her and range themselves and signal and pick up men, until at last
they sailed away towards the glowing sunset, going to the great Asiatic
rendez-vous, above the oil wells of Cleveland. They dwindled and passed
away, leaving him alone, so far as he could tell, the only living man
in a world of ruin and strange loneliness almost beyond describing. He
watched them recede and vanish. He stood gaping after them.

"Gaw!" he said at last, like one who rouses himself from a trance.

It was far more than any personal desolation extremity that flooded his
soul. It seemed to him indeed that this must be the sunset of his race.

2

He did not at first envisage his own plight in definite and
comprehensible terms. Things happened to him so much of late, his
own efforts had counted for so little, that he had become passive and
planless. His last scheme had been to go round the coast of England as
a Desert Dervish giving refined entertainment to his fellow-creatures.
Fate had quashed that. Fate had seen fit to direct him to other
destinies, had hurried him from point to point, and dropped him at
last upon this little wedge of rock between the cataracts. It did
not instantly occur to him that now it was his turn to play. He had
a singular feeling that all must end as a dream ends, that presently
surely he would be back in the world of Grubb and Edna and Bun Hill,
that this roar, this glittering presence of incessant water, would be
drawn aside as a curtain is drawn aside after a holiday lantern show,
and old familiar, customary things re-assume their sway. It would be
interesting to tell people how he had seen Niagara. And then Kurt's
words came into his head: "People torn away from the people they care
for; homes smashed, creatures full of life and memories and peculiar
little gifts--torn to pieces, starved, and spoilt."...

He wondered, half incredulous, if that was in deed true. It was so hard
to realise it. Out beyond there was it possible that Tom and Jessica
were also in some dire extremity? that the little green-grocer's shop
was no longer standing open, with Jessica serving respectfully, warming
Tom's ear in sharp asides, or punctually sending out the goods?

He tried to think what day of the week it was, and found he had lost his
reckoning. Perhaps it was Sunday. If so, were they going to church or,
were they hiding, perhaps in bushes? What had happened to the landlord,
the butcher, and to Butteridge and all those people