The complete works, p.87
The Complete Works, page 87
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 upborne 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 colour 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-folding mantle
hung from his shoulders. He threw his arm free of this and followed Lincoln. He perceived the girl in grey
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 centre 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 this group an old careworn 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 that
enigmatical word "Ostrog." All his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling
song. The multitude were beating time with their
feet--marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The green 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 inaudible 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,
grey 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 shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tall fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. He noted two Chinamen.
A tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth,
white clad from top to toe, clambered 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, eyes met his and passed and vanished. Men
gesticulated to him, shouted inaudible 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 towards 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. Attendants 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--three and three and three. He was
marched along a little railed way, and crossed above the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath, and shouting up to him. He did not know whither
he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back
across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
CHAPTER X
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 traversed the city.
Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The
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 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 bare heads.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The song roared up to Graham now, no longer
upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the
beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a 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 the
direction of 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, having no
bearing on the things below. Each huge globe of
blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation.
Graham became aware that this strange behaviour
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. He saw a multitude 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!" He looked down. In this dancing death
of the lights the area 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 those glittering
myriads of men.
He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were
gripped. Something rapped sharply against his shin.
A voice bawled in his ear, " It is 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. Voices were shouting,
"Save 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 recognisable 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 were suddenly
a succession of piercing 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 there
with 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 instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, 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. He wore a red uniform.
Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of
red a little way along the vista caught his eye. He
saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed
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 grey while the light lasted.
Abruptly the flare 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 half-way down the ways towards the central aisle.
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 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 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 his head. He
looked up 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 haste was contagious.
Graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the
paralysis of his incredulous 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 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-coats below, he saw, had now
almost gained the central passage. Their countless
faces 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 that the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of
red police, was crowded 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 transverse 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 crushed
by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, 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. 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 thrust and pressed back and writhed in the
pressure, kicked presently against a 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, perspiring, in a livid glare.
One face, 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
now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed back across the lower area of the great theatre. 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 theatre surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham
perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier,
