sails that sweep out of the morning mist "like restless
gossameres." They make the bridge, which is just within my vision,
and then away past Westminster and Blackfriars where St Paul's
great dome lifts the cross high over a self-seeking city; past
Southwark where England's poet illuminates in the scroll of divine
wisdom the sign of the Tabard; past the Tower with its haunting
ghosts of history; past Greenwich, fairy city, caught in the meshes
of riverside mist; and then the salt and speer of the sea, the
companying with great ships, the fresh burden.

At night I see them again, silent, mysterious; searching the
darkness with unwinking yellow stare, led by a great green light.
They creep up under the bridge which spans the river with its
watching eyes, and vanish, crying back a warning note as they make
the upper reach, or strident hail, as a chain of kindred phantoms
passes, ploughing a contrary tide.

Throughout the long watches of the night I follow them; and in the
early morning they slide by, their eyes pale in the twilight; while
the stars flicker and fade, and the gas lamps die down into a dull
yellow blotch against the glory and glow of a new day.



CHAPTER II



February is here, February fill-dyke; the month of purification, of
cleansing rains and pulsing bounding streams, and white mist