Page:The food of the gods, and how it came to earth.djvu/289

 a little in order to get it taken away, drank freely of whisky, and then took a chair and went back to the window. The minutes expanded into grey immensities, and for a time perhaps he slept....

He woke with a vague impression of remote concussions. He perceived a rattling of the windows like the quiver of an earthquake, that lasted for a minute or so and died away. Then after a silence it returned.... Then it died away again. He fancied it might be merely the passage of some heavy vehicle along the main road. What else could it be?

After a time he began to doubt whether he had heard this sound.

He began to reason interminably with himself. Why, after all, was he seized? Caterham had been in office two days--just long enough--to grasp his Nettle! Grasp his Nettle! Grasp his Giant Nettle! The refrain once started, sang through his mind, and would not be dismissed.

What, after all, could Caterham do? He was a religious man. He was bound in a sort of way by that not to do violence without a cause.

Grasp his Nettle I Perhaps, for example, the Princess was to be seized and sent abroad. There might be trouble with his son. In which case--! But why had he been arrested? Why was it necessary to keep him in ignorance of a thing like that? The thing suggested--something more extensive.

Perhaps, for example--they meant to lay all the giants by the heels I They wer