which a child feels when he takes a gun upon a journey or a bun
with him to bed. The sword-stick and the brandy-flask, though in
themselves only the tools of morbid conspirators, became the
expressions of his own more healthy romance. The sword-stick
became almost the sword of chivalry, and the brandy the wine of
the stirrup-cup. For even the most dehumanised modern fantasies
depend on some older and simpler figure; the adventures may be
mad, but the adventurer must be sane. The dragon without St.
George would not even be grotesque. So this inhuman landscape was
only imaginative by the presence of a man really human. To Syme's
exaggerative mind the bright, bleak houses and terraces by the
Thames looked as empty as the mountains of the moon. But even the
moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

The tug was worked by two men, and with much toil went
comparatively slowly. The clear moon that had lit up Chiswick had
gone down by the time that they passed Battersea, and when they
came under the enormous bulk of Westminster day had already begun
to break. It broke like the splitting of great bars of lead,
showing bars of silver; and these had brightened like white fire
when the tug, changing its onward course, turned inward to a large
landing stage rather beyond Charing Cross.

The great stones of the Embankment seemed equally dark and gigantic
as Syme looked up at them. They were big and black against the huge
white dawn. They made him feel that he was landing on the colossal
steps of some Egyptian palace; and, indeed, the thing suited his
mood, for he was, in his own mind, mounting to attack the solid
thrones of horrible and heathen kings. He leapt out of the boat on
to one slimy step, and stood, a dark and slender figure, amid the