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

replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of Victorian
London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine
cables Iying athwart it in every direction. The circular wheels of a number
of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and
snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful white light
smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and
made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down! some
vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks.

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood about
him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and
fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things were said
briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward.

Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Graham across the flat roof
in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. Graham obeyed.

"Mind!" said a voice, as Graham stumbled against a cable. "Between them and
not across them," said the voice. And, "We must hurry."

"Where are the people? " said Graham. "The people you said awaited me? "

The stranger did not answer. He left Graham's arm as the path grew
narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. Graham followed blindly. In a
minute he found himself running. "Are the others coming?" he panted, but
received no reply. His companion glanced back and ran on. They came to a
sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the direction they had
come, and they turned aside to follow this. Graham looked back, but the
snowstorm had hidden the others.

"Come on!" said his guide. Running now, they drew near a little windmill
spinning high in the air. "Stoop," said Graham's guide, and they avoided an
endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "This way!" and
they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow, between two
low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "I will go first," said
the guide. Graham drew his cloak about him and followed. Then suddenly came
a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy darkness of the
further side. Graham peeped over the side once and the gulf was black. For
a moment he regretted his flight. He dared not look again, and his brain
spun as he waded through the half liquid snow.

Then out of the gutter they clambered and hurried across a wide flat space
damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights
that went to and fro underneath. He hesitated at this unstable looking
substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came to and
clambered up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass. Round this
they went. Far below a number of people seemed to be dancing, and music
filtered through the dome. . . . Graham fancied he heard a shouting through
the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new spurt of haste. They