Some sort of struggle had
sprung into life. People seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on
either side, and carried away against their will. They would spring off
so soon as they were beyond the thick of the confusion, and run back
towards the conflict.
"It is the Sleeper. Verily it is the Sleeper," shouted voices. "That is
never the Sleeper," shouted others. More and more faces were turned to
him. At the intervals along this central area Graham noted openings,
pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with people
ascending out of them and descending into them. The struggle it seemed
centred about the one of these nearest to him. People were running down
the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform to
platform. The clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to divide
their interest between this point and the balcony. A number of sturdy
little figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodically
together, were employed it seemed in preventing access to this descending
staircase. About them a crowd was rapidly accumulating. Their brilliant
colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their antagonists, for
the struggle was indisputable.
He saw these things with Howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm.
And then suddenly Howard was gone and he stood alone.
He perceived that the cries of "The Sleeper!" grew in volume, and that
the people on the nearer platform were standing up.
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