silence by her superior deck. She left us riotous in her wake, and we
continued our journey dancing our indignation on the uneasy deck of the
_Lizzie_.

The silent drift recommenced, and we neared a region of unearthly
lights and the smell of sulphur, where aerial skeletons, vast and
black, and columns and towers, alternately glowed and vanished as the
doors of infernal fires were opened and shut. We drew abreast of this
phantom place where names and darkness battled amid gigantic ruin.
Charon spoke. "They're the coal wharves," he said.

The lights of a steamer rose in the night below the wharves, but it was
our own progress which brought them nearer. She was anchored. We made
out at last her shape, but at first she did not answer our hail.

"Hullo, _Aldebaran_," once more roared our captain.

There was no answer. In a minute we should be by her, and too late.

"Barge ahoy!" came a voice. "Look out for a line."




III. A Shipping Parish

What face this shipping parish shows to a stranger I do not know. I
was never a stranger to it. I should suppose it to be a face almost
vacant, perhaps a little conventionally picturesque, for it is grey and
seamed. It might be even an altogether expressionless mask, staring at