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

had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to
walk abreast. He was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making
Boscastle Harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his
companion interrupted him again.

"My head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of
expressive phrases. "It's not like what it was. There is a sort of
oppression, a weight. No-not drowsiness, would God it were! It is like a
shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across something busy.
Spin, spin into the darkness The tumult of thought, the confusion, the eddy
and eddy. I can't express it. I can hardly keep my mind on it-steadily
enough to tell you."

He stopped feebly.

" Don't trouble, old chap," said Isbister. "I think I can understand. At
any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me, you
know."

The sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them.
Isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had a
fresh idea. "Come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. I can show
you some sketches of this Blackapit. If you'd care? "

The other rose obediently and followed him down the steep.

Several times Isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his
movements were slow and hesitating. "Come in with me," said Isbister, "and
try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. If you take alcohol?"

The stranger hesitated at the garden gate. He seemed no longer clearly
aware of his actions. "I don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden
path, and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "No-I don't drink.
It goes round. Spin, it goes -spin-"

He stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one
who sees nothing.

Then he sat down abruptly and heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost to
fall into it. He leant forward with his brows on his hands and became
motionless.

Presently he made a faint sound in his throat. Isbister moved about the
room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little remarks
that scarcely required answering. He crossed the room to his portfolio,
placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock.

"I don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an
unlighted cigarette in his handhis mind troubled with a design of the
furtive administration of chloral. "Only cold mutton, you know, but passing