The old facade of the Hospital was just warming to the
sunset as we went by, and after that, right and left, the river opened,
the sense of the sea increased and prevailed, reach after reach from
Northfleet to the Nore.
And out you come at last with the sun behind you into the eastern
sea. You speed up and tear the oily water louder and faster, siroo,
siroo-swish-siroo, and the hills of Kent--over which I once fled from
the Christian teachings of Nicodemus Frapp--fall away on the right hand
and Essex on the left. They fall away and vanish into blue haze, and
the tall slow ships behind the tugs, scarce moving ships and wallowing
sturdy tugs, are all wrought of wet gold as one goes frothing by. They
stand out, bound on strange missions of life and death, to the killing
of men in unfamiliar lands. And now behind us is blue mystery and the
phantom flash of unseen lights, and presently even these are gone, and
I and my destroyer tear out to the unknown across a great grey space.
We tear into the great spaces of the future and the turbines fall to
talking in unfamiliar tongues.
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