The wind abated and the sea calmed. The sun, a mere ghost, looked down through worn places of the cloud-rack, like a pale face pressed to a rain-smeared pane. A long, wavy line of cliffs, dirty-white, blurred and indistinct in a perpetual mist, was pointed out to him as the land of the English. He saw it vaguely as one sees whose sight is dim with tears. All his hope centred in the little moneybag at his chest; there was comfort in thinking that he had enough to pay the price of a return voyage to the land of sunlight. Not for a day would he sojourn in this region of eternal gloaming, but would seek out a ship at once and take passage in her. There was sure to be some good Muslim at the landing-place who would direct him for the love of Allah and the Faith that saves.
The cliffs were gone and the ship moved along by a low, marshy coast. Here and there a group of dwellings, a lighthouse, a lonely hut broke the sullen monotony of the shoreline blackly. There was land on both sides now—flat and dreary, shadowed, grim and inhuman as Jehennum itself. Saïd wondered what kind of men could dwell in that wilderness meant for the damned. The waterway was dotted with ships great and small. The sun was shining, but so faintly that he hardly knew it. A few wan snakes at play upon the ripples were all the brightness it gave.
Anon the gloom deepened in spite of the feeble sun and became of a dull, yellowish brown. The shore drew nearer on either hand. They entered a great river, populous with all manner of craft—by far the greatest Saïd had ever seen. After noon, as they still glided on, the face of the sun took on a reddish hue, and the water glinted cold and coppery to its lifeless rays. The world seemed dead, and the stir of human life upon it loathsome as the foul brood of corruption. The river wound between two banks of fog, on which strange shapes of roof and chimney, tower and steeple, and the masts of ships appeared carven or painted by a tremulous hand. From all sides clouds of smoke arose, feeding the gloom and blending with it perpetually. It was as if the whole land smouldered. Ships were moored along the wharves, at the foot of huge buildings frowning like precipices. Here and there a large steamer, lying out towards midstream, had a swarm of small craft—lighters, wherries and row boats—about her, clinging to her, trailing from her like driftwood: a floating island, long and black upon the burnished water.
A mighty clamour filled all the gloom and seemed a part of it. The beat of hammers rang out so thunderous that Saïd trembled to guess what made it. There was a constant hiss of escaping steam, the throbbing of huge engines, the creak and rattle of cranes culminating now and then in a long roar, the whistle and hoot of steamers, sounds of puffing and the swish of paddle-wheels, shouts and cries of human kind. Smells found their way out on to the river and dwelt there, in spite of a light breeze blowing up from the sea—smells of the furnace and the tan-yard, of pitch and resin, and the prevailing pungent smoke. The taste in Saïd’s mouth was a mixture of smoke and brine. He was choked, deafened, wholly bewildered.
One of the sailors, the most villainous-looking of all, who had of late made friendly overtures to him in the shape of devilish grins and murderous digs in the ribs, drew near and smote the tarpaulin.
“Lûndra!” he said, leering into Saïd’s face.
“Lûndra!” echoed the passenger with a series of nods and a bright display of teeth, explaining that he understood. At that the mariner laughed hoarsely and began a lively pantomime, twitching Saïd’s robe, pointing to the shore, slapping his own chest, and then making as if he would embrace the fisherman. Saïd was slow to see the drift of all this; the whole show had to be repeated a second time. But at last he gathered that this sailor of the evil countenance was his sincere well-wisher and would take charge of him when the time came to disembark.
The sun, swathed in smoke-wreaths, was already setting in crimson when, amid hoarse shouts of greeting and command, the frenzied blowing of a whistle and much flinging about of ropes and chains, the ship drew up to a wharf-side. The river flowed as turbid blood, parting a dark wilderness of masts and rigging, of endless, shapeless buildings. Here and there a pane of glass or other polished surface caught a beam and sprang to lurid flame. Westward, over against the sun, a great black dome brooded over the misty roofs. The din of the city had a note of weariness, like the sighing of a great multitude.
He shrank from landing. At least the ship was known to him, familiar in its every part; whereas this boundless, black city, whose sweat was filthy smoke, frightened him as a living monster lying in wait to devour. Surely it was the realm of Eblis, the abode of evil spirits and of souls in torment. For a long while he watched the business of the wharf, his brain ahum with doubt and bewilderment, so that he could not read or unravel his thoughts.
The skipper came and spoke gruffly to him, pointing to the gangway. He dragged the tarpaulin from Saïd’s shoulders and flung it aside upon a heap of cordage. The Arab saw plainly that there was no choice left for him. Trembling and shrinking, in his flowing Eastern dress of many colours, he hurried across the plank, looking back to the ship, the scene of so much anguish for him, with longing as to a
