His descent into the street was like the descent into a slimy aquarium from which the water had been run off.

A murky, gloomy dampness enveloped him.

The walls of the houses were wet, the mud of the roadway glistened with an effect of phosphorescence, and when he emerged into the Strand out of a narrow street by the side of Charing Cross Station the genius of the locality assimilated him.

He might have been but one more of the queer foreign fish that can be seen of an evening about there flitting round the dark corners.
He came to a stand on the very edge of the pavement, and waited.

His exercised eyes had made out in the confused movements of lights and shadows thronging the roadway the crawling approach of a hansom.