(Breaking into a heavy sweat.) Great God! I haven’t a place to hide! Oh, Lord, what shall I do? (He turns, and in his dream he imagines a deserted stone hut set in a grove of thick tall trees, which seems to offer shelter. He runs towards the hut.) As I live, here is a stone hut among thick trees! I’ll hide in it. Perhaps they won’t see me. (He dashes wildly in, slamming a heavy door behind him.)
A SCORE OF DREAM SOLDIERS
(Hurrying after him and knocking with their musket butts on the door.) Knock! Knock! Knock!
PATSY LAFERTY
(At the door.) Knock! Knock! Knock! Gee, wot a night! Dese raindrops look like spits. An’ dat lightning! Dat last one looked like a telegraph pole standin’ straight in de air!
SYPHERS
(Cowering in a corner.) Oh, Lord! My life is worth nothing! Here I lie hiding in an empty stone hut, and those men at the door want my life. What is life? A dream! A dream!—but, oh, such a precious dream! I would not want to disappear—not yet! No, no! I would not want to wake up. I don’t want to die—not yet. Not yet! (As he lies there cowering, all the coruscations and thunder of a great battle afflict him; cannon, machine guns, human cries, commands. He cowers lower, and yet in spite of the thickness of the walls which seem to protect him he can see through them to the surrounding trees to where the dream soldiers await him—tall men in red coats and towering shakos—and beyond them again to the battlefield, red with flame and gore. As he stares, the men in the shakos glare at him.)
FIRST DREAM SOLDIER
(Pointing at him and speaking to another.) We’ll easily get him out of there. Can’t you see him lying there, close by the wall? (To the other soldiers.) Bring a battering ram. (A soldier starts off.) No, bring a cannon. We’ll blow him out. (A second soldier goes.) He thinks we can’t get him, but we can. (Other soldiers draw near. They move in the curious, indefinite way common to figures in dreams. Nothing is clear, and yet there is a sense of impending disaster. The Professor studies the nature of his predicament with a sense of horror.)