Miss Clarence was startled. She had heard of sleeping sickness, but had always supposed it to be a tropical disease. It surprised her to hear that it was ravaging an island like Inishrua.
“Men or women, it’s the same,” said Michael. “They’ll sleep all night and they’ll sleep the most of the day. Not a tap of work will be done on the island, summer or winter.”
“But,” said Miss Clarence, “how do they live?”
“They’ll not live long,” said Michael. “Amn’t I telling you that they’re dying out? It’s the sleep that’s killing them.”
Miss Clarence drew a large notebook and a pencil from her bag. Michael was greatly pleased. He went on to tell her that the Inishrua islanders had become enormously rich during the war. Wrecked ships had drifted on to their coasts in dozens. They had gathered in immense stores of oil, petrol, cotton, valuable wood and miscellaneous merchandise of every kind. There was no need for them to work any more. Digging, ploughing, fishing, toil of every kind was unnecessary. All they had to do was eat and sleep, waking up now and then for an hour or two to sell their spoils to eager buyers who came to them from England.
Michael could have gone on talking about the immense riches of the islanders. He would have liked to enlarge upon the evil consequences of having no work to do, the inevitable extinction which waits for those who merely sleep. But he was conscious that Peter Gahan was becoming uneasy. As a good socialist, Peter knew that work is an unnecessary evil, and that men will never be healthy or happy until they escape from the tyranny of toil. He was not likely to listen patiently to Michael’s doctrine that a race of sleepers is doomed to extinction. At any moment he might burst into the conversation argumentatively. And Michael Kane did not want that. He liked to do all the talking himself. He switched off the decay of the islanders and started a new subject which he hoped would be equally interesting to Miss Clarence.
“It’s a lucky day you have for visiting the island,” he said. “But sure you know that yourself, and there’s no need for me to be telling you.”
Beyond the fact that the day was moderately fine, Miss Clarence did not know that there was anything specially lucky about it. She looked enquiringly at Michael Kane.
“It’s the day of the King’s wedding,” said Michael.
To Miss Clarence “the King” suggested his Majesty George V. But he married some time ago, and she did not see why the islanders should celebrate an event of which most people have forgotten the date. She cast round in her mind for another monarch likely to be married; but she could not think of any. There are not, indeed, very many kings left in the world now. Peter Gahan gave a vicious dab at his engine with his oil-can, and then emerged feet first from the shelter of the fore deck. This talk about kings irritated him.