"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

"I suppose so, now."

"In the first place, hadn't I better have some clothes? "

"They-" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met
his eye and went away. "You will very speedily have clothes," said the
thickset man.

"Is it true indeed, that I have been asleep two hundred-?" asked Graham.

"They have told you that, have they? Two hundred and three, as a matter of
fact."

Graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed
mouth. He sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "Is there a
mill or dynamo near here?" He did not wait for an answer. "Things have
changed tremendously, I suppose?" he said.

"What is that shouting? " he asked abruptly.

"Nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "It's people. You'll
understand better later-perhaps. As you say, things have changed." 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 some can come. 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: " how 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.