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shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the

central way. One thing he distinguished: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It

is indeed the Sleeper," they testified.

For a space Graham stood without a movement. Then he became vividly

aware that all this concerned him. He was pleased at his wonderful

popularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his

arm. He was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. The

tumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. He

became aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men

in trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. He heard voices behind

him, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; he

suddenly perceived that his guardian Howard was back again and gripping

his arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear.

He turned, and Howard's face was white. "Come back," he heard. "They

will stop the ways. The whole city will be in confusion."

He perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars

behind Howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall

man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and

all these people had anxious eager faces.

"Get him away," cried Howard.

"But why?" said Graham. "I don't see--"

"You must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. His face

and eyes were resolute, too. Graham's glances went from face to face,

and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life,

compulsion. Some one gripped his arm.... He was being dragged away. It

seemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts

that had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into the

passages of the great building behind him. Marvelling and confused,

feeling an impotent desire to resist, Graham was half led, half thrust,

along the passage of blue pillars, and suddenly he found himself alone

with Howard in a lift and moving swiftly upward.

CHAPTER VI. THE HALL OF THE ATLAS

From the moment when the tailor had bowed his farewell to the moment

when Graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely five

minutes. And as yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung about

him, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all in

this remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of the

irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. He was

still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in

life. What he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed

in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing

witnessed from the box of a theatre. "I don't understand," he said.

"What was the trouble? My mind is in a whirl. Why were they shouting?

What is the danger?"

"We have our troubles," said Howard. His eyes avoided Graham's enquiry.

"This is a time of unrest. And, in fact, your appearance, your waking

just now, has a sort of connexion--"

He spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. He stopped

abruptly.

"I don't understand," said Graham.

"It will be clearer later," said Howard.

He glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift

slow.

"I shall understand better, no doubt, when I have seen my way about

a little," said Graham puzzled. "It. will be--it is bound to be

perplexing. At present it is all so strange. Anything seems possible.

Anything In the details even. Your counting, I understand, is

different."

The lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very long

passage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of

tubes and big cables.

"What a huge place this is!" said Graham. "Is it all one building? What

place is it?"

"This is one of the city ways for various public services. Light and so

forth."

"Was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? How are you

governed? Have you still a police?" "Several," said Howard.

"Several?"

"About fourteen."

"I don't understand."

"Very probably not. Our social order will probably seem very complex to

you. To tell you the truth, I don't understand it myself very clearly.

Nobody does. You will, perhaps--bye and bye. We have to go to the

Council."

Graham's attention was divided between the urgent necessity of his

inquiries and the people in the passages and halls they were traversing.

For a moment his mind would be concentrated upon Howard and the halting

answers he made, and then he would lose the thread in response to some

vivid unexpected impression. Along the passages, in the halls, half the

people seemed to be men in the red uniform. The pale blue canvas

that had been so abundant in the aisle of moving ways did not appear.

Invariably these men looked at him, and saluted him and Howard as they

passed.

He had a clear vision of entering a long corridor, and there were a

number of girls sitting on low seats and as though in a class. He saw

no teacher, but only a novel apparatus from which he fancied a voice

proceeded. The girls regarded him and his conductor, he thought, with

curiosity and astonishment. But he was hurried on before he could form a

clear idea of the gathering. He judged they knew Howard and not himself,

and that they wondered who he was. This Howard, it seemed, was a person

of importance. But then he was also merely Graham's guardian. That was

odd.

There came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hung

so that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and fro

thereon, but no more of them. Then vague impressions of galleries and

of casual astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two of

them with their red-clad guard.

The stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. He was

speedily fatigued by this excessive haste. He asked Howard to slacken

his speed. Presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the great

street space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were too

high for him to see the moving platforms below. But he saw people going

to and fro along cables and along strange, frail-looking ridges.

And thence they passed across the street and at a vast height above it.

They crossed by means of a narrow bridge closed in with glass, so clear

that it made him giddy even to remember it. The floor of it also was of

glass. From his memory of the cliffs between New Quay and Boscastle, so

remote in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him that

they must be near four hundred feet above the moving ways. He stopped,

looked down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes,

minute and fore-shortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards

the little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he

had so recently been standing. A thin haze and the glare of the mighty

globes of light obscured everything. A man seated in a little open-work

cradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrow

bridge, rushing down a cable as swiftly almost as if he were falling.

Graham stopped involuntarily to watch this strange passenger vanish in

a great circular opening below, and then his eyes went back to the

tumultuous struggle.

Along one of the swifter ways rushed a thick crowd of red spots. This

broke up into individuals as it approached the balcony, and went pouring

down the slower ways towards the dense struggling crowd on the central

area. These men in red appeared to be armed with sticks or truncheons;

they seemed to be striking and thrusting. A great shouting, cries of

wrath, screaming, burst out and came up to Graham, faint and thin. "Go

on," cried Howard, laying hands on him.

Another man rushed down a cable. Graham suddenly glanced up to see

whence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network of

cables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vans of

windmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. Then

Howard had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a little

narrow passage decorated with geometrical patterns.

"I want to see more of that," cried Graham, resisting.

"No, no," cried Howard, still gripping his arm.

"This way. You must go this way." And the men in red following them

seemed ready to enforce his orders.

Some negroes in a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared

down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that

had seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham found

himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. The

attendant in black and yellow crossed this, thrust up a second shutter

and stood waiting.

This place had the appearance of an ante-room. He saw a number of people

in the central space, and at the opposite end a large and imposing

doorway at the top of a flight of steps, heavily curtained but giving a

glimpse of some still larger hall beyond. He perceived white men in

red and other negroes in black and yellow standing stiffly about those

portals.

As they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "The

Sleeper," and was aware of a turning of heads, a hum of observation.

They entered another little passage in the wall of this ante-chamber,

and then he found himself on an iron-railed gallery of metal that

passed round the side of the great hall he had already seen through the

curtains. He entered the place at the corner, so that he received

the fullest impression of its huge proportions. The black in the wasp

uniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valve

behind him.

Compared with any of the places Graham had see thus far, this second

hall appeared to be decorate with extreme richness. On a pedestal at

the remote end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was a

gigantic white figure of Atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon his

bowed shoulders. It was the first thing to strike his attention, it was

so vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. Save for

this figure and for a dais in the centre, the wide floor of the place

was a shining vacancy. The dais was remote in the greatness of the area;

it would have looked a mere slab of metal had it not been for the group

of seven men who stood about a table on it, and gave an inkling of its

proportions. They were all dressed in white robes, they seemed to have

arisen that moment from their seats, and they were regarding Graham

steadfastly. At the end of the table he perceived the glitter of some

mechanical appliances.

Howard led him along the end gallery until they were opposite this

mighty labouring figure. Then he stopped. The two men in red who had

followed them into the gallery came and stood on either hand of Graham.

"You must remain here," murmured Howard, "for a few moments," and,

without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery.

"But, _why?_" began Graham.

He moved as if to follow Howard, and found his path obstructed by one of

the men in red. "You have to wait here, Sire," said the man in red.

_"Why?"_

"Orders, Sire."

"Whose orders?"

"Our orders, Sire."

Graham looked his exasperation.

"What place is this?" he said presently. "Who are those men?"

"They are the lords of the Council, Sire."

"What Council?"

"_The_ Council."

"Oh!" said Graham, and after an equally ineffectual attempt at the other

man, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, who

stood watching him and whispering together.

The Council? He perceived there were now eight, though how the newcomer

had arrived he had not observed. They made no gestures of greeting; they

stood regarding him as in the nineteenth century a group of men might

have stood in the street regarding a distant balloon that had suddenly

floated into view. What council could it be that gathered there, that

little body of men beneath the significant white Atlas, secluded from

every eavesdropper in this impressive spaciousness? And why should he

be brought to them, and be looked at strangely and spoken of inaudibly?

Howard appeared beneath, walking quickly across the polished floor

towards them. As he drew near he bowed and performed certain peculiar

movements, apparently of a ceremonious nature. Then he ascended the

steps of the dais, and stood by the apparatus at the end of the table.

Graham watched that visible inaudible conversation. Occasionally, one

of the white-robed men would glance towards him. He strained his ears

in vain. The gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. He

glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... When he

looked again Howard was extending his hands and moving his head like

a man who protests. He was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the

white-robed men rapping the table.

The conversation lasted an interminable time to Graham's sense. His

eyes rose to the still giant at whose feet the Council sat. Thence they

wandered at last to the walls of the hall. It was decorated in long

painted panels of a quasi-Japanese type, many of them very beautiful.

These panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of dark

metal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, and

the great structural lines of the interior. The facile grace of these

panels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centre

of the scheme. Graham's eyes came back to the Council, and Howard

was descending the steps. As he drew nearer his features could be

distinguished, and Graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out his

cheeks. His countenance was still disturbed when presently he reappeared

along the gallery.