* * * * *

I could have made short work, and landed at Hull:  but I would not:  I was so afraid.  For I was used to the silence of the ice:  and I was used to the silence of the sea:  but I was afraid of the silence of England.

* * * * *

I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August, somewhere about Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm to port, and went on further south, no longer bothering with the instruments, but coasting at hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and now in the centre of a circle of sea; not admitting to myself the motive of this loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, but ignoring the deep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and instinctively hiding myself in to-day.  I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth, Felixstowe.  By now the things that floated motionless on the sea were beyond numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and lift them, without seeing yet another there:  so that soon after dusk I, too, had to lie still among them all, till morning:  for they lay dark, and to move at any pace would have been to drown the already dead.

Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats and Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey and the North Kent coast:  and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler Light:  and all along the coast I had seen no light:  but as to that I said not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart know what my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; but with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darkling land, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon a poor man like me.

And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were very well aware of the Prince’s Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue ship, for there they were:  but I would not look at them at all, nor go near them:  for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever might have happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straight before, seeing nothing, and concerning one’s-self with one’s-self.

The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little to the E. by S. of the North Foreland:  and I saw no light there, nor any Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts were strewn with old wrecked fleets.  I turned about S.E., very slowly moving—­for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead within a ten-mile circle of sea—­and by two in the fore-day had wandered up well in sight of the French cliffs:  for I had said:  ’I will go and see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.’  And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around