



Produced by John Bean





WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES

By Herbert George Wells




CHAPTER I. INSOMNIA

One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at
Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen,
desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous
path to the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an
attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. The
hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and
staring before him, and his face was wet with tears.

He glanced round at Isbister's footfall. Both men were disconcerted,
Isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his
involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that
the weather was hot for the time of year.

"Very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in
a colourless tone, "I can't sleep."

Isbister stopped abruptly. "No?" was all he said, but his bearing
conveyed his helpful impulse.

"It may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to
Isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but I
have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights."

"Had advice?"

"Yes. Bad advice for the most part. Drugs. My nervous system.... They
are all very well for the run of people. It's hard to explain. I dare
not take... sufficiently powerful drugs."

"That makes it difficult," said Isbister.

He stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. Clearly
the man wanted to talk. An idea natural enough under the circumstances,
prompted him to keep the conversation going. "I've never suffered from
sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in
those cases I have known, people have usually found something--"

"I dare make no experiments."

He spoke wearily. He gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both
men were silent.

"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.

"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to
the mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
something--"

He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.

"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which
I have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the
childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, I
childless--I could find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One
thing at last I set myself to do.

"I said, I will do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs!
I don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only
live in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
complacencies--or irritations. We have to take the air or else our
thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A
thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes
drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's
day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
rest--black coffee, cocaine--"

"I see," said Isbister.

"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.

"And this is the price?"

"Yes."

For a little while the two remained without speaking.

"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a hunger and
thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a
whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts
leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--"

He paused. "Towards the gulf."

"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."

"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"

"Yes?"

"You have