It was a cloudy and oppressive
evening, not a star showing to illumine the slow tide, now just past
its flood. The vast forms of steamers at anchor - chiefly those of
the General Steam Navigation and the Aberdeen Line - heaved
themselves high out of the water, straining sluggishly at their
mooring buoys. On either side the naked walls of warehouses rose
like grey precipices from the stream, holding forth quaint arms of
steam-cranes. To the west the Tower Bridge spanned the river with
its formidable arch, and above that its suspended footpath - a
hundred and fifty feet from earth.
Down towards the east and the Pool of London a forest of funnels
and masts was dimly outlined against the sinister sky. Huge barges,
each steered by a single man at the end of a pair of giant oars,
lumbered and swirled down-stream at all angles. Occasionally a
tug snorted busily past, flashing its red and green signals and
dragging an unwieldy tail of barges in its wake. Then a Margate
passenger steamer, its electric lights gleaming from every porthole,
swerved round to anchor, with its load of two thousand fatigued
excursionists. Over everything brooded an air of mystery - a spirit
and feeling of strangeness, remoteness, and the inexplicable. As
the broad flat little boat bobbed its way under the shadow of
enormous hulks, beneath stretched hawsers, and past buoys
covered with green slime, Racksole could scarcely believe that he
was in the very heart of London - the most prosaic city in the
world.
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