The great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day.  He noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in Phonetic lettering.  But what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into “Here is Eadhamite,” or, “Labour Bureau—­Little Side”?  Grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his!

The perversity of his experience came to him vividly.  In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again.  And that fact realised, he had been prepared.  His mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle.  And no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness.  Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him.  Would he, after all, be killed before he saw?  It might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed.  A great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him.

He became fearful of corners.  It seemed to him that there was safety in concealment.  Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned?  At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there.

He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes.  Suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone.  Suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream.  It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless.  Why were the people fighting for him?  Why should this saner world regard him as Owner and Master?

So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home.  But fact takes no heed of human hopes.  A squad of men with a black banner tramped athwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face.

“It is no dream,” he said, “no dream.”  And he bowed his face upon his hands.

CHAPTER XI

THE OLD MAN WHO KNEW EVERYTHING

He was startled by a cough close at hand.

He turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure.

“Have ye any news?” asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man.

Graham hesitated.  “None,” he said.