The crust of roofs ends abruptly in a country which is a complexity of
gasometers, canals, railway junctions, between which cabbage fields in
long spokes radiate from the train and revolve. There is the grotesque
suggestion of many ships in the distance, for through gaps in a
nondescript horizon masts appear in a kaleidoscopic way. The journey
ends, usually in the rain, among iron sheds that are topped on the far
side by the rigging and smoke-stacks of great liners. There is no
doubt about it now. At the corner of one shed, sheltering from the
weather, is a group of brown men in coloured rags, first seen in the
gloom because of the whites of their eyes. What we remember of such a
day is that it was half of night, and the wind hummed in the cordage,
and swayed wildly the loose gear aloft. Towering hulls were ranged
down each side of a lagoon that ended in vacancy. The rigging and
funnels of the fleet were unrelated; those ships were phantom and
monstrous. They seemed on too great a scale to be within human
control. We felt diminished and a little fearful, as among the looming
urgencies of a dream. The forms were gigantic but vague, and they were
seen in a smother of the elements; and their sounds, deep and mournful,
were like the warnings of something alien, yet without form, which we
knew was adverse, but could not recall when awake again. We remember,
that day, a few watchers insecure on an exposed dockhead that projected
into a sullen dreariness of river and mud which could have been the
finish of the land. At the end of a creaking hawser was a steamer
canting as she backed to head downstream--now she was exposed to a
great adventure--the tide rapid and noisy on her plates, the reek from
her funnel sinking over the water. And from the dockhead, in the
fuddle of a rain-squall, we were waving a handkerchief, probably to the
wrong man, till the vessel went out where all was one--rain, river,
mud, and sky, and the future.