The Sleeper Awakes | Page 9

naked, and casting about
him for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs
beside him. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.
His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and had
been removed in his sleep. But where? And who were those people, the
distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out
and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.
What was this place?--this place that to his senses seemed subtly
quivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean and
beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that
the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as
he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and
came again and passed. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note
of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
He would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat.
Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his
way towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on the
corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved
himself by catching at one of the blue pillars.
The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended
remotely in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into
a space of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building.
Beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural forms. The
tumult of voices rose now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with
their backs to him, gesticulating and apparently in animated
conversation, were three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy
garments of bright soft colourings. The noise of a great multitude of
people poured up over the balcony, and once it seemed the top of a
banner passed, and once some brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap
or garment thrown up into the air perhaps, flashed athwart the space
and fell. The shouts sounded like English, there was a reiteration of
"Wake!" He heard some indistinct shrill cry, and abruptly these three
men began laughing.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe.
"When the Sleeper wakes--When!"
He turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. His face
changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. The other two turned
swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. Their faces assumed
an expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe.
Suddenly Graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar
collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face.
CHAPTER IV
THE SOUND OF A TUMULT
Graham's last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells.
He learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and
death, for the better part of an hour. When he recovered his senses, he
was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at
heart and throat. The dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed
from his arm, which was bandaged. The white framework was still
about him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was
altogether gone. A man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had
been on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face.
Remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that
suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting
together. Something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly
closed.
Graham moved his head. "What does this all mean?" he said slowly.
"Where am I?"
He saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. A voice
seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled.
The man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking English with a
slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the Sleeper's ears.

"You are quite safe. You were brought hither from where you fell
asleep. It is quite safe. You have been here some time--sleeping. In a
trance."
He said, something further that Graham could not hear, and a little
phial was handed across to him. Graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant
mist played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of
refreshment increased. He closed his eyes in satisfaction.
"Better?" asked the man in violet, as Graham's eyes reopened. He was a
pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and
a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe.
"Yes," said Graham.
"You have been asleep some time. In a cataleptic trance. You have
heard?