章节正文
song was enriched and complicated by the massive
echoes of arches and passages. Men and women
mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp,
tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. The garments
waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's pressure
he turned towards the archway, walking unconsciously
in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the
melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture and
song, all moved in that direction, the flow of people
smote downward until the upturned faces were below
the level of his feet. He was aware of a path before
him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and
;Lincoln on his right hand. Attendants intervened,
and ever and again blotted out the sight of the
multitude to the left. Before him went the backs of the
guards in black--three and three and three. He was
marched along a little railed way, and crossed above
the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath,
and shouting up to him. He did not know whither
he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back
across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp,
tramp, tramp.
CHAPTER X
THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
He was no longer in the hall. He was marching
along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets
of the moving platforms that traversed the city.
Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The
whole concave of the moving ways below was a
congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left,
shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a
huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting
as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the
globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped
down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The song roared up to Graham now, no longer
upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the
beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps
from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the
higher ways.
Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on
the opposite side of the way seemed deserted, the
cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were
empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind
that these also should have swarmed with people.
He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast!
He stopped again. The guards before him marched
on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw the
direction of their faces. The throbbing had something
to do with the lights. He too looked up.
At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the
lights simply, an isolated phenomenon, having no
bearing on the things below. Each huge globe of
blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed
in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole,
and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness,
light, darkness, in rapid alternation.
Graham became aware that this strange behaviour
of the lights had to do with the people below. The
appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance
of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of
vivid lights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude
of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence,
seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing
with steady swiftness--to leap suddenly back and
return reinforced. The song and the tramping had
ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was
arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of
"The lights!" Voices were crying together one
thing. "The lights!" cried these voices. "The
lights!" He looked down. In this dancing death
of the lights the area of the street had suddenly
become a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes
became purple-white, purple with a reddish glow,
flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light
and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere
fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten
seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there
was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity
that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering
myriads of men.
He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were
gripped. Something rapped sharply against his shin.
A voice bawled in his ear, " It is all right--all right."
Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment.
He struck his forehead against Lincoln's and
bawled, "What is this darkness?"
"The Council has cut the currents that light the
city. We must wait--stop. The people will go on.
They will--"
His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting,
"Save the Sleeper. Take care of the Sleeper." A
guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by
an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult
tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed,
louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments
of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were
whirled away from him as his mind reached out to
grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting
orders, other voices answered. There were suddenly
a succession of piercing screams close beneath them.
A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and
receded forthwith beyond his questions.
A crackling sound grew to distinctness, and there
with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the
further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads
and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons
like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim
visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with
little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the
darkness rolled back like a curtain.
A glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething
expanse of struggling men confused his mind. A
shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. He
looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung
far overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by
a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness
back. He wore a red uniform.
Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of
red a little way along the vista caught his eye. He
saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed
the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless
cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of
antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed
and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edge of the
contest, and other heads replaced them, the little
flashes from the green weapons became little jets of
smoky grey while the light lasted.
Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways
were an inky darkness once more, a tumultuous
mystery.
He felt something thrusting against him. He was
being pushed along the gallery. Someone was
shouting--it might be at him. He was too confused to
hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a number of
people blundered past him. It seemed to him that his
guards were struggling with one another.
Suddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again,
and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The
band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer; its apex
was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle.
And raising his eyes Graham saw that a number of
these men had also appeared now in the darkened
lower galleries of the opposite building, and were firing
over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling
confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning
of these things dawned upon him. The march of the
people had come upon an ambush at the very outset.
Thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights
they were now being attacked by the red police. Then
he became aware that he was standing alone, that his
guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in the
direction along which he had come before the darkness
fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly,
running back towards him. A great shouting came
from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the
whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined
and speckled with red-clad men. And they were pointing
over to him and shouting. "The Sleeper! Save
the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
Something struck the wall above his head. He
looked up at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash
of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felt his
arm gripped. Then, pat, pat; he had been missed
twice.
For a moment he did not understand this. The
street was hidden, everything was hidden, as he looked.
The second flare had burned out.
Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was
lugging him along the gallery. "Before the next
light!" he cried. His haste was contagious.
Graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the
paralysis of his incredulousastonishment. He became for
a time the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran,
stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness,
blundered into his guards as they turned to run with
him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous
gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare
came close on its predecessors. With it came a great
shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from
the ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now
almost gained the central passage. Their countless
faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The
white facade opposite was densely stippled with red.
All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon
him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council
attempting to recapture him.
Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first
fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard
bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten
metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that
the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of
red police, was crowded and bawling and firing at him.
Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham,
unable to stop, leapt the writhing body.
In another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a
black passage, and incontinently someone, coming, it
echoes of arches and passages. Men and women
mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp,
tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. The garments
waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at Lincoln's pressure
he turned towards the archway, walking unconsciously
in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the
melody and stir of it. The multitude, the gesture and
song, all moved in that direction, the flow of people
smote downward until the upturned faces were below
the level of his feet. He was aware of a path before
him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and
;Lincoln on his right hand. Attendants intervened,
and ever and again blotted out the sight of the
multitude to the left. Before him went the backs of the
guards in black--three and three and three. He was
marched along a little railed way, and crossed above
the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath,
and shouting up to him. He did not know whither
he went; he did not want to know. He glanced back
across a flaming spaciousness of hall. Tramp, tramp,
tramp, tramp.
CHAPTER X
THE BATTLE OF THE DARKNESS
He was no longer in the hall. He was marching
along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets
of the moving platforms that traversed the city.
Before him and behind him tramped his guards. The
whole concave of the moving ways below was a
congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left,
shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a
huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting
as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the
globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped
down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.
The song roared up to Graham now, no longer
upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the
beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps
from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the
higher ways.
Abruptly he noted a contrast. The buildings on
the opposite side of the way seemed deserted, the
cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were
empty and shadowy. It came into Graham's mind
that these also should have swarmed with people.
He felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast!
He stopped again. The guards before him marched
on; those about him stopped as he did. He saw the
direction of their faces. The throbbing had something
to do with the lights. He too looked up.
At first it seemed to him a thing that affected the
lights simply, an isolated phenomenon, having no
bearing on the things below. Each huge globe of
blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed
in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole,
and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness,
light, darkness, in rapid alternation.
Graham became aware that this strange behaviour
of the lights had to do with the people below. The
appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance
of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of
vivid lights and leaping shadows. He saw a multitude
of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence,
seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing
with steady swiftness--to leap suddenly back and
return reinforced. The song and the tramping had
ceased. The unanimous march, he discovered, was
arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of
"The lights!" Voices were crying together one
thing. "The lights!" cried these voices. "The
lights!" He looked down. In this dancing death
of the lights the area of the street had suddenly
become a monstrous struggle. The huge white globes
became purple-white, purple with a reddish glow,
flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light
and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere
fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. In ten
seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there
was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity
that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering
myriads of men.
He felt invisible forms about him; his arms were
gripped. Something rapped sharply against his shin.
A voice bawled in his ear, " It is all right--all right."
Graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment.
He struck his forehead against Lincoln's and
bawled, "What is this darkness?"
"The Council has cut the currents that light the
city. We must wait--stop. The people will go on.
They will--"
His voice was drowned. Voices were shouting,
"Save the Sleeper. Take care of the Sleeper." A
guard stumbled against Graham and hurt his hand by
an inadvertent blow of his weapon. A wild tumult
tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed,
louder, denser, more furious each moment. Fragments
of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were
whirled away from him as his mind reached out to
grasp them. Voices seemed to be shouting conflicting
orders, other voices answered. There were suddenly
a succession of piercing screams close beneath them.
A voice bawled in his ear, "The red police," and
receded forthwith beyond his questions.
A crackling sound grew to distinctness, and there
with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the
further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads
and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons
like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim
visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with
little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the
darkness rolled back like a curtain.
A glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething
expanse of struggling men confused his mind. A
shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. He
looked up to see the source of the light. A man hung
far overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by
a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness
back. He wore a red uniform.
Graham's eyes fell to the ways again. A wedge of
red a little way along the vista caught his eye. He
saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed
the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless
cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of
antagonists. They were fighting. Weapons flashed
and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edge of the
contest, and other heads replaced them, the little
flashes from the green weapons became little jets of
smoky grey while the light lasted.
Abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways
were an inky darkness once more, a tumultuous
mystery.
He felt something thrusting against him. He was
being pushed along the gallery. Someone was
shouting--it might be at him. He was too confused to
hear. He was thrust against the wall, and a number of
people blundered past him. It seemed to him that his
guards were struggling with one another.
Suddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again,
and the whole scene was white and dazzling. The
band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer; its apex
was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle.
And raising his eyes Graham saw that a number of
these men had also appeared now in the darkened
lower galleries of the opposite building, and were firing
over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling
confusion of people on the lower ways. The meaning
of these things dawned upon him. The march of the
people had come upon an ambush at the very outset.
Thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights
they were now being attacked by the red police. Then
he became aware that he was standing alone, that his
guards and Lincoln were along the gallery in the
direction along which he had come before the darkness
fell. He saw they were gesticulating to him wildly,
running back towards him. A great shouting came
from across the ways. Then it seemed as though the
whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined
and speckled with red-clad men. And they were pointing
over to him and shouting. "The Sleeper! Save
the Sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats.
Something struck the wall above his head. He
looked up at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash
of silvery metal. He saw Lincoln near him. Felt his
arm gripped. Then, pat, pat; he had been missed
twice.
For a moment he did not understand this. The
street was hidden, everything was hidden, as he looked.
The second flare had burned out.
Lincoln had gripped Graham by the arm, was
lugging him along the gallery. "Before the next
light!" he cried. His haste was contagious.
Graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the
paralysis of his incredulousastonishment. He became for
a time the blind creature of the fear of death. He ran,
stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness,
blundered into his guards as they turned to run with
him. Haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous
gallery upon which he was exposed. A third glare
came close on its predecessors. With it came a great
shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from
the ways. The red-coats below, he saw, had now
almost gained the central passage. Their countless
faces turned towards him, and they shouted. The
white facade opposite was densely stippled with red.
All these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon
him as a pivot. These were the guards of the Council
attempting to recapture him.
Lucky it was for him that these shots were the first
fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. He heard
bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten
metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that
the whole opposite facade, an unmasked ambuscade of
red police, was crowded and bawling and firing at him.
Down went one of his guards before him, and Graham,
unable to stop, leapt the writhing body.
In another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a
black passage, and incontinently someone, coming, it
- complicated [´kɔmplikeitid]
a.结构复杂的；难懂的 (初中英语单词) - movement [´mu:vmənt] n.活动；运动；动作 (初中英语单词)
- multitude [´mʌltitju:d] n.大群(批)；众多 (初中英语单词)
- gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- gallery [´gæləri] n.画廊；美术馆；长廊 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- contrast [´kɔntrɑ:st] n.对比 v.使对比(照) (初中英语单词)
- confusion [kən´fju:ʒən] n.混乱(状态)；骚乱 (初中英语单词)
- purple [´pə:pl] n.紫色 a.紫(红)的 (初中英语单词)
- invisible [in´vizəbəl] a.看不见的；无形的 (初中英语单词)
- sharply [´ʃɑ:pli] ad.锋利地；剧烈地 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- weapon [´wepən] n.武器；斗争手段 (初中英语单词)
- furious [´fjuəriəs] a.狂怒的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- succession [sək´seʃən] n.继任；继承(权) (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- instinct [´instiŋkt] n.本能；直觉；天资 (初中英语单词)
- astonishment [ə´stɔniʃmənt] n.吃惊；惊异 (初中英语单词)
- splash [splæʃ] v.&n.溅水声；涉水而进 (初中英语单词)
- onward [´ɔnwəd] ad.&a.向前(的) (高中英语单词)
- downward [´daunwəd] a.下降的，向下的 (高中英语单词)
- torrent [´tɔrənt] n.奔流，激流，洪流；迸发 (高中英语单词)
- shadowy [´ʃædəui] a.有阴影的；模糊的 (高中英语单词)
- phenomenon [fi´nɔminən] n.现象；奇迹；珍品 (高中英语单词)
- sprung [sprʌŋ] spring的过去分词 (高中英语单词)
- monstrous [´mɔnstrəs] a.怪异的；庞大的 (高中英语单词)
- flicker [´flikə] n.&v.闪烁；忽隐忽现 (高中英语单词)
- forthwith [fɔ:θ´wið] ad.立刻 (高中英语单词)
- half-way [´hɑ:fwei] ad.半途；几乎 (高中英语单词)
- tumult [´tju:mʌlt, ´tu:-] n.喧哗；激昂；烦乱 (高中英语单词)
- concerned [kən´sə:nd] a.有关的；担心的 (高中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- rhythm [´riðəm] n.(诗的)韵律；格律 (英语四级单词)
- flaming [´fleimiŋ] a.熊熊燃烧的；热情的 (英语四级单词)
- graham [´greiəm] a.&n.用全麦粉做的 (英语四级单词)
- aggressive [ə´gresiv] a.进攻的；侵略的 (英语四级单词)
- unanimous [ju:´næniməs] a.一致同意的 (英语四级单词)
- reddish [´rediʃ] a.带红色的；微红的 (英语四级单词)
- obscurity [əb´skjuəriti] n.暗(淡)；朦胧；含糊 (英语四级单词)
- accomplished [ə´kʌmpliʃt] a.完成了的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- crackle [´krækəl] v.劈啪地响 n.劈啪声 (英语四级单词)
- ambush [´æmbuʃ] n.埋伏(地点)；伏兵 (英语四级单词)
- lincoln [´liŋkən] n.林肯 (英语四级单词)
- silvery [´silvəri] a.银一般的 (英语四级单词)
- overcame [,əuvə´keim] overcome的过去式 (英语四级单词)
- uncertainty [ʌn´sə:tənti] n.不可靠；不确定的事 (英语四级单词)
- concave [,kɔn´keiv] a.凹(面)的 n.凹面(物) (英语六级单词)
- perspective [pə´spektiv] n.望远镜 a.透视的 (英语六级单词)
- affected [ə´fektid] a.做作的；假装的 (英语六级单词)
- paralysis [pə´rælisis] n.麻痹；瘫痪 (英语六级单词)
- sleeper [´sli:pə] n.睡眠者；(铁路)枕木 (英语六级单词)
- piercing [´piəsiŋ] a.刺(贯)穿的；尖刻的 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- impact [´impækt] n.影响，作用；冲击 (英语六级单词)
- incredulous [in´kredjuləs] a.不(轻易)相信的 (英语六级单词)
- densely [´densli] ad.密集地；浓厚地 (英语六级单词)
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