The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER XIII
THE END OF THE OLD ORDER
So far as Graham was able to judge, it was near midday when the whitebanner of the Council fell. But some hours had to elapse before it waspossible to effect the formal capitulation, and so after he had spokenhis "Word" he retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. Thecontinuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left him inordinatelyfatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space he sat inert andpassive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. He was roused by twomedical attendants, come prepared with stimulants to sustain him throughthe next occasion. After he had taken their drugs and bathed by theiradvice in cold water, he felt a rapid return of interest and energy, andwas presently able and willing to accompany Ostrog through several miles(as it seemed) of passages, lifts, and slides to the closing scene of theWhite Council's rule.
The way ran deviously through a maze of buildings. They came at last to apassage that curved about, and showed broadening before him an oblongopening, clouds hot with sunset, and the ragged skyline of the ruinousCouncil House. A tumult of shouts came drifting up to him. In anothermoment they had come out high up on the brow of the cliff of tornbuildings that overhung the wreckage. The vast area opened to Graham'seyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had hadof it in the oval mirror.
This rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the better part of a mile toits outer edge. It was gold lit on the left hand, catching the sunlight,and below and to the right clear and cold in the shadow. Above theshadowy grey Council House that stood in the midst of it, the great blackbanner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazingsunset. Severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken massesof metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses oftwisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came atumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound oftrumpets. All about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; thesmashed and blackened masses, the gaunt foundations and ruinous lumber ofthe fabric that had been destroyed by the Council's orders, skeletons ofgirders, Titanic masses of wall, forests of stout pillars. Amongst thesombre wreckage beneath, running water flashed and glistened, and faraway across the space, out of the midst of a vague vast mass ofbuildings, there thrust the twisted end of a water-main, two hundred feetin the air, thunderously spouting a shining cascade. And everywhere greatmultitudes of people.
Wherever there was space and foothold, people swarmed, little people,small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them toindistinguishable gold. They clambered up the tottering walls, they clungin wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. They swarmed alongthe edges of the circle of ruins. The air was full of their shouting, andthey were pressing and swaying towards the central space.
The upper storeys of the Council House seemed deserted, not a humanbeing was visible. Only the drooping banner of the surrender hungheavily against the light. The dead were within the Council House, orhidden by the swarming people, or carried away. Graham could see only afew neglected bodies in gaps and corners of the ruins, and amidst theflowing water.
"Will you let them see you, Sire?" said Ostrog. "They are very anxiousto see you."
Graham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken verge ofwall dropped sheer. He stood looking down, a lonely, tall, black figureagainst the sky.
Very slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. And as they did solittle bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting throughthe crowds towards the Council House. He saw little black heads becomepink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweepacross the space. It occurred to him that he should accord them somerecognition. He held up his arm, then pointed to the Council House anddropped his hand. The voices below became unanimous, gathered volume,came up to him as multitudinous wavelets of cheering.
The western sky was a pallid bluish green, and Jupiter shone high in thesouth, before the capitulation was accomplished. Above was a slowinsensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below washurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments oforganisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Councilcame out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts,carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-handconflict within those long passages and chambers....
Guards in black lined the way that the Council would come, and as far asthe eye could reach into the hazy blue twilight of the ruins, andswarming now at every possible point in the captured Council House andalong the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent buildings, wereinnumerable people, and their voices, even when they were not cheering,were as the soughing of the sea upon a pebble beach. Ostrog had chosen ahuge commanding pile of crushed and overthrown masonry, and on this astage of timbers and metal girders was being hastily constructed. Itsessential parts were complete, but humming and clangorous machinery stillglared fitfully in the shadows beneath this temporary edifice.
The stage had a small higher portion on which Graham stood with Ostrogand Lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minorofficers. A broader lower stage surrounded this quarter-deck, and on thiswere the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the little greenweapons whose very names Graham still did not know. Those standing abouthim perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarming peoplein the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the White CouncilHouse, whence the Trustees would presently come, and to the gaunt cliffsof ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. The voices of thecrowd swelled to a deafening tumult.
He saw the Councillors first afar off in the glare of one of thetemporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figuresin a black archway. In the Council House they had been in darkness. Hewatched them approaching, drawing nearer past first this blazingelectric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd over whomtheir power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched along besidethem. As they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, white, andanxious. He saw them blinking up through the glare about him and Ostrog.He contrasted their strange cold looks in the Hall of Atlas.... Presentlyhe could recognise several of them; the man who had rapped the table atHoward, a burly man with a red beard, and one delicate-featured, short,dark man with a peculiarly long skull. He noted that two were whisperingtogether and looking behind him at Ostrog. Next there came a tall, darkand handsome man, walking downcast. Abruptly he glanced up, his eyestouched Graham for a moment, and passed beyond him to Ostrog. The waythat had been made for them was so contrived that they had to march pastand curve about before they came to the sloping path of planks thatascended to the stage where their surrender was to be made.
"The Master, the Master! God and the Master," shouted the people. "Tohell with the Council!" Graham looked at their multitudes, recedingbeyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at Ostrog beside him,white and steadfast and still. His eye went again to the little group ofWhite Councillors. And then he looked up at the familiar quiet starsoverhead. The marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. Couldthat be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred years goneby--and this as well?