heard someone shouting. "Stop all work. Stop all work," and aswarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping downthe platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "Thisis Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." His voicewas hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. Heyelled an unspeakable horror that the Black Police had done in Paris, andso passed shrieking, "Ostrog the Knave!"

  For a moment Graham stood still, for it had come upon him again thatthese things were a dream. He looked up at the great cliff of buildingson either side, vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights, anddown to the roaring tiers of platforms, and the shouting, running peoplewho were gesticulating past. "The Master is betrayed!" they cried. "TheMaster is betrayed!"

  Suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. Hisheart began to beat fast and strong.

  "It has come," he said. "I might have known. The hour has come."

  He thought swiftly. "What am I to do?"

  "Go back to the Council House," said Asano.

  "Why should I not appeal--? The people are here."

  "You will lose time. They will doubt if it is you. But they will massabout the Council House. There you will find their leaders. Your strengthis there--with them."

  "Suppose this is only a rumour?"

  "It sounds true," said Asano.

  "Let us have the facts," said Graham.

  Asano shrugged his shoulders. "We had better get towards the CouncilHouse," he cried. "That is where they will swarm. Even now the ruins maybe impassable."

  Graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him.

  They went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one, and there Asanoaccosted a labourer. The answers to his questions were in the thick,vulgar speech.

  "What did he say?" asked Graham.

  "He knows little, but he told me that the Black Police would have arrivedhere before the people knew--had not someone in the Wind-Vane Officeslearnt. He said a girl."

  "A girl? Not--?"

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

  And then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimlesstumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along thestreet. "To your wards, to your wards. Every man get arms. Every man tohis ward!"