FROM THE CROW'S NEST
And so after and through an of and battle, this man from the nineteenth century came at last to his position at the of that world.
At when he rose from the long sleep that his and the of the Council, he did not his surroundings. By an he a in his mind, and all that had came to him, at with a quality of like a heard, like something read out of a book. And his memories were clear, the of his escape, the wonder of his were in his mind. He was owner of the world; Master of the Earth. This new great age was in the his. He no longer to his a dream; he now to himself that they were real.
An him to dress under the direction of a attendant, a little man him Japanese, he spoke English like an Englishman. From the he learnt something of the of affairs. Already the was an fact; already was being the city. Abroad the of the Council had been for the most part with delight. Nowhere was the Council popular, and the thousand of Western America, after two hundred years still of New York, London, and the East, had almost two days at the news of Graham's imprisonment. Paris was itself. The of the world in suspense.
While he was his fast, the of a telephone from a corner, and his called his attention to the voice of Ostrog making enquiries. Graham his to reply. Very Lincoln arrived, and Graham at once a to talk to people and to be more of the new life that was opening him. Lincoln him that in three hours' time a of officials and their would be in the of the wind-vane Chief. Graham's to the of the city was, however, at present impossible, of the of the people. It was, however, possible for him to take a bird's-eye view of the city from the crow's of the wind-vane keeper. To this Graham was by his attendant. Lincoln; with a to the attendant, for not them, on account of the present pressure of work.
Higher than the most gigantic, wind-wheels this crow's nest, a clear thousand above the roofs, a little disc-shaped on a of filigree, stayed. To its Graham was in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway the frail-seeming was a light about which a of tubes—minute they looked from above—rotating slowly on the ring of its rail. These were the specula, en with the wind-vane keeper's mirrors, in one of which Ostrog had him the of his rule. His Japanese him and they nearly an hour and questions.
It was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of the wind warmed. The sky was an and the of London under the sun. The air was clear of and haze, sweet as the air of a glen.
Save for the of about the House of the Council and the black flag of the that there, the city from above of the that had, to his imagination, in one night and one day, the of the world. A of people still over these ruins, and the in the from which started in times of peace the service of to the great of Europe and America, were also black with the victors. Across a narrow way of on that the a of were the the and of the Council House and the of the city, to the transfer of Ostrog's from the Wind-Vane buildings.
For the the was undisturbed. So was its in with the of disturbance, that presently Graham, looking them, almost the thousands of men out of in the the quasi-subterranean labyrinth, or of the wounds, the with the of surgeons, nurses, and busy, forget, indeed, all the wonder, and under the electric lights. Down there in the of the he that the triumphed, that black the day, black favours, black banners, black across the streets. And out here, under the fresh sunlight, the of the fight, as if nothing had to the earth, the of wind that had from one or two while the Council had ruled, peacefully upon their duty.
Far away, spiked, and by the wind vanes, the Surrey Hills rose and faint; to the north and nearer, the of Highgate and Muswell Hill were jagged. And all over the countryside, he knew, on every and hill, where once the had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farm houses had among their trees, wind-wheels to those he saw and like them advertisements, and of the new age, their and the energy that away through all the of the city. And these the and of the British Food Trust, his property, with their and keepers.
Not a familiar the of below. St. Paul's he survived, and many of the old in Westminster, out of sight, over and in among the of this great age. The Thames, too, no and of to the of the city; the thirsty water up every of its they the walls. Its and estuary, and sunken, was now a of sea water, and a of the materials of from the Pool the very of the workers. Faint and in the earth and sky the of the in the Pool. For all the traffic, for which there was no need of haste, came in ships from the ends of the earth, and the for which there was in ships of a smaller sort.
And to the south over the came with sea water for the sewers, and in three ran lines—the roads, with moving specks. On the occasion that offered he was to go out and see these roads. That would come after the ship he was presently to try. His officer them as a pair of a hundred yards wide, each one for the traffic going in one direction, and of a called Eadhamite—an substance, so as he gather, glass. Along this a traffic of narrow rubber-shod vehicles, great single wheels, two and four vehicles, along at of from one to six miles a minute. Railroads had vanished; a as rust-crowned here and there. Some the of Eadhamite ways.
Among the to his attention had been the great of and that in and along the lines of the journeys. No great were to be seen. Their passages had ceased, and only one little-seeming high in the above the Surrey Hills, an speck.
A thing Graham had already learnt, and which he very hard to imagine, was that nearly all the in the country, and almost all the villages, had disappeared. Here and there only, he understood, some hotel-like square miles of some single and the name of a town—as Bournemouth, Wareham, or Swanage. Yet the officer had him how such a had been. The old order had the country with farmhouses, and every two or three miles was the landlord's estate, and the place of the and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church—the village. Every eight miles or so was the country town, where lawyer, merchant, wool-stapler, saddler, surgeon, doctor, draper, and so lived. Every eight miles—simply that eight mile journey, four there and back, was as much as was for the farmer. But directly the railways came into play, and after them the light railways, and all the new that had replaced and horses, and so soon as the high to be of wood, and rubber, and Eadhamite, and all of substances—the of having such market disappeared. And the big grew. They the with the of work, the with their of an of labour.
And as the of rose, as the of the of increased, life in the country had more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. The of and squire, the of the by the city specialist; had the village of its last touch of culture. After telephone, and had replaced newspaper, book, schoolmaster, and letter, to live the range of the electric was to live an savage. In the country were neither means of being (according to the of the time), no doctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits.
Moreover, in one the of thirty labourers. So, the condition of the city in the days when London was of the of its air, the now came to the city and its life and at night to it again in the morning. The city had up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development. First had come the nomad, the hunter, then had the of the state, and and were but the and markets of the countryside. And now, logical of an of invention, was this new of men.
Such as these, of though they were to men, Graham's to picture. And when he "over there" at the that on the Continent, it failed him altogether.
He had a of city city; on great plains, great rivers, along the sea margin, by mountains. Over a great part of the earth the English was spoken; taken together with its Spanish American and Hindoo and Negro and "Pidgin" dialects, it was the everyday-language of two-thirds of humanity. On the Continent, save as and survivals, three other alone sway—German, which to Antioch and Genoa and Spanish-English at Cadiz; a Gallicised Russian which met the Indian English in Persia and Kurdistan and the "Pidgin" English in Pekin; and French still clear and brilliant, the language of lucidity, which the Mediterranean with the Indian English and German and through a to the Congo.
And now through the city-set earth, save in the "black belt" of the tropics, the same social prevailed, and from Pole to Equator his property and his extended. The whole world was civilised; the whole world in cities; the whole world was his property….
Out of the south-west, and strange, voluptuous, and in some way terrible, those Pleasure Cities of which the kinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the had spoken. Strange places of the Sybaris, of art and beauty, art and beauty, of motion and music, repaired all who by the fierce, inglorious, economic that on in the below.
Fierce he it was. How he judge from the that these latter-day people to the England of the nineteenth century as the of an easy-going life. He his to the him again, trying to the big of that maze….
