on and novelty under the
electric lights. Down there in the hidden ways of the anthill he knew
that the revolution triumphed, that black everywhere carried the day,
black favours, black banners, black festoons across the streets. And out
here, under the fresh sunlight, beyond the crater of the fight, as if
nothing had happened to the earth, the forest of Wind Vanes that had
grown from one or two while the Council had ruled, roared peacefully
upon their incessant duty.

Far away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the Surrey
Hills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contours
of Highgate and Muswell Hill were similarly jagged. And all over the
countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges
had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled
among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like
vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast
their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed
away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. And underneath
these wandered the countless flocks and herds of the British Food Trust
with their lonely guards and keepers.

Not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes
below. St. Paul's he knew survived, and many of the old buildings in
Westminster, embedded out of sight, arched over and covered in among the
giant growths of this great age. The Themes, too, made no fall and gleam
of silver to break the wilderness of the city; the thirsty water mains
drank up every drop of its waters before they reached the walls. Its bed
and estuary scoured and sunken, was now a canal of sea water and a race
of grimy bargemen brought the heavy materials of trade from the Pool
thereby beneath the very feet of the workers. Faint and dim in the
eastward between earth and sky hung the clustering masts of the colossal
shipping in the Pool. For all the heavy traffic, for which there was
no need of haste, came in gigantic sailing ships from the ends of the
earth, and the heavy goods for which there was urgency in mechanical
ships of a smaller swifter sort.

And to the south over the hills, came vast aqueducts with sea water
for the sewers and in three separate directions, ran pallid lines--the
roads, stippled with moving grey specks. On the first occasion that
offered he was determined to go out and see these roads. That would come
after the f