The complete works, p.104
The Complete Works, page 104
Then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distant ceiling of the hall.
He shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg and threw him headlong, and
struggled to his feet.
Lincoln appeared before him, went down heavily
again with a blow under the point of the jaw and lay still. Graham made two strides, stumbled. And then
Ostrog's arm was round his neck, he was pulled over
backward, fell heavily, and his arms were pinned to the ground. After a few violent efforts he ceased to
struggle and lay staring at Ostrog's heaving throat.
"You--are--a prisoner," panted Ostrog, exulting.
"You--were rather a fool--to come back."
Graham turned his head about and perceived
through the irregular green window in the walls of
the hall the men who had been working the building
cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them.
They had seen!
Ostrog followed his eyes and started. He shouted
something to Lincoln, but Lincoln did not move. A
bullet smashed among the mouldings above the Atlas
The two sheets of transparent matter that had been
stretched across this gap were rent, the edges of the torn aperture darkened, curved, ran rapidly towards
the framework, and in a moment the Council chamber
stood open to the air. A chilly gust blew in by the
gap, bringing with it a war of voices from the ruinous spaces without, an elvish babblement, "Save the Master!" "What are they doing to the Master?"
"The Master is betrayed! "
And then he realised that Ostrog's attention was
distracted, that Ostrog's grip had relaxed, and,
wrenching his arms free, he struggled to his knees.
In another moment he had thrust Ostrog back, and
he was on one foot, his hand gripping Ostrog's throat, and Ostrog's hands clutching the silk about his neck.
But now men were coming towards them from the
dais--men whose intentions he misunderstood. He
had a glimpse of someone running in the distance
towards the curtains of the antechamber, and then
Ostrog had slipped from him and these newcomers
were upon him. To his infinite astonishment, they
seized him. They obeyed the shouts of Ostrog.
He was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that
they were not friends--that they were dragging him
towards the open panel. When he saw this he pulled
back, he tried to fling himself down, he shouted for help with all his strength. And this time there were answering cries.
The grip upon his neck relaxed, and behold! in the
lower corner of the rent upon the wall, first one and then a number of little black figures appeared shouting and waving arms. They came leaping down from
the gap into the light gallery that had led to the Silent Rooms. They ran along it, so near were they that
Graham could see the weapons in their hands, Then
Ostrog was shouting in his ear to the men who held
him, and once more he was struggling with all his
strength against their endeavours to thrust him towards the opening that yawned to receive him. "They can't come down," panted Ostrog. "They daren't fire.
It's all right." "We'll save him from them yet."
For long minutes as it seemed to Graham that
inglorious struggle continued. His clothes were rent in a dozen places, he was covered in dust, one hand
had been trodden upon. He could hear the shouts of
his supporters, and once he heard shots. He could
feel his strength giving way, feel his efforts wild and aimless. But no help came, and surely, irresistibly, that black, yawning opening came nearer.
The pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled
up. He saw Ostrog's grey head receding and
perceived that he was no longer held. He turned about and came full into a man in black. One of the green
weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent
smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed.
The huge chamber span about him.
He saw a man in pale blue stabbing one of the black
and yellow attendants not three yards from his face.
Then hands were upon him again.
He was being pulled in two, directions now. It
seemed as though people were shouting to him. He
wanted to understand and could not. Someone was
clutching about his thighs, he was being hoisted in
spite of his vigorous efforts. He understood suddenly, he ceased to struggle. He was lifted up on men's
shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel.
Ten thousand throats were cheering.
He saw men in blue and black hurrying after the
retreating Ostrogites and firing. Lifted up, he saw
now across the whole expanse of the hall beneath the Atlas image, saw that he was being carried towards
the raised platform in the centre of the place. The far end of the hall was already full of people running
towards him. They were looking at him and cheering.
He became aware that a sort of body-guard
surrounded him. Active men about him shouted vague
orders. He saw close at hand the black moustached
man in yellow who had been among those who had
greeted him in the public theatre, shouting directions.
The hall was already densely packed with swaying
people, the little metal gallery sagged with a shouting load, the curtains at the end had been torn away, and the ante-chamber was revealed densely crowded. He
could scarcely make the man near him hear for the
tumult about them. "Where has Ostrog gone?" he asked.
The man he questioned pointed over the heads
towards the lower panels about the hall on the side
opposite the gap. They stood open and armed men,
blue clad with black sashes, were running through them and vanishing into the chambers and passages beyond.
It seemed to Graham that a sound of firing drifted
through the riot. He was carried in a staggering
curve across the great hall towards an opening beneath the gap.
He perceived men working with a sort of rude
discipline to keep the crowd off him, to make a space clear about him. He passed out of the hall, and saw a
crude, new wall rising blankly before him topped by
blue sky. He was swung down to his feet; someone
gripped his arm and guided him. He found the man
in yellow close at hand. They were taking him up a
narrow stairway of brick, and close at hand rose the great red painted masses, the cranes and levers and
the still engines of the big building machine.
He was at the top of the steps. He was hurried
across a narrow railed footway, and suddenly with a
vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruins opened again before him. "The Master is with us! The Master!
The Master!" The shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, broke against the distant cliff of ruins, and came back in a welter of cries. "The Master is on our side! "
Graham perceived that he was no longer encompassed
by people, that he was standing upon a little
temporary platform of white metal, part of a flimsy
seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass
of the Council House. Over all the huge expanse
of the ruins, swayed and eddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners of the revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare
nuclei of organisation in the chaos. Up the steep
stairs of wall and scaffolding by which his rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber, clung
a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures
clinging to pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested masses to stir. Behind him, at a
higher point on the scaffolding, a number of men
struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge
black standard. Through the yawning gap in the
walls below him he could look down upon the packed
attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The
distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual
translucency of the air. A solitary aeropile beat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming
aeroplanes.
"What had become of Ostrog?" asked Graham, and even as he spoke he saw that all eyes were turned
from him towards the crest of the Council House
building. He looked also in this direction of universal attention. For a moment he saw nothing but the
jagged corner of a wall, hard and clear against the
sky. Then in the shadow he perceived the interior of a room and recognised with a start the green and
white decorations of his former prison. And coming
quickly across this opened room and up to the very
verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figure followed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. He heard the man beside him
exclaim "Ostrog," and turned to ask a question. But he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another of those who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. He looked, and behold the
aeropile that had been rising from the flying stage
when last he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. The swift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention.
Nearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger,
until it had swept over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes below. It
drooped across the space and rose and passed
overhead, rising to clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyond
the skyline of the ruins.
Graham transferred his attention to Ostrog. He
was signalling with his hands, and his attendants busy breaking down the wall beside him. In another
moment the aeropile came into view again, a little
thing far away, coming round in a wide curve and
going slower.
Then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "What
are they doing? What are the people doing? Why
is Ostrog left there? Why is he not captured? They
will lift him--the aeropile will lift him! Ah!"
The exclamation was echoed by a shout from the
ruins. The rattling sound of the green weapons
drifted across the intervening gulf to Graham, and,
looking down, he saw a number of black and yellow
uniforms running along one of the galleries that lay open to the air below the promontory upon which
Ostrog stood. They fired as they ran at men unseen,
and then emerged a number of pale blue figures in
pursuit. These minute fighting figures had the oddest effect; they seemed as they ran like little model
soldiers in a toy. This queer appearance of a
house cut open gave that struggle amidst furniture
and passages a quality of unreality. It was perhaps
two hundred yards away from him, and very nearly
fifty above the heads in the ruins below. The black
and yellow men ran into an open archway, and turned
and fired a volley. One of the blue pursuers striding forward close to the edge, flung up his arms,
staggered sideways, seemed to Graham's sense to hang over the edge for several seconds, and fell headlong down. Graham saw him strike a projecting corner, fly out, head over heels, head over heels, and vanish
behind the red arm of the building machine.
And then a shadow came between Graham and the
sun. He looked up and the sky was clear, but he
knew the aeropile had passed. Ostrog had vanished.
The man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and
perspiring, pointing and blatent.
"They are grounding!" cried the man in yellow.
"They are grounding. Tell the people to fire at him.
Tell them to fire at him!"
Graham could not understand. He heard loud
voices repeating these enigmatical orders.
Suddenly over the edge of the ruins he saw the prow
of the aeropile come gliding and stop with a jerk. In a moment Graham understood that the thing had
grounded in order that Ostrog might escape by it.
He saw a blue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him were now firing up at the
projecting stem.
A man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw
that the blue rebels had gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and yellow a
moment before, and were running in a continual
stream along the open passage.
And suddenly the aeropile slipped over the edge of
the Council House and fell. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, and dropping so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most
of these below, that it could not possibly rise again.
It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the guides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut wrenching
over the lever that drove the engine along its guides.
He heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable
men below.
Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped.
The second seemed an age. The lower van of the
aeropile passed within an ace of touching the people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another
below.
And then it rose.
For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly
clear the opposite cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that rotated beyond.
And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling
sideways, upward, upward into the wind-swept sky.
The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of
exasperation as the swarming people realised that
Ostrog had escaped them. With belated activity they
renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar, until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the thin smoke of their weapons.
Too late! The aeropile dwindled smaller and
smaller, and curved about and swept gracefully
downward to the flying stage from which it had so lately risen. Ostrog had escaped.
For a while a confused babblement arose from the
ruins, and then the universal attention came back to Graham, perched high among the scaffolding. He
saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heard their shouts at his rescue. From the throat of the
ways came the song of the revolt spreading like a
breeze across that swaying sea of men.
The little group of men about him shouted
congratulations on his escape. The man in yellow was close to him, with a set face and shining eyes. And
the song was rising, louder and louder; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
Slowly the realisation came of the full meaning of
these things to him, the perception of the swift change in his position. Ostrog, who had stood beside him
whenever he had faced that shouting multitude before, was beyond there--the antagonist. There was no
one to rule for him any longer. Even the people
about him, the leaders and organisers of the multitude, looked to see what he would do, looked to him to act, awaited his orders. He was King indeed. His
puppet reign was at an end.
He was very intent to do the thing that was
expected of him. His nerves and muscles were quivering, his mind was perhaps a little confused, but he
felt neither fear nor anger. His hand that had been
trodden upon throbbed and was hot. He was a little
nervous about his bearing. He knew he was not
afraid, but he was anxious not to seem afraid. In his former life he had often been more excited in playing games of skill. He was desirous of immediate action, he knew he must not think too much in detail of the
huge complexity of the struggle about him lest he
should be paralysed by the sense of its intricacy.
Over there those square blue shapes, the flying stages, meant Ostrog; against Ostrog he was fighting for the world.
CHAPTER XXIII
WHILE THE AEROLANES WERE COMING
For a time the Master of the Earth was not even
master of his own mind. Even his will seemed a will
not his own, his own acts surprised him and were but a part of the confusion of strange experiences that
poured across his being. These things were definite, the aeroplanes were coming, Helen Wotton had
warned the people of their coming, and he was Master of the Earth. Each of these facts seemed struggling
for complete possession of his thoughts. They
protruded from a background of swarming halls, elevated passages, rooms jammed with ward leaders in council
