at you would like a
bath and in consequence being instantly knocked overboard to sink or
swim with your clothes on. However, I didn't feel as if I were in deep
water at first. I left the shipping office quietly and for a time
strolled along the street as easy as if I had a week before me to fit
myself out. But by and by I reflected that the notice was even shorter
than it looked. The afternoon was well advanced; I had some things to
get, a lot of small matters to attend to, one or two persons to see: One
of them was an aunt of mine, my only relation, who quarrelled with poor
father as long as he lived about some silly matter that had neither
right nor wrong to it. She left her money to me when she died. I used
always to go and see her for decency's sake. I had so much to do before
night that I didn't know where to begin. I felt inclined to sit down on
the kerb and hold my head in my hands. It was as if an engine had been
started going under my skull. Finally I sat down in the first cab that
came along and it was a hard matter to keep on sitting there I can tell
you, while we rolled up and down the streets, pulling up here and there,
the parcels accumulating round me and the engine in my head gathering
more way every minute. The composure of the people on the pavements was
provoking to a degree, and as to the people in shops, they were
benumbed, more than half frozen--imbecile. Funny how it affects you to
be in a peculiar state of mind: everybody that does not act up to your
excitement seems so confoundedly unfriendly. And my state of mind what
with the hurry, the worry and a growing exultation was peculiar enough.
That engine in my head went round at its top speed hour after hour till
at about eleven at night it let up on me suddenly at the entrance to the
Dock before large iron gates in a dead wall."

These gates were closed and locked. The cabby, after shooting his
things off the roof of his machine into young Powell's arms, drove away
leaving him alone with his sea-chest, a sail cloth bag and a few parcels
on the pavement about his feet. It was a dark, narrow thoroughfare he
told us. A mean row of houses on the other side looked empty: there
wasn't the smallest gleam of light in them. The white-hot glare of a
gin palace a good way off made the intervening piece of the street
pitch-black. Some human shapes appearing mysteriously, as if they had
sprung up from the dark ground, shunned the edge of the f