on which was written, "The Last Crusade," and a number, the sign
of his official authority. He put this carefully in his upper
waistcoat pocket, lit a cigarette, and went forth to track and
fight the enemy in all the drawing-rooms of London. Where his
adventure ultimately led him we have already seen. At about
half-past one on a February night he found himself steaming in a
small tug up the silent Thames, armed with swordstick and revolver,
the duly elected Thursday of the Central Council of Anarchists.

When Syme stepped out on to the steam-tug he had a singular
sensation of stepping out into something entirely new; not merely
into the landscape of a new land, but even into the landscape of a
new planet. This was mainly due to the insane yet solid decision of
that evening, though partly also to an entire change in the weather
and the sky since he entered the little tavern some two hours
before. Every trace of the passionate plumage of the cloudy sunset
had been swept away, and a naked moon stood in a naked sky. The
moon was so strong and full that (by a paradox often to be noticed)
it seemed like a weaker sun. It gave, not the sense of bright
moonshine, but rather of a dead daylight.

Over the whole landscape lay a luminous and unnatural
discoloration, as of that disastrous twilight which Milton spoke
of as shed by the sun in eclipse; so that Syme fell easily into
his first thought, that he was actually on some other and emptier
planet, which circled round some sadder star. But the more he felt
this glittering desolation in the moonlit land, the more his own
chivalric folly glowed in the night like a great fire. Even the
common things he carried with him--the food and the brandy and the
loaded pistol--took on exactly that concrete and material poetry