As the broad flat little boat bobbed its way under the shadow of enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and past buoys covered with green slime, Racksole could scarcely believe that he was in the very heart of London--the most prosaic city in the world.

He had a queer idea that almost anything might happen in this seeming waste of waters at this weird hour of ten o'clock.

It appeared incredible to him that only a mile or two away people were sitting in theatres applauding farces, and that at Cannon Street Station, a few yards off, other people were calmly taking the train to various highly respectable suburbs whose names he was gradually learning.

He had the uplifting sensation of being in another world which comes to us sometimes amid surroundings violently different from our usual surroundings.

The most ordinary noises--of men calling, of a chain running through a slot, of a distant siren--translated themselves to his ears into terrible and haunting sounds, full of portentous significance.