IV THE "HEART'S DESIRE"
V THE MASTER
VI THE SHIP-RUNNERS
VII NOT IN THE ALMANAC
VIII THE ILLUSION
IX IN A COFFEE-SHOP
X OFF-SHORE
XI AN OLD LLOYD'S REGISTER




I. The Foreshore

It begins on the north side of the City, at Poverty Corner. It begins
imperceptibly, and very likely is no more than what a native knows is
there. It does not look like a foreshore. It looks like another of
the byways of the capital. There is nothing to distinguish it from the
rest of Fenchurch Street. You will not find it in the Directory, for
its name is only a familiar bearing used by seamen among themselves.
If a wayfarer came upon it from the west, he might stop to light a pipe
(as well there as anywhere) and pass on, guessing nothing of what it is
and of its memories. And why should he? London is built of such old
shadows; and while we are here casting our own there is not much time
to turn and question what they fall upon. Yet if some unreasonable
doubt, a suspicion that he was being watched, made a stranger hesitate
at that corner, he might begin to feel that London there was as
different from Bayswater and Clapham as though deep water intervened.
In a sense deep water does; and not only the sea, but legends of ships
that have gone, and of the men who knew them, and traditions of a