had to lie still among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and to
move at any pace would have been to drown the already dead.

Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats
and Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey
and the North Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler
Light: and all along the coast I had seen no light: but as to that I
said not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart know
what my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; but
with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darkling
land, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon a
poor man like me.

And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were
very well aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue
ship, for there they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor go
near them: for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever might
have happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straight
before, seeing nothing, and concerning one's-self with one's-self.

The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little
to the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any
Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts
were strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly
moving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead
within a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wandered
up well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and
see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that
nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in
the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose