rried 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. The nearer swifter
platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the
space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded
and passing away bare. With incredible swiftness a vast crowd had
gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass
of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous
incessant clamour: "The Sleeper! The Sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a
waving of garments and cries of "Stop the ways!" They were also crying
another name strange to Graham. It sounded like "Ostrog." The slower
platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the
movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him.

"Stop the ways," they cried. Agile figures ran up swiftly from the
centre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him,
shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the
central way. One thing he distinguished: "It is indeed the Sleeper. It
is indeed the Sleeper," they testified.

For a space Graham stood without a movement. Then he became vividly
aware that all this concern