like weathered and unequal cliffs. It is hard to believe sunlight ever
falls there. It could not get down. It is not easy to believe the
River is near. It seldom shows. You think at times you hear the
distant call of a ship. But what would that be? Something in the
mind. It happened long ago. You, too, are a ghost left by the
vanished past. There is a man above at a high loophole, the topmost
cave of a warehouse which you can see has been exposed to commerce and
the elements for ages; he pulls in a bale pendulous from the cable of a
derrick. Below him one of the horses of a van tosses its nose-bag.
There is no other movement. A carman leans against an iron post, and
cuts bread and cheese with a clasp-knife. It was curious to hear that
steamer call, but we knew what it was. It was from a ship that went
down, we have lately heard, in the War, and her spectre reminds us,
from a voyage which is over, of men we shall see no more. But the call
comes again just where the Stairs, like a shining wedge of day, hold
the black warehouses asunder, and give us the light of the River and a
release to the outer world. And there, moving swiftly across the
brightness, goes a steamer outward bound.

That was what we wanted to know. She confirms it, and her signal, to
whomever it was made, carries farther than she would guess. It is
understood. The past for some of us now is our only populous and
habitable world, invisible to others, but alive with whispers for us.
Yet the sea still moves daily along the old foreshore, and ships still
come and go, and do not, like us, run aground on what now is not there.




II. A Midnight Voyage