第 9 页

brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to

fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently.

Graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. He looked

up again in a strange excitement. The figure had gone.

He remained motionless--his every sense intent upon the flickering patch

of darkness, for outside it was high night. He became aware of some

faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. They

came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of

the uprush from the fan. A gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed

white, and then the darkness came again. Warmed and lit as he was, he

perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him.

Graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. He

saw the head of a man pass near. There was a sound of whispering. Then

a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vans

stopped. A gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before

they touched the floor. "Don't be afraid," said a voice.

Graham stood under the fan. "Who are you?" he whispered.

For a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the

head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. His face appeared

nearly inverted to Graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakes

of snow upon it. His arm went up into the darkness holding something

unseen. He had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his

forehead were swollen. He seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his

position.

For several seconds neither he nor Graham spoke.

"You were the Sleeper?" said the stranger at last.

"Yes," said Graham. "What do you want with me?"

"I come from Ostrog, Sire."

"Ostrog?"

The man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was

towards Graham. He appeared to be listening. Suddenly there was a hasty

exclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the

sweep of the released fan. And when Graham peered up there was nothing

visible but the slowly falling snow.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the

ventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; the

fans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time

in the same place, alert and tremulously excited.

"Who are you? What do you want?" he said.

"We want to speak to you, Sire," said the intruder.

"We want--I can't hold the thing. We have been trying to find a way to

you these three days."

"Is it rescue?" whispered Graham. "Escape?"

"Yes, Sire. If you will."

"You are my party--the party of the Sleeper?"

"Yes, Sire."

"What am I to do?" said Graham.

There was a struggle. The stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was

bleeding. His knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "Stand

away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and

one shoulder at Graham's feet. The released ventilator whirled noisily.

The stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to a

bruised shoulder, and with his bright eyes on Graham.

"You are indeed the Sleeper," he said. "I saw you asleep. When it was

the law that anyone might see you."

"I am the man who was in the trance," said Graham. "They have imprisoned

me here. I have been here since I awoke--at least three days."

The intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly at

the door, and suddenly left Graham and ran towards it, shouting quick

incoherent words. A bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and he

began tap, tap, a quick succession of blows upon the hinges. "Mind!"

cried a voice. "Oh!" The voice came from above.

Graham glanced up, saw the soles of two feet, ducked, was struck on the

shoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. He

fell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. He

knelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him.

"I did not see you, Sire," panted the man. He rose and assisted Graham

to arise. "Are you hurt, Sire?" he panted. A succession of heavy blows

on the ventilator began, something fell close to Graham's face, and a

shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay flat upon the

floor.

"What is this?" cried Graham, confused and looking at the ventilator.

"Who are you? What are you going to do? Remember, I understand nothing."

"Stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator

as another fragment of metal fell heavily.

"We want you to come, Sire," panted the newcomer, and Graham glancing

at his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his

forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood starting therefrom.

"Your people call for you."

"Come where? My people?"

"To the hall about the markets. Your life is in danger here. We have

spies. We learned but just in time. The Council has decided--this very

day--either to drug or kill you. And everything is ready. The people are

drilled, the wind-vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearers

are with us. We have the halls crowded--shouting. The whole city shouts

against the Council. We have arms." He wiped the blood with his hand.

"Your life here is not worth--" "But why arms?"

"The people have risen to protect you, Sire. What?"

He turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing

with his teeth. Graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to

conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind the opening door.

As he did so Howard appeared, a little tray in one hand and his heavy

face downcast. He started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the

tray tilted sideways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. He

went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of

the outer room. The man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his

face for a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door.

"Your poison!" said a voice in Graham's ear.

Then abruptly they were in darkness. The innumerable cornice lights

had been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with

ghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three

knelt on the fan. Some dim thing--a ladder was being lowered through the

opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift

alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of

the Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a

moment. And his people awaited him!

"I do not understand," he said, "I trust. Tell me what to do."

The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm.

"Clamber up the ladder," he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the

lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest

man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over

Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again,

and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then

he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the

ventilating funnel.

He shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Half

a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and

face and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastly

violet white, and then everything was dark again.

He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which

had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of

Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge

serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular

wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through

the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the

fitful white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a

transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and

here and there, low down! some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism

flickered with livid sparks.

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood

about him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about

him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things

were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward.

Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"

said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Graham across the flat

roof in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Graham

obeyed.

"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them

and not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."

"Where are the people?" said Graham. "The people you said awaited me?"

The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew

narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly.

In a minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" he

panted, but received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on.

They came to a sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the

direction they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. Graham

looked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others.

"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill

spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided

an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This

way!" and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow,

between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will

go first," said the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed.

Then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the

snowy darkness of the further side. Graham peeped over the side once and

the gulf was black. For a moment he regretted his flight. He dared not

look again, and his brain spun as he waded through the half liquid snow.

Then out of the gutter they clambered and hurried across a wide flat

space damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent

to lights that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstable

looking substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came to

and clambered up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass.

Round this they went. Far below a number of people seemed to be dancing,

and music filtered through the dome.... Graham fancied he heard a

shouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new

spurt of haste. They clambered panting to a space of huge windmills, one

so vast that only the lower edge of its vans came rushing into sight and

rushed up again and was lost in the night and the snow. They hurried for

a time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and came

at last above a place of moving platforms like the place into which

Graham had looked from the balcony. They crawled across the sloping

transparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on hands

and knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall.

For the most part the glass was bedewed, and Graham saw only hazy

suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent

roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon

it all. For awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way

to vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. Far

below, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping

city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their

incessant journey. Messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along

the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. It was

like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him

with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall.

The street showed warm and lit, and Graham was wet now to the skin with

thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. For a space he could

not move.

"Come on!" cried his guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"

Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.

Over the ridge, following his guide's example, he turned about and slid

backward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalanche

of snow While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some

broken gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet

ankle deep in slush thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His

guide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse.

Through the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vast

windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels

was pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling of

extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every

point of the compass.

"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of

terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.

Above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared

vast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in illimitable

vistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate the

snowfall they glared.

"Get on this," cried Graham's conductor, and thrust him forward to a

long grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly

sloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham's benurrled feet, and a

faint eddy of steam rose from it.

"Come on!" shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran