with its fires, as it went ahead, a radiant _Lizzie_ on an area of
water that leaped in red flames. The furnace door of the tug was shut,
and at once we were blind. "Hold hard," yelled our skipper, and the
_Lizzie_ slipped into the turmoil of the tug's wake.

There would be Millwall. The tug and the turmoil had gone. We were
alone again in the beyond. There was no sound now but the water
spattering under our craft, and the fumbling and infrequent splash of
the sweep. Once we heard the miniature bark of a dog, distinct and
fine, as though distance had refined it as well as reduced it. We were
nearly round the loop the River makes about Millwall, and this unknown
region before us was Blackwall Reach by day, and Execution Dock used to
be dead ahead. To the east, over the waters, red light exploded
fan-wise and pulsed on the clouds latent above, giving them momentary
form. It was as though, from the place where it starts, the dawn had
been released too soon, and was at once recalled. "The gas works,"
said the skipper.

Still the slow drift, quite proper to those at large in eternity. But
this, I was told, was the beginning of Bugsby's Reach. It was first a
premonition, then a doubt, and at last a distinct tremor in the
darkness ahead of us. A light appeared, grew nearer, higher, and
brighter, and there was a suspicion of imminent mass. "Watch her,"
warned the skipper. Watch what? There was nothing to watch but the
dark and some planets far away, one of them red. The menacing one
still grew higher and brighter. It came at us. A wall instantly
appeared to overhang us, with a funnel and masts above it, and our
skipper's yell was lost in the thunder of a churning propeller. The
air shuddered, and a siren hooted in the heavens. A long, dark body
seemed minutes going by us, and our skipper's insults were taken in