Our voyage was to begin at midnight from near Limehouse Hole. The hour
and the place have been less promising in the beginning of many a
strange adventure. Where the voyage would end could not be said,
except that it would be in Bugsby's Reach, and at some time or other.
It was now ten o'clock, getting towards sailing time, and the way to
the foreshore was unlighted and devious. Yet it was somewhere near.
This area of still and empty night railed off from the glare of the
Commercial Road would be Limehouse Church. It is foolish to suppose
you know the Tower Hamlets because you have seen them by day. They
change. They are like those uncanny folk of the fables. At night,
wonderfully, they become something else, take another form, which has
never been more than glimpsed, and another character, so fabulous and
secret that it will support the tales of the wildest romanticist, who
rightly feels that if such yarns were told of 'Frisco or Timbuctoo they
might get found out. Was this the church? Three Chinamen were
disputing by its gate. Perhaps they were in disagreement as to where
the church would be in daylight.

At a corner where the broad main channel of electric light ended, and
perplexity began, a policeman stood, and directed me into chaos.
"Anywhere," he explained, "anywhere down there will do." I saw a
narrow alley in the darkness, which had one gas lamp and many cobbled
stones. At the bottom of the lane were three iron posts. Beyond the
posts a bracket lamp showed a brick wall, and in the wall was an arch
so full of gloom that it seemed impassable, except to a steady draught
of cold air that might have been the midnight itself entering Limehouse
from its own place. At the far end of that opening in the wall was
nothing. I stood on an invisible wooden platform and looked into
nothing with no belief that a voyage could begin from there. Before me