had barely time to notice this before I heard the rumbling and whistling
sounds approaching me. A high chair on wheels moved by, through the
field of red light, carrying a shadowy figure with floating hair, and
arms furiously raised and lowered working the machinery that propelled
the chair at its utmost rate of speed. "I am Napoleon, at the sunrise
of Austerlitz!" shouted the man in the chair as he swept past me on his
rumbling and whistling wheels, in the red glow of the fire-light. "I
give the word, and thrones rock, and kings fall, and nations tremble,
and men by tens of thousands fight and bleed and die!" The chair rushed
out of sight, and the shouting man in it became another hero. "I
am Nelson!" the ringing voice cried now. "I am leading the fleet at
Trafalgar. I issue my commands, prophetically conscious of victory and
death. I see my own apotheosis, my public funeral, my nation's tears, my
burial in the glorious church. The ages remember me, and the poets sing
my praise in immortal verse!" The strident wheels turned at the far end
of the room and came back. The fantastic and frightful apparition,
man and machinery blended in one--the new Centaur, half man, half
chair--flew by me again in the dying light. "I am Shakespeare!"
cried the frantic creature now. "I am writing 'Lear,' the tragedy of
tragedies. Ancients and moderns, I am the poet who towers over them
all. Light! light! the lines flow out like lava from the eruption of my
volcanic mind. Light! light! for the poet of all time to write the words
that live forever!" He ground and tore his way back toward the middle of
the room. As he approached the fire-place a last morsel of unburned coal
(or wood) burst into momentary flame, and showed the open doorway. In
that moment he saw us! The wheel-chair stopped with a shock that shook
the crazy old floor of the room, altered its course, and flew at us
with the rush of a wild animal. We drew back, just in time to escape it,
against the wall of the recess. The chair passed on, and burst aside the
hanging tapestry. The light of the lamp in the circular room poured in
through the gap. The creature in the chair checked his furious wheels,
and looked back over his shoulder with an impish curiosity horrible to
see.

"Have I run over them? Have I ground them to powder for presuming to
intrude on me?" he said to himself. As the expression of this amiable
doubt passed his lips his eyes lighted on us. His mind instantly veer