" He
spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man
trying to decide in an emergency. "We must get you clothes and so forth,
at any rate. Better wait here until they can be procured. No one will
come near you. You want shaving."
Graham rubbed his chin.
The man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly,
listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried
off through the archway towards the balcony. The tumult of shouting grew
louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly
under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly
expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting
and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then
a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to
draw some single thread of sound from the woven tumult.
Then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. For a
time he doubted his ears. But surely these were the words: "Show us the
Sleeper! Show us the Sleeper!"
The thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway.
"Wild!" he cried. "How do they know? Do they know? Or is it guessing?"
There was perhaps an answer.
"I can't come," said the thickset man; "I have _him_ to see to. But shout
from the balcony."
There was an inaudible reply.
"Say he is not awake. Anything! I leave it to you.
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