was falling at the end of an epoch. It was not many years before the
War, to be a little more precise, though then I was unaware of the reason
of the darkness, except common fog.

Besides, why should a Londoner, and even an East-Ender whose familiar
walls are topped by mastheads, believe in the nearness of the ocean? We
think of the shipping no more than we do of the paving stones or of the
warnings of the pious. It is an event of the first importance to go for
a first voyage, though mine was to be only by steam-trawler to the Dogger
Bank; yet, as the event had come to me so late, I had lost faith in the
omens of London's foreshore, among which, at the bottom of Mark Lane, was
an Italian baking chestnuts over a coke fire. The fog, and the slops,
and the smell by Billingsgate, could have been tokens of no more than a
twopenny journey to Shepherd's Bush. I had believed in the signs so
little that I had left my bag at a railway station, miles away.

Three small steamers, the size of tugs, but with upstanding bows and a
sheer suggesting speed and buoyancy, were lying off the fish market, and
mine, the _Windhover_, had the outside berth. I climbed over to her.
Blubber littered her iron deck, and slime drained along her gutters.
Black grits showered from her stack. The smell from her galley, and the
heat from her engine-room casing, were challenging to a stranger. It was
no place for me. The men and porters tramping about their jobs knew
that, and did not order me out of their way. This was Billingsgate, and
there was a tide to be caught. They hustled me out of it. But the
skipper had to be found, for I must know when I had to come aboard. A
perpendicular iron ladder led to her saloon from a hatch, and through
unintelligence and the dark I entered that saloon more precipitously than
was a measure of my eagerness, picked myself up with a coolness which I
can only hope met with the approval of some silent men, watching me, who