The Sleeper Awakes | Page 8

of some queer long-forgotten
sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the
effort of a man near drowning in darkness. Then came a panorama of
dazzling unstable confluent scenes....

Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some
unfamiliar thing.
It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. He
moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. It went up
beyond the top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be. Did it
matter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour of his thoughts was a
dark depression. He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes
towards the hour of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and
footsteps hastily receding.
The movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical
weakness. He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the
valley--but he could not recall that white edge. He must have slept. He
remembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He recalled the cliff and
Waterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to a
passer-by....
How long had he slept? What was that sound of pattering feet? And
that rise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out a
languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit
to place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. This was
so unexpected that it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled
over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. The
effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak--and
amazed.
He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings was confusing but
his mind was quite clear--evidently his sleep had benefited him. He was
not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very
soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. The mattress was
partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and
below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About his arm--and he saw
with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was bound a
curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass
into his skin above and below. And this bed was placed in a case of
greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white
framework of which had first arrested his attention. In the corner of the

case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for the
most part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum
thermometer was recognisable.
The slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surrounded
him on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was a
vast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and
simple white archway facing him. Close to the walls of the cage were
articles of furniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like the
side of a fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number of
dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. He
realised that he was intensely hungry.
He could see no one, and after a period of hesitation scrambled off the
translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his
little apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however, and
staggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him to
steady himself. For a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward like
a distended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished--a
pricked bubble. He reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatly
astonished. He caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of the
glasses to the floor--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of
the armchairs.
When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the
bottle and drank--a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with a
pleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support and
stimulus. He put down the vessel and looked about him.
The apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that the
greenish transparency that had intervened was removed. The archway
he saw led to a flight of steps, going downward without the
intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage. This passage
ran between polished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep
ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements, and
voices and a deep undeviating droning note. He sat, now fully awake,
listening alertly, forgetting the viands in his attention.

Then with a shock he remembered that he was