章节正文
may be, in a transverse direction, blundered violently
into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolute
darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and
came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed
by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and
thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He
could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt
a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of
people moving together, bore him back towards the
great theatre from which he had so recently come.
There were moments when his feet did not touch the
ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. He
heard shouts of "They are coming!" and a muffled
cry close to him. His foot blundered against
something soft, he heard a hoarsescream under foot. He
heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" but he was too
confused to speak. He heard the green weapons
crackling. For a space he lost his individual will,
became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical.
He thrust and pressed back and writhed in the
pressure, kicked presently against a step, and found
himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces all
about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white
and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare.
One face, a young man's, was very near to him, not
twenty inches away. At the time it was but a passing
incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came
back to him in his dreams. For this young man,
wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot
and was already dead.
A fourth white star must have been lit by the man
on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast
windows and arches and showed Graham that he was
now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed
back across the lower area of the great theatre. This
time the picture was livid and fragmentary slashed
and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite
near to him the red guards were fighting their way
through the people. He could not tell whether they
saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He
saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded
in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up
and staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham
perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of
the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier,
sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden
idea came to him, and he began fighting his way
towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came
to an end.
In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that
not only impeded his movements but made him
conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. He
heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was
scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness
on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to
the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness
the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and
voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected
step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools
and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to
vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the
glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast
fenestrations of the theatre walls.
He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting
and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and
was knocked back again, perceived that a number of
black-badged men were all about him firing at the rebels
below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the
seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the
seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and
cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames.
Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the
most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the
veil of darkness fell again.
A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting
over the seats. "Hullo!" he said, with his flying feet
within six inches of the crouching Sleeper's face.
He stared without any sign of recognition, turned
to fire, fired, and, shouting, "To hell with the Council!"
was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham
that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A
drop of moisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green
weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man
stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then
he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and
darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham
rose up and ran for his life until a step down to
the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet,
turned up the gangway and ran on.
When the sixth star glared he was already close to
the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the
swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a
corner into absolute night again. He was knocked
sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He
found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives
pressing in one direction. His one thought now was
their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He
thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly,
lost ground and then was clear again.
For some minutes he was running through the darkness
along a winding passage, and then he crossed
some wide and open space, passed down a long incline,
and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place.
Many people were shouting, "They are coming! The
guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of the
fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safe in
Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!" There
were women and children in the crowd as well as men.
Men called names to him. The crowd converged on
an archway, passed through a short throat and
emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black
figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed
in the twilight to be a giganticseries of steps. He
followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.
. . . He perceived that he was no longer in a
crowd. He stopped near the highest step. Before
him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little
kiosk. He went up to this and, stopping in the shadow
of its eaves, looked about him panting.
Everything was vague and gray, but he recognised
that these great steps were a series of platforms of the
"ways," now motionless again. The platform slanted
up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond,
vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements
indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and
cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A
number of people hurried by. From their shouts and
voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the
fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the
shadows.
From very far away down the street he could hear
the sound of a struggle. But it was evident to him
that this was not the street into which the theatre
opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly
dropped out of sound and hearing. And--grotesque
thought!--they were fighting for him!
For a space he was like a man who pauses in the
reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he
has been taking unquestioningly. At that time he had
little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge
astonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from
the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and
the attack of the red police upon the swarming people
were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort
to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative
interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory
leapt these things and took him back to the cascade
at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre
splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast
touched everything with unreality. And then the gap
filled, and he began to comprehend his position.
It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been
in the Silent Rooms. At least he had the strange,
bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of
half the world, and great political parties were fighting
to possess him. On the one hand was the White Council,
with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the
usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on
the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with
this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole
of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle.
Frantic development of his world! "I do not under-
stand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
He had slipped out between the contending parties
into this liberty of the twilight. What would happen
next? What was happening? He figured the redclad
men as busilyhunting him, driving the blackbadged
revolutionists before them.
At any rate chance had given him a breathing space.
He could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and
watch the course of things. His eye followed up the
intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and
it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that
above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit
and glowing with the old familiar light of day. In a
little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing
had already dried upon him from the snow.
He wandered for miles along these twilight ways,
speaking to no one, accosted by no one--a dark
figure among dark figures--the coveted man out of
the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of half
the world. Wherever there were lights or dense
crowds, or exceptionalexcitement he was afraid of
recognition, and watched and turned back or went up
and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse
system of ways at a lower or higher level. And
though he came on no more fighting, the whole city
stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a
marching multitude of men that swept the street.
Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part
they were men, and they carried what he judged were
weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was
concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which
he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote
suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his
caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his
caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away
from the fighting--so far as he could judge. He
went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark.
After a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of
the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at
into him. He was hurling down a staircase in absolute
darkness. He reeled, and was struck again, and
came against a wall with his hands. He was crushed
by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and
thrust to the right. A vast pressure pinned him. He
could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. He felt
a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of
people moving together, bore him back towards the
great theatre from which he had so recently come.
There were moments when his feet did not touch the
ground. Then he was staggering and shoving. He
heard shouts of "They are coming!" and a muffled
cry close to him. His foot blundered against
something soft, he heard a hoarsescream under foot. He
heard shouts of "The Sleeper!" but he was too
confused to speak. He heard the green weapons
crackling. For a space he lost his individual will,
became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical.
He thrust and pressed back and writhed in the
pressure, kicked presently against a step, and found
himself ascending a slope. And abruptly the faces all
about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white
and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare.
One face, a young man's, was very near to him, not
twenty inches away. At the time it was but a passing
incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came
back to him in his dreams. For this young man,
wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot
and was already dead.
A fourth white star must have been lit by the man
on the cable. Its light came glaring in through vast
windows and arches and showed Graham that he was
now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed
back across the lower area of the great theatre. This
time the picture was livid and fragmentary slashed
and barred with black shadows. He saw that quite
near to him the red guards were fighting their way
through the people. He could not tell whether they
saw him. He looked for Lincoln and his guards. He
saw Lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded
in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up
and staring to and fro as if seeking him. Graham
perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of
the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier,
sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. A sudden
idea came to him, and he began fighting his way
towards the barrier. As he reached it the glare came
to an end.
In a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that
not only impeded his movements but made him
conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. He
heard someone trip in its folds. In another he was
scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness
on the further side. Then feeling his way he came to
the lower end of an ascending gangway. In the darkness
the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and
voices lulled. Then suddenly he came to an unexpected
step and tripped and fell. As he did so pools
and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to
vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the
glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast
fenestrations of the theatre walls.
He rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting
and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and
was knocked back again, perceived that a number of
black-badged men were all about him firing at the rebels
below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the
seats to reload. Instinctively he crouched amidst the
seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and
cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames.
Instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the
most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the
veil of darkness fell again.
A young man in faded blue garments came vaulting
over the seats. "Hullo!" he said, with his flying feet
within six inches of the crouching Sleeper's face.
He stared without any sign of recognition, turned
to fire, fired, and, shouting, "To hell with the Council!"
was about to fire again. Then it seemed to Graham
that the half of this man's neck had vanished. A
drop of moisture fell on Graham's cheek. The green
weapon stopped half raised. For a moment the man
stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then
he began to slant forward. His knees bent. Man and
darkness fell together. At the sound of his fall Graham
rose up and ran for his life until a step down to
the gangway tripped him. He scrambled to his feet,
turned up the gangway and ran on.
When the sixth star glared he was already close to
the yawning throat of a passage. He ran on the
swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a
corner into absolute night again. He was knocked
sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. He
found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives
pressing in one direction. His one thought now was
their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. He
thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly,
lost ground and then was clear again.
For some minutes he was running through the darkness
along a winding passage, and then he crossed
some wide and open space, passed down a long incline,
and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place.
Many people were shouting, "They are coming! The
guards are coming. They are firing. Get out of the
fighting. The guards are firing. It will be safe in
Seventh Way. Along here to Seventh Way!" There
were women and children in the crowd as well as men.
Men called names to him. The crowd converged on
an archway, passed through a short throat and
emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. The black
figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed
in the twilight to be a giganticseries of steps. He
followed. The people dispersed to the right and left.
. . . He perceived that he was no longer in a
crowd. He stopped near the highest step. Before
him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little
kiosk. He went up to this and, stopping in the shadow
of its eaves, looked about him panting.
Everything was vague and gray, but he recognised
that these great steps were a series of platforms of the
"ways," now motionless again. The platform slanted
up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond,
vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements
indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and
cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. A
number of people hurried by. From their shouts and
voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the
fighting. Other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the
shadows.
From very far away down the street he could hear
the sound of a struggle. But it was evident to him
that this was not the street into which the theatre
opened. That former fight, it seemed, had suddenly
dropped out of sound and hearing. And--grotesque
thought!--they were fighting for him!
For a space he was like a man who pauses in the
reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he
has been taking unquestioningly. At that time he had
little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge
astonishment. Oddly enough, while the flight from
the Council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and
the attack of the red police upon the swarming people
were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort
to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative
interval of the Silent Rooms. At first his memory
leapt these things and took him back to the cascade
at Pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre
splendours of the sunlit Cornish coast. The contrast
touched everything with unreality. And then the gap
filled, and he began to comprehend his position.
It was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been
in the Silent Rooms. At least he had the strange,
bare outline now. He was in some way the owner of
half the world, and great political parties were fighting
to possess him. On the one hand was the White Council,
with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the
usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on
the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with
this unseen "Ostrog" as its leader. And the whole
of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle.
Frantic development of his world! "I do not under-
stand," he cried. "I do not understand!"
He had slipped out between the contending parties
into this liberty of the twilight. What would happen
next? What was happening? He figured the redclad
men as busilyhunting him, driving the blackbadged
revolutionists before them.
At any rate chance had given him a breathing space.
He could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and
watch the course of things. His eye followed up the
intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and
it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that
above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit
and glowing with the old familiar light of day. In a
little while he had recovered his breath. His clothing
had already dried upon him from the snow.
He wandered for miles along these twilight ways,
speaking to no one, accosted by no one--a dark
figure among dark figures--the coveted man out of
the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of half
the world. Wherever there were lights or dense
crowds, or exceptionalexcitement he was afraid of
recognition, and watched and turned back or went up
and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse
system of ways at a lower or higher level. And
though he came on no more fighting, the whole city
stirred with battle. Once he had to run to avoid a
marching multitude of men that swept the street.
Everyone abroad seemed involved. For the most part
they were men, and they carried what he judged were
weapons. It seemed as though the struggle was
concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which
he came. Ever and again a distant roaring, the remote
suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. Then his
caution and his curiosity struggled together. But his
caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away
from the fighting--so far as he could judge. He
went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark.
After a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of
the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at
- pressure [´preʃə]
n.压榨 vt.对...施压力 (初中英语单词) - scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- thrust [θrʌst] v.&n.猛推；冲；刺；挤进 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- visible [´vizəbəl] a.可见的；明显的 (初中英语单词)
- emotional [i´məuʃənəl] a.易动感情的；情感的 (初中英语单词)
- vacant [´veikənt] a.空虚的，无表情的 (初中英语单词)
- rattle [´rætl] n.嘎吱声 (初中英语单词)
- recognition [,rekəg´niʃən] n.认出；认识；承认 (初中英语单词)
- moisture [´mɔistʃə] n.潮湿；温度；水份 (初中英语单词)
- throat [θrəut] n.咽喉；嗓子；出入口 (初中英语单词)
- absolute [´æbsəlu:t] a.绝对的 n.绝对 (初中英语单词)
- invisible [in´vizəbəl] a.看不见的；无形的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- flight [flait] n.逃走；飞行；班机 (初中英语单词)
- twilight [´twailait] n.黎明；黄昏 (初中英语单词)
- series [´siəri:z] n.连续；系列；丛书 (初中英语单词)
- platform [´plætfɔ:m] n.(平)台；讲台；站台 (初中英语单词)
- ribbon [´ribən] n.缎带；带子；色带 (初中英语单词)
- evident [´evidənt] a.明显的，明白的 (初中英语单词)
- absolutely [´æbsəlu:tli] ad.绝对地；确实 (初中英语单词)
- outline [´autlain] n.外形 vt.画出...轮廓 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- wherever [weər´evə] conj.无论在哪里 (初中英语单词)
- excitement [ik´saitmənt] n.兴奋；骚动；煽动 (初中英语单词)
- multitude [´mʌltitju:d] n.大群(批)；众多 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- mainly [´meinli] ad.主要地；大体上 (初中英语单词)
- conflict [´kɔnflikt, kən´flikt] n.&vi.战斗；抵触 (初中英语单词)
- curiosity [,kjuəri´ɔsiti] n.好奇；奇事；珍品 (初中英语单词)
- remote [ri´məut] a.遥远的；偏僻的 (初中英语单词)
- upright [´ʌprait] a.直立的 ad.直立地 (高中英语单词)
- barrier [´bæriə] n.栅栏；屏障；障碍 (高中英语单词)
- gigantic [dʒai´gæntik] a.巨大的 (高中英语单词)
- motionless [´məuʃənləs] a.静止的；固定的 (高中英语单词)
- hurried [´hʌrid] a.仓促的，慌忙的 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- revive [ri´vaiv] v.(使)苏醒；(使)振奋 (高中英语单词)
- comprehend [,kɔmpri´hend] vt.了解；领会；包含 (高中英语单词)
- riddle [´ridl] n.谜(语) v.解(谜等) (高中英语单词)
- unseen [,ʌn´si:n] a.未看见的 (高中英语单词)
- staircase [´steəkeis] n.楼梯 =stairway (英语四级单词)
- momentary [´məuməntəri] a.瞬息间的 (英语四级单词)
- hoarse [hɔ:s] a.嘶哑的；嗓门粗哑的 (英语四级单词)
- graham [´greiəm] a.&n.用全麦粉做的 (英语四级单词)
- lincoln [´liŋkən] n.林肯 (英语四级单词)
- amidst [ə´midst] prep.=amid (英语四级单词)
- uproar [´ʌprɔ:] n.喧嚣；骚动；轰鸣，轰动 (英语四级单词)
- instinctively [in´stiŋktivli] ad.本能地 (英语四级单词)
- happening [´hæpəniŋ] n.事件，偶然发生的事 (英语四级单词)
- busily [´bizili] ad.忙碌地 (英语四级单词)
- infinitely [´infinitli] ad.无限地；无穷地 (英语四级单词)
- exceptional [ik´sepʃənəl] a.异常的，特别的 (英语四级单词)
- timidly [´timidli] ad.胆怯地 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- awakening [ə´weikəniŋ] n.&a.觉醒(中的) (英语六级单词)
- resolutely [´rezəlju:tli] ad.坚决地；果断地 (英语六级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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