WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES

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 seen things go down an eddy? Out of
the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity--
down--"

"But," expostulated Isbister.

The man threw out a hand towards him, and his
eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. "I shall
kill myself. If in no other way--at the foot of yonder 
dark precipice there, where the waves are green,
and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little
thread of water trembles down. There at any rate is
. . . sleep."

" That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the
man's hysterical gust of emotion. "Drugs are better
than that."

" There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger,
not heeding him.

Isbister looked at him and wondered transitorily if
some complex Providence had indeed brought them
together that afternoon. "It's not a cert, you know,"
he remarked. " There's a cliff like that at Lulworth
Cove--as high, anyhow--and a little girl fell from
top to bottom. And lives to-day--sound and well."

"But those rocks there? "

"One might lie on them rather dismally through a
cold night, broken bones grating as one shivered, chill
water splashing over you. Eh? "

Their eyes met. "Sorry to upset your ideals," said
Isbister with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance.

"But a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter 
of that), really, as an artist--" He laughed.
"It's so damned amateurish."

"But the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, 
"the other thing. No man can keep sane if
night after night--"

"Have you been walking along this coast alone? "

"Yes."

"Silly sort of thing to do. If you'll excuse my
saying so. Alone! As you say; body fag is no cure
for brain fag. Who told you to? No wonder;
walking! And the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, 
all the day long, and then, I suppose, you go to
bed and try very hard--eh?"

Isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer
doubtfully.

"Look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with
a sudden force of gesture. "Look at that sea that
has shone and quivered there for ever! See the white
spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. And
this blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from
the dome of it. It is your world. You accept it, you
rejoice in it. It warms and supports and delights you.
And for me--"

He turned his head and showed a ghastly face,
bloodshot pallid eyes and bloodless lips. He spoke
almost in a whisper. "It is the garment of my misery.
The whole world . . . is the garment of 
my misery."

Isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit
cliffs about them and back to that face of despair
For a moment he was silent.