When the Sleeper Wakes

by H. G. [Herbert George] Wells
CHAPTER I

INSOMNIA
One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young

artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to
the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine

the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path
to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man

sitting in an attitude of profounddistress beneath
a projecting mass of rock. The hands of this man

hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and
staring before him, and his face was wet with tears.

He glanced round at Isbister's footfall. Both men
were disconcerted, Isbister the more so, and, to

override the awkwardness of his involuntary pause, he
remarked, with an air of matureconviction, that the

weather was hot for the time of year.
"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a

second, and added in a colourless tone, "I can't sleep."
Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said,

but his bearing conveyed his helpful impulse.
"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning

weary eyes to Isbister's face and emphasizing his
words with a languid hand, "but I have had no sleep

--- no sleep at all for six nights."
"Had advice?"

"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My
nervous system... . They are all very well for

the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare not
take . . . sufficiently powerful drugs."

"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.
He stood helplessly" target="_blank" title="ad.无能为力地">helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed

what to do. Clearly the man wanted to talk. An idea
natural enough under the circumstances, prompted

him to keep the conversation going. "I've never suffered
from sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of

commonplace gossip, "but in those cases I have
known, people have usually found something--"

"I dare make no experiments."
He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection,

and for a space both men were silent.
"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a

glance from his interlocutor's face of wretchedness to
the touring costume he wore.

"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I
have followed the coast, day after day--from New

Quay. It has only added muscularfatigue to the mental.
The cause of this unrest was overwork-- trouble.

There was something--"
He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his

forehead with a lean hand. He resumed speech like
one who talks to himself.

"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering
through a world in which I have no part. I am wifeless--

childless--who is it speaks of the childless as
the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless,

I childless--I could find no duty to do. No desire
even in my heart. One thing at last I set myself to do.

"I said, I will do this, and to do it, to overcome
the inertia of this dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great

God, I've had enough of drugs! I don't know if __you__
feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its

exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--
life! Live! We only live in patches. We have

to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies--
or irritations. We have to take the air or else

our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs
and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from

within and without, and then comes drowsiness and
sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a

man's day is his own--even at the best! And then
come those false friends, those Thug helpers, the

alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill rest--
black coffee, cocaine--"

"I see," said Isbister.
"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a

querulous intonation.
"And this is the price? "

"Yes."
For a little while the two remained without speaking.

"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I
feel--a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since

my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool,
swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of

thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and
steady--"

He paused. "Towards the gulf."
"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and

with an air of a remedy discovered. "Certainly you
must sleep."

"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer.
But I know I am drawing towards the vortex.

Presently--"
"Yes?"

"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of
the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity--

down--"
"But," expostulated Isbister.

The man threw out a hand towards him, and his
eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. "I shall

kill myself. If in no other way--at the foot of yonder
dark precipice there, where the waves are green,

and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little
thread of water trembles down. There at any rate is

. . . sleep."
" That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the

man's hysterical gust of emotion. "Drugs are better
than that."

" There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger,
not heeding him.

Isbister looked at him and wondered transitorily if
some complex Providence had indeed brought them

together that afternoon. "It's not a cert, you know,"
he remarked. " There's a cliff like that at Lulworth

Cove--as high, anyhow--and a little girl fell from
top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."

"But those rocks there? "
"One might lie on them rather dismally through a

cold night, broken bones grating as one shivered, chill
water splashing over you. Eh? "

Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said
Isbister with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance.

"But a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter
of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed.

"It's so damned amateurish."
"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably,