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 repla