Indeed, it was a life! Why did one hang on to it? Not far away dark water oozed and sucked around big, stationary ships. All one had to do was to get up, feel one’s way over the damp ground, avoiding posts and chains and ropes—there wasn’t any need to hurt yourself on the way, was there?—until there wasn’t any wet ground, but only the dark water. ‘Couple o’ gurgles, and yer’ve done with knocks,’ he reflected. Then he chided himself. Wot, ’im a swizzicide? ’Im wot ’ad been in the Merchant Service and ’ad once asked a captain for a rise? ‘Ben, yer potty!’ he announced to his weaker nature. ‘Come orf it!’ And so, instead of seeking the dark water, he sought the post again, with the more temporary sleep it offered, discovered too late that the post wasn’t there, and found himself flat.
He gave a yelp. The yelp was echoed. Now Ben was no longer flat. He was on his feet, shaking like a struck tuning-fork. For if the second yelp had really been an echo of the first, its character had changed uncannily in the tiny space of time between!
Ben’s yelp had been the yelp of one in sudden pain. The other seemed to have come from one in sudden panic.
‘Well, I’m in a panic, ain’t I?’ chattered Ben, struggling for comfort in the thought.
He stood, listening—for thirteen years. The echo was not repeated. Then, deciding that any place was better than where he was, a condition which possibly explains the source of most human energy, he groped his way through darkest dockland in search of a happier spot. He did not know in what direction he was walking saving that, if the second cry had come from the north, he was unerringly walking south.
He came upon another post. It wasn’t a nice post. It was unnaturally white, and it fluttered. All at once it occurred to Ben that it wasn’t a post at all, and that he had better hit it. The blow proved, painfully, that it was a post, but the fluttering white costume still needed explaining. A match explained it. Matches, at certain moments, are wonderful company. The service performed by the present match, however, might have been improved on. The costume turned out to be a newspaper poster tied round the post with a piece of string, and the poster said:
OLD MAN
MURDERED
AT
HAMMERSMITH
‘Gawd! Ain’t I never goin’ ter git away from it?’ muttered Ben.
For a few seconds the match-light flickered on the gruesome words—words against which the holder of the match might have laid his head. But sleep was no longer in the immediate programme. A rat, an echo, and a placard had combined to demonstrate that dockland—or, at any rate, this particular corner of dockland—was unhealthy, and that the best thing to do was to get right out of it.
The match-light touched his fingers. He dropped it spasmodically, but suppressed the exclamation. He had an idea that ears were listening, and in the darkness that followed the match’s descent the policy of retreat became instantly more appealing. Even in the darkness the horrible placard was still visible. It shivered palely as a little night breeze slithered from the sides of ships, and suddenly Ben turned and darted away. His foot caught in a chain, and he made a croquet-hoop over it.
He remained, croquet-hooped, for nearly half a minute. Only by utter staticism, he felt, did he stand any chance that Fate would lose him and pass him by. He knew for certain by now that Fate was hunting him, and that the invisible fingers were groping to make their catch. It was only when he considered that it would not be dignified to be caught in the shape of a croquet-hoop that he cautiously rose and proceeded on his miserable way.
He trod gingerly. He raised his feet high over many chains that were not there, and failed to raise them over another that was. He didn’t fall this time, however. As the ground rose up towards him, like the deck of a rolling ship, he lurched his left leg forward with a bent knee, recalling a trick of his old sea days. ‘Not this time, cocky!’ He glared at the chain. But a couple of seconds later he looped over some fresh obstacle, and his hands descended on something soft.
‘Wot’s ’appened?’ he wondered. ‘Is the bloomin’ ground meltin’?’
Or was it grass? But what would grass be doing here? Soft. Soft and warmish. Now, what was soft and warmish?
The solution came to him in a sickening flash. Suddenly weakened, the human croquet-hoop went flat, doing a sort of splits north and south from the stomach. Then it bounded up towards the unseen stars. It is doubtful whether anything in dockland had risen so high in the time since the days of bombardments.
Obeying the laws of gravitation, Ben came down on the spot from which he had vertically ascended. In other words, he came down on a dead man. After that, he ran amok.
He ran without knowledge of time or direction. Actually, the time was five minutes, and the direction was a very large circle. He fought imaginary foes all the way, and at every fifth step he leapt high over imaginary corpses. By the time he had completed the circle, his breath was spent. But, as events were soon to prove, that needn’t stop you. You can always borrow a bit of breath from the future if you’re really pressed.
Back at the spot where he had started from, he paused. He knew it was the same spot for various reasons. One was the chain—the chain over which he had nearly tripped just before falling over the dead body. There it was. No mistaking it. Another reason was a shape looming on his left. A bit of a boat. He remembered that too. Another reason—the strongest reason—was instinct. He knew this was the same spot. Couldn’t say why. Just knew it. It was as though he had stepped back into a picture he had temporarily deserted, completing it again … Yes, but one thing wasn’t in the picture. What was it? What was missing?
He stared at the ground ahead of him. His eyes glued themselves to the spot.
‘Lummy!’ he murmured. ‘Where’s ’e got ter?’
A splash answered him.
Several nasty things had happened during the last few minutes, but this splash was among the nastiest. If it had been followed by a cry, or by further splashing, or by any sound denoting movement, it would have seemed less ominous. But it was followed by nothing. Just silence. Whatever had caused the splash had made no protest.
And then, suddenly and without warning, a dark form came vaguely into view, and stopped dead.
The form was tall and shadowy, and the reason of its abrupt halt was obvious. If it had come into Ben’s view, Ben had also come into its view. Each was a dim shadow to the other. Too frozen to move, Ben stared at the spectre, while the spectre stared back. Then, when the silence at last became unbearable, the weaker broke it.
‘’Allo!’ said Ben stupidly.
He heard himself saying it with surprise. He did not recall having instructed his tongue to say it. And, now he came to think of it, had he said it? The spectre made no sign of having heard it.
‘’Allo!’ He tried again.
He was sure he had said it that time. His voice rattled like hollow thunder. But the spectre still made no sign. Slightly encouraged by the astonishing fact that he was still alive, Ben became informative.
‘There was a deader ’ere jest now,’ he said.
The spectre moved a little closer. Ben backed a little farther.
‘’Ere, none o’ that!’ he muttered, and then added, in nervous exasperation, ‘’As somebody cut out yer tongue?’
He closed his eyes tightly the next instant. He was afraid the spectre would answer the question by opening its mouth and revealing that its tongue had been cut out. He couldn’t have stood that. The darkness of closed lids was momentarily consoling, for it not only shut out the spectre, but it induced the theory that perhaps there really wasn’t any spectre at all. The whole thing might be just imagination. There were not many things, come to think of it, Ben had not imagined in his time. Once he had even imagined a transparent tiger with all its victims. ‘Wot you