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The Sleeper Awakes Chapter 10 - The Battle of the Darkness · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten of The Sleeper Awakes. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. The
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  Speaker 1: Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells, Chapter ten, The Battle
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  Speaker 1: of the Darkness. He was no longer in the hall.
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  Speaker 1: He was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the
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  Speaker 1: great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city.
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  Speaker 1: Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The whole
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  Speaker 1: concave of the moving ways. Below was a congested mass
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  Speaker 1: of people, marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands
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  Speaker 1: and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they
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  Speaker 1: came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded,
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  Speaker 1: until the globes of electric light, receding in perspective, dropped down,
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  Speaker 1: it seemed, and hid the swarming bareheads. Tramp tramp, tramp, tramp.
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  Speaker 1: The song roared up to Graham, now no longer upborne
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  Speaker 1: by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of
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  Speaker 1: the marching feet. Tramp tramp, tramp, tramp interwove with the
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  Speaker 1: thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that poured
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  Speaker 1: along the higher ways. Abruptly, he noted a contrast, The
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  Speaker 1: buildings on the opposite side of the way seemed deserted.
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  Speaker 1: The cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were
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  Speaker 1: empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind that these
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  Speaker 1: also should have swarmed with people. He felt a curious emotion,
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  Speaker 1: throbbing very fast, he stopped again. The guards before him
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  Speaker 1: marched on. Those about him stopped as he did. He
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  Speaker 1: saw anxiety and fear in their faces. The throbbing had
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  Speaker 1: something to do with the lights, He too looked up.
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  Speaker 1: At first, it seemed to him a thing that affected
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  Speaker 1: the lights, simply an isolated phenomenon, having no bearing on
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  Speaker 1: the things below. Each huge globe of blinding whiteness was,
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  Speaker 1: as it were, clutched, compressed, an assist hole that was
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  Speaker 1: followed by a transitory diastole, and again a cystole, like
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  Speaker 1: a tightening grip. Darkness, light, darkness, and rapid alternation. Graham
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  Speaker 1: became aware that this strange behavior of the lights had
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  Speaker 1: to do with the people below. The appearance of the
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  Speaker 1: houses and ways. The appearance of the packed masses changed
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  Speaker 1: became a confusion of vivid lights and leaping shadows. He
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  Speaker 1: saw a multitude of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence,
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  Speaker 1: seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing, with steady swiftness to leap,
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  Speaker 1: suddenly back and return reinforced. The song and the tramping
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  Speaker 1: had ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested. There
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  Speaker 1: were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of the lights. Voices
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  Speaker 1: were crying together one thing. The lights cried these voices,
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  Speaker 1: the lights. He looked down in this dancing death of
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  Speaker 1: the lights. The area of the street had suddenly become
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  Speaker 1: a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes became purple white,
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  Speaker 1: purple with a reddish glow. Flickered, flickered faster and faster,
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  Speaker 1: fluttered between light and extinction, ceased to flicker and became
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  Speaker 1: mere fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity.
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  Speaker 1: In ten seconds, the extinction was accomplished, and there was
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  Speaker 1: only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenly
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  Speaker 1: swallowed up those glittering myriads of men. He felt invisible
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  Speaker 1: forms about him. His arms were gripped, something rapped sharply
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  Speaker 1: against his shin a voice bold in his ear, It's
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  Speaker 1: all right, all right. Graham shook off the paralysis of
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  Speaker 1: his first astonishment. He struck his forehead against Lincoln's and bowled,
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  Speaker 1: what is this darkness? The council has cut the currents
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  Speaker 1: that light the city. We must wait stop. The people
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  Speaker 1: will go on, they will. His voice was drowned. Voices
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  Speaker 1: were shouting, save the sleeper, take care of the sleeper.
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  Speaker 1: A guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by
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  Speaker 1: an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult tossed
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  Speaker 1: and whirled about him, growing as it seemed louder, denser,
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  Speaker 1: more furious each moment. Fragments of recognizable sounds drove towards him,
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  Speaker 1: were whirled away from him as his mind reached out
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  Speaker 1: to grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting orders.
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  Speaker 1: Other voices answered. There were suddenly a succession of piercing
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  Speaker 1: screams close beneath them. A voice bawled in his ear
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  Speaker 1: the red police and receded forthwith beyond his questions. A
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  Speaker 1: crackling sound grew to distinctness, and therewith a leaping of
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  Speaker 1: faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By
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  Speaker 1: their light, Graham saw the heads and bodies of a
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  Speaker 1: number of men armed with weapons like those of his guards,
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  Speaker 1: leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began
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  Speaker 1: to crackle to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light,
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  Speaker 1: and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain. A
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  Speaker 1: glare of light dazzled his eyes. A vast, seething expandans
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  Speaker 1: of struggling men confused his mind. A shout, a burst
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  Speaker 1: of cheering came across the ways. He looked up to
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  Speaker 1: see the source of the light. A man hung far
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  Speaker 1: overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by
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  Speaker 1: a rope. The blinding star that had driven the darkness back.
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  Speaker 1: Graham's eyes fell to the waves again. A wedge of
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  Speaker 1: red a little way along the vista caught his eye.
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  Speaker 1: He saw it was a dense mass of red clad
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  Speaker 1: men jammed on the higher further way, their backs against
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  Speaker 1: the pitiless cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense
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  Speaker 1: crowd of antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed and rose
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  Speaker 1: and fell. Heads vanished at the edge of the contest,
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  Speaker 1: and other heads replaced them. The little flashes from the
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  Speaker 1: green weapons became little jets of smoky gray, while the
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  Speaker 1: light lasted Abruptly, the flame was extinguished, and the waves
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  Speaker 1: were an inky darkness, once more a tumultuous mystery. He
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  Speaker 1: felt something thrusting against him. He was being pushed along
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  Speaker 1: the gallery. Some one was shouting it might be it him,
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  Speaker 1: He was too confused to hear. He was thrust against
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  Speaker 1: the wall, and a number of people blundered past him.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to him that his guards were struggling with
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  Speaker 1: one another. Suddenly, the cable hung star holder appeared again,
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  Speaker 1: and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The band
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  Speaker 1: of redcoats seemed broader and nearer. Its apex was half
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  Speaker 1: way down the ways, towards the central aisle, and raising
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  Speaker 1: his eyes, Graham saw that a number of these men
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  Speaker 1: had also appeared now in the darkened lower galleries of
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  Speaker 1: the opposite building, and were firing over the heads of
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  Speaker 1: their fellows below. At the boiling confusion of people on
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  Speaker 1: the lower ways. The meaning of these things dawned upon him.
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  Speaker 1: The march of the people had come upon an ambush
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  Speaker 1: at the very outset, Thrown into confusion by the extinction
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  Speaker 1: of the lights. They were now being attacked by the
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  Speaker 1: red police. Then he became aware that he was standing alone,
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  Speaker 1: that his guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in
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  Speaker 1: the direction along which he had come before the darkness fell.
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  Speaker 1: He saw they were gesticulating to him, wildly, running back
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  Speaker 1: towards him. A great shouting came from across the ways.
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  Speaker 1: Then it seemed as though the whole face of the
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  Speaker 1: darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red clad men,
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  Speaker 1: and they were pointing over to him and shouting. The
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  Speaker 1: sleeper save. The sleeper shouted a multitude of throats. Something
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  Speaker 1: struck the wall above his head. He looked up at
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  Speaker 1: the impact and saw a star shaped splash of silvery metal.
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  Speaker 1: He saw Lincoln near him, felt his arm gripped, then
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  Speaker 1: pat pat. He had been missed twice. For a moment
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  Speaker 1: he did not understand this. The street was hidden, everything
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  Speaker 1: was hidden. As he looked, the second flare had burned out.
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  Speaker 1: Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm was lugging him
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  Speaker 1: along the gallery. Before the next light, he cried, his
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  Speaker 1: haste was contagious. Graham's instinct of self preservation overcame the
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  Speaker 1: paralysis of his incredulous astonishment. He became for a time
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  Speaker 1: the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran,
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  Speaker 1: stumbling because of the unser certainty of the darkness, blundered
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  Speaker 1: into his guards as they turned to run with him.
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  Speaker 1: Haste was his one desire to escape this perilous gallery
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  Speaker 1: upon which he was exposed. A third glare came close
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  Speaker 1: on its predecessors. With it came a great shouting across
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  Speaker 1: the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. The red
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  Speaker 1: coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage.
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  Speaker 1: Their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The
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  Speaker 1: white facade opposite was densely stippled with red. All these
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  Speaker 1: wonderful things concerned him turned upon him as a pivot.
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  Speaker 1: These were the guards of the Council, attempting to recapture him.
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  Speaker 1: Lucky it was for him that these shots were the
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  Speaker 1: first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years.
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  Speaker 1: He heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash
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  Speaker 1: of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived, without looking
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  Speaker 1: that the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police,
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  Speaker 1: was crowding and bawling and firing at him. Down went
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  Speaker 1: one of his guards before him, and Graham, unable to stop,
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  Speaker 1: leapt the writhing body. In another second, he had plunged,
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  Speaker 1: unhurt into a black passage, and incontinently, some one coming
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  Speaker 1: it may be in a traverse direction, blundered violently into him.
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  Speaker 1: He was hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. He
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  Speaker 1: reeled and was struck again, and came against the wall
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  Speaker 1: with his hands. He was crushed by a weight of
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  Speaker 1: struggling bodies, whirled around and thrust to the right. A
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  Speaker 1: vast pressure pinned him. He could not breathe. His ribs
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  Speaker 1: seemed cracking. He felt a momentary relaxation, and then the
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  Speaker 1: whole mass of people moving together bore him back towards
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  Speaker 1: the great theater from which he had so recently come.
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  Speaker 1: There were moments when his feet did not touch the ground.
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  Speaker 1: Then he was staggering and shoving. He heard shouts of
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  Speaker 1: they are coming, and a muffled cry close to him.
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  Speaker 1: His foot blundered against something soft. He heard a coarse
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  Speaker 1: scream under the foot. He heard shouts of the sleeper,
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  Speaker 1: but he was too confused to speak. He heard the
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  Speaker 1: green weapons crackling for a space wilst his individual will
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  Speaker 1: became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical he
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  Speaker 1: thrust and pressed back, and writhed in the pressure, kicked
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  Speaker 1: presently against the step, and found himself ascending a slope,
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  Speaker 1: and abruptly the faces all about him leaped out of
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  Speaker 1: the black, visible, ghastly white and astonished, terrified, perspiring in
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  Speaker 1: a livid glare. One face, a young man's, was very
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  Speaker 1: near to him, not twenty inches away. At the time
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  Speaker 1: it was but a passing incident of no emotional value.
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  Speaker 1: But afterwards it came back to him in his dreams.
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  Speaker 1: For this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for
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  Speaker 1: a time, had been shot and was already dead. A
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  Speaker 1: fourth white star must have been lit by the man
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  Speaker 1: on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast
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  Speaker 1: windows and arches, and showed Graham that he was now
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  Speaker 1: one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed
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  Speaker 1: back against the lower area of the great theater. This
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  Speaker 1: time the picture was livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred
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  Speaker 1: with black shadow. He saw that quite near to him,
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  Speaker 1: the Red Guards were fighting their way through the people.
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  Speaker 1: He could not tell whether they saw him. He looked
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  Speaker 1: for Lincoln and his guards. He saw Lincoln near the
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  Speaker 1: stage of the theater, surrounded in a crowd of black
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  Speaker 1: badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring to and fro as
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  Speaker 1: if seeking him. Graham perceived that he himself was near
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  Speaker 1: the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated
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  Speaker 1: by a barrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theater.
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  Speaker 1: A sudden idea came to him, and he began fighting
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  Speaker 1: his way towards the barrier. As he reached it, the
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  Speaker 1: glare came to an end. In a moment, he had
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  Speaker 1: thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his
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  Speaker 1: movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from
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  Speaker 1: his shoulders. He heard someone trip in its folds. In
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  Speaker 1: another he was scaling the barrier and had dropped into
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  Speaker 1: the blackness on the further side. Then, feeling his way,
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  Speaker 1: he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway
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  Speaker 1: in the darkness. The sound of firing ceased, and the
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  Speaker 1: roar of feet and voices lulled. Then suddenly he came
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  Speaker 1: to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. As he
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  Speaker 1: did so, pools and islands amidst the darkness about him,
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  Speaker 1: leaped to vivid light again. The uproar surged louder, and
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  Speaker 1: the glare of the fifth White Star shone through the
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  Speaker 1: vast fenestrations of the theater walls. He rolled over among
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  Speaker 1: some seats, heard a shouting and the whirring rattle of weapons,
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  Speaker 1: struggled up and was knocked back again. Perceived that a
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  Speaker 1: number of black badged men were all about him, firing
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  Speaker 1: at the reds below, leaping from seat to sea, crouching
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  Speaker 1: among the seats to reload. Instinctively, he crouched amidst the
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  Speaker 1: seats as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and cut
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  Speaker 1: bright slashes on their soft meadow frames. Instinctively he marked
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  Speaker 1: the direction of the gangways, the most plausible way of
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  Speaker 1: escape for him. So soon as the veil of darkness
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  Speaker 1: fell again, a young man in faded blue garments came
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  Speaker 1: vaulting over the seats. Hullo, he said, with his feet
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  Speaker 1: flying within six inches of the crouching sleeper's face. He
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  Speaker 1: stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired,
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  Speaker 1: and shouting to hell with the council was about to
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  Speaker 1: fire again. Then it seemed to Graham that the half
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  Speaker 1: of this man's neck had vanished. A drop of moisture
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  Speaker 1: fell on Graham's cheek. The green weapon stopped half raised.
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  Speaker 1: For a moment, the man stood still, with his face
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  Speaker 1: suddenly expressionless. Then he began to slant forward, his knees bent.
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  Speaker 1: Man and darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall.
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  Speaker 1: Graham rose up and ran for his life, until a
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  Speaker 1: step down to the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to
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  Speaker 1: his feet, turned up the gangway, and ran on. When
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  Speaker 1: the sixth star glared, he was already close to the
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the swifter
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  Speaker 1: for the light, entered the passage and turned a corner
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: into absolute night. Again. He was knocked sideways, rolled over
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  Speaker 1: and recovered his feet. He found himself one of a
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  Speaker 1: crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. His one
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  Speaker 1: thought now was their thought also, to escape out of
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  Speaker 1: this fighting. He thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly,
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  Speaker 1: lost ground, and then was clear again. For some minutes
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  Speaker 1: he was running through the darkness along a winding passage,
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  Speaker 1: and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed
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  Speaker 1: down a long incline, and came at last on a
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  Speaker 1: flight of steps to a level place. Many people were shouting,
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  Speaker 1: they're coming, The guards are coming. They're firing. Get out
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  Speaker 1: of the fighting. The guards are firing. It will be
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  Speaker 1: safe in seventh Way. Along here to seventh Way. There
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  Speaker 1: were women and children in the crowd, as well as men.
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  Speaker 1: The crowd converged on an archway, passed through a short throat,
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  Speaker 1: and emerged on a wider space, Again lit dimly, The
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  Speaker 1: black figures about him spread out and ran up what
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  Speaker 1: seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps.
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  Speaker 1: He followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.
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  Speaker 1: He perceived that he was no longer in a crowd.
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  Speaker 1: He stopped near the highest step. Before him. On that
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  Speaker 1: level were groups of seats and a little kiosk. He
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: went up to this, and, stopping in the shadow of
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  Speaker 1: its eaves, looked about him, panting. Everything was vague and gray,
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  Speaker 1: but he recognized that these great steps were a series
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of platforms of the ways. Now motionless again, The platforms
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  Speaker 1: slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose
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  Speaker 1: beyond vast dim ghosts. Their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and up through the girders and cables was a faint,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A number of people hurried by.
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  Speaker 1: From their shouts and voices, it seemed they were hurrying
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  Speaker 1: to join the fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly
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  Speaker 1: among the shadows. From very far away down the street,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: he could hear the sound of a struggle, but it
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  Speaker 1: was evident to him that this was not the street
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  Speaker 1: into which the theater opened. That former fight, it seemed,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: had suddenly dropped out of sound and hearing, and they
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: were fighting for him for a space. He was like
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: book and suddenly doubts what he has been taking. Unquestionably,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: at that time he had little mind for dear details,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and the whole effect was a huge astonishment. Oddly enough,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: while the flight from the council prison, the great crowd
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  Speaker 1: in the hall, and the attack of the red police
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  Speaker 1: upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it cost him an effort to peace in his awakening
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  Speaker 1: and to revive the meditative interval of the silent rooms.
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  Speaker 1: At first, his memory leapt these things and took him
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: back to the cascade at Pintargan, quivering in the wind,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and all the somber splendors of the sunlit Cornish coast.
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  Speaker 1: The contrast touched everything with unreality. And then the gap
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  Speaker 1: filled and he began to comprehend his position. It was
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: no longer absolutely irriddle as it had been in the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: silent rooms. At least he had the strange, bare outline.
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  Speaker 1: Now he was, in some way the owner of the world,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and great political parties were fighting to possess him. On
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  Speaker 1: the one hand, was the Council, with its red police
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  Speaker 1: set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property
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  Speaker 1: and perhaps his murder. On the other, the revolution that
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  Speaker 1: had liberated him, with this unseen ostrog as its leader,
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  Speaker 1: and the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by
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  Speaker 1: their struggle frantic development of his world. I do not understand,
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  Speaker 1: he cried, I do not understand. He had slipped out
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  Speaker 1: between the contending parties into this liberty of the twilight.
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  Speaker 1: What would happen next? What was happening? He figured the
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  Speaker 1: red clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black
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  Speaker 1: badged revolutionists before them. At any rate, chance had given
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  Speaker 1: him a breathing space. He could lurk, unchallenged by the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: passers by and watch the course of things. His eyes
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: followed up the intricate, dim immensity of the twilight buildings,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful
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  Speaker 1: that above there the sun was rising, and the world
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: was lit and glowing with the old, familiar light of day.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: In a little while he had recovered his breath, his
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: clothing had already dried upon him from the snow. He
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one,
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  Speaker 1: accosted by no one, a dark figure among dark figures,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the coveted man out of the past, the inestimable, unintentional
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  Speaker 1: owner of the world. Wherever there were lights, or dense
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  Speaker 1: crowds or exceptional excitement, he was afraid of recognition, and
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  Speaker 1: watched and turned back, or went up and down by
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  Speaker 1: the middle stairways into some transverse system of ways at
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: a lower or higher level. And though he came on
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: no more fighting, the whole city stirred with battle. Once
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: men that swept the street. Everyone abroad seemed involved for
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the most part, they were men, and they carried what
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: he judged were weapons. It seemed as though the struggle
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: which he came. Ever and again, a distant roaring, the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: remote suggestion of that conflict reached his ears. Then his
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his caution prevailed,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and he continued wandering away from the fighting. So far
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: as he could judge, he went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: After a time he ceased to hear even a remote
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: echo of the battle. Fewer and fewer people passed him,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: until at last the streets became deserted, the frontages of
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the buildings grew plain and harsh. He seemed to have
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: come to a district of vacant warehouses. Solitude crept upon him,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: his pace slackened. He became aware of a growing fatigue.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: At times he would turn aside and sit down on
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: one of the numerous benches of the upper ways, but
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: of feverish restlessness. The knowledge of his vital implication in
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: this struggle would not let him rest in any place.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: For long was the struggle on his behalf alone and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a roaring and thundering, a mighty wind of cold air
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and thud of falling masonry, a series of gigantic concussions.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: A mass of glass and iron work fell from the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: remote roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: away from him, and in the distance were shouts and running.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: He too was startled into an aimless activity, and ran
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: first one way, and then as aimlessly back. A man
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: came running towards him. His self control returned. What have
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: they blown up? Asked the man breathlessly. That was an explosion,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And before Graham could speak he had hurried on. The
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: great buildings rose dimly veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: He even spelt out many of the inscriptions in phonetic lettering.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: odd looking letters? Resolving itself after painful strain of eye
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and mind into here is Eadhamite or labor bureau Little side,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: grotesque thought that all these cliff like houses were his.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: The perversity of his experience came to him vividly. In
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: actual fact, he had made such a leap in time
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: as romancers have imagined again and again, and that fact
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: realized he had been prepared. His mind had, as it were,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: seated itself for a spectacle, And no spectacle unfolded itself,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: darkness somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity. His death sought him.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Would he, after all, be killed before he saw? It?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Might be that, even at the next corner his destruction ambushed,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a great desire to see, a great longing to know,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: arose in him. He became fearful of corners. It seemed
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: to him that there was safety in concealment. Where could
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: he hide to be inconspicuous. When the lights returned at last,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: he sat down upon a seat in a recess on
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: one of the higher ways. Conceiving he was alone there,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: he squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. Suppose when
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone. Suppose he were
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to discover the whole story of these last few days,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the awakening, the shuting multitudes, the darkness, and the fighting,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: It must be a dream. It was so inconsecutive, so reasonless.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Why were the people fighting for him? Why should this
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: saner world regard him as owner and master? So he thought,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: sitting blinded. And then he looked again, half hoping, in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: spite of his ears, to see some familiar aspect of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the life of the nineteenth century, to see perhaps the
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: little harbor of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: or the bedroom of his home. But fact takes no
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: heed of human hopes. A squad of men with a
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: black banner tramped athwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It is no dream, he said, no dream, and he
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: bowed his face upon his hands. End of Chapter ten