By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it as Canterbury, which I knew quite well.  And I walked up Castle Street to the High Street, conscious for the first time of that regularly-repeated sound, like a sob or groan, which was proceeding from my throat.  As there was no visible moon, and these old streets very dim, I had to pick my way, lest I should desecrate the dead with my foot, and they all should rise with hue and cry to hunt me.  However, the bodies here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners:  and these, scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark night, presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in travail with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out upon it all, God knows.

Only when I stood at the west entrance of the Cathedral I could discern, spreading up the dark nave, to the lantern, to the choir, a phantasmagorical mass of forms:  I went a little inward, and striking three matches, peered nearer:  the two transepts, too, seemed crowded—­the cloister-doorway was blocked—­the southwest porch thronged, so that a great congregation must have flocked hither shortly before their fate overtook them.

Here it was that I became definitely certain that the after-odour of the poison was not simply lingering in the air, but was being more or less given off by the bodies:  for the blossomy odour of this church actually overcame that other odour, the whole rather giving the scent of old mouldy linens long embalmed in cedars.

Well, away with stealthy trot I ran from the abysmal silence of that place, and in Palace Street near made one of those sudden immoderate rackets that seemed to outrage the universe, and left me so woefully faint, decrepit, and gasping for life (the noise of the train was different, for there I was flying, but here a captive, and which way I ran was capture).  Passing in Palace Street, I saw a little lampshop, and wanting a lantern, tried to get in, but the door was locked; so, after going a few steps, and kicking against a policeman’s truncheon, I returned to break the window-glass.  I knew that it would make a fearful noise, and for some fifteen or twenty minutes stood hesitating:  but never could I have dreamed, my good God, of such a noise, so passionate, so dominant, so divulgent, and, O Heaven, so long-lasting:  for I seemed to have struck upon the weak spot of some planet, which came suddenly tumbling, with protracted bellowing and debacle, about my ears.  It was a good hour before I would climb in; but then quickly found what I wanted, and some big oil-cans; and till one or two in the morning, the innovating flicker of my lantern went peering at random into the gloomy nooks of the town.