He had a queer idea that almost anything might happen in
this seeming waste of waters at this weird hour of ten o'clock. It
appeared incredible to him that only a mile or two away people
were sitting in theatres applauding farces, and that at Cannon
Street Station, a few yards off, other people were calmly taking the
train to various highly respectable suburbs whose names he was
gradually learning. He had the uplifting sensation of being in
another world which comes to us sometimes amid surroundings
violently different from our usual surroundings. The most ordinary
noises - of men calling, of a chain running through a slot, of a
distant siren - translated themselves to his ears into terrible and
haunting sounds, full of portentous significance. He looked over
the side of the boat into the brown water, and asked himself what
frightful secrets lay hidden in its depth. Then he put his hand into
his hip-pocket and touched the stock of his Colt revolver - that
familiar substance comforted him.
The oarsmen had instructions to drop slowly down to the Pool, as
the wide reach below the Tower is called. These two men had not
been previously informed of the precise object of the expedition,
but now that they were safely afloat Hazell judged it expedient to
give them some notion of it. 'We expect to come across a rather
suspicious steam launch,' he said. 'My friend here is very anxious
to get a sight of her, and until he has seen her nothing definite can
be done.
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