Then I found myself sitting in the workshop, as before, my calculations spread about before me on the table. My equations were of the utmost lucidity-I recognised that from the neat formulations I had managed and from the comments of “precise” and “wonderful!” in the margins. But what was this? I heard the sound of oars pulling against the tide, and the creaking of a boat upon the water. Who would be rowing upon the Thames at this hour? I went to the door of the workshop and opened it by a fraction. The familiar smell of mud and brine assailed me. But there was another odour, too. I peered out and saw a shallow vessel making its way slowly to the jetty. “Who is there?” I called out. There came no answer. “For God’s sake, tell me who you are!”
The boat had come to a stop beside the wooden platform of the jetty itself. I could hear the water lapping beside it. Then Harriet Westbrook-Harriet Shelley-stepped out. She was not as she had been in life. She was infinitely more bright and splendid. Then I noticed that she was carrying upon her shoulders a coarsely woven sack. “Why are you here, Harriet?” She did not answer, but seemed to turn back to someone else in the boat. There was some murmuring, and I recognised the voice of Martha. Then there was a light note of laughter. Now she turned again to me. “I am not here, Victor. You are here.” So I awoke again at the table, the papers strewed about it.
Throughout that night, and for the next morning, the dreams or visions emerged and then disappeared. I was in a position of complete enslavement, helplessly in thrall to whatever hallucination passed before me. I was in the estuary, walking among its sad flats and wild marshes with the gulls crying overhead; the strong savour of salt was in the damp air. I was somehow aware of some great, dark shape brooding in the distance-out of sight-and then I knew that the malevolent presence was that of London. Man had created London. Man had not created the estuary. I was seized with a great fear that this land had just emerged from the sea, and that the incoming water was about to overwhelm me. So I ran inland-or what I believed to be inland-and sought shelter in a small and crudely built hut that stood alone upon a mound in a field of pasture. In contrast to the world outside, it was perfectly dry and warm. There was a crackling sound, as of branches and twigs burning in flame, but I could see no fire.
Then I found myself walking down a street in London. It was a street of black stone, with no doors or windows or openings of any kind. But, as I walked upon it, the stone began to shriek-in agony, in fear, in consternation, I knew not what. I turned the corner and there before me was another street of stone; as soon as I ventured upon it, it gave out a loud cry of pain, which came from the walls as well as the ground. I could not bear the cacophony but as I hurried down the streets, and turned down other alleys, the screaming grew more immense.
WHEN I AWOKE, it was broad day. I was too troubled by these laudanum dreams to resume the study of my papers, so I left the workshop and walked into Limehouse. There was a carriage stop at the tavern by the church, and I waited there for the next vehicle. I knew the crossing sweeper who stood here and who, for a penny, would hold the horses while the driver refreshed himself in the tavern or relieved himself in the churchyard. He was a black man by the name of Job. “Job,” I said. “When did the last one leave?”
“He be gone a good half-hour. It be a good half-hour yet.”
“Was it full?”
“Pretty tight, sir. There was a seat on the top.”
So I went into the tavern and brought out two mugs of porter. “There we are, Job. Sluice the dust from your throat.”
Job had told me in the past that he had been shipped from Barbados as a captain’s boy, or slave, and that he had been abandoned by his master on their arrival in England. The ship had docked at Limehouse, and he had lived in the neighbourhood ever since. He survived now on the few coins he obtained from those using his crossing, and from the drivers of the carriages. “Where do you live?” I asked him as we sat on a wooden bench outside the tavern.
“Along the street yonder.” He pointed out to me an alley of tenements that led off Limehouse Church Street. “It is a mouse-hole, sir.”
“Are you married, Job?”
“I never be married. Who want a poor black man like myself?”
“Your race does seem to be unfortunate.”
“We be harried and cursed and beaten. Some of these fine gentlemen will aim a kick at me on the crossing. Some of them swear dreadful.”
I do not know whether it was the effect of the powder, but I experienced a sudden and overwhelming feeling of pity for the sweeper. “Come inside,” I said. “It is a raw day.”
“No permission, sir. Mrs. Jessop will not abide black people.”
“Then I will bring another drink to you, Job. I wish to learn more of you.” When I returned I questioned Job closely about his life in Limehouse. Much to my surprise, he had stories worse than his own to relate: of newborn babies abandoned on the streets, of small children forced to wade into the stinking cesspits in search of the cheapest items of any value, of the dead buried under the floorboards to save the trifling expense of a pauper’s funeral.
At night Job himself would go down to the foreshore, and search for objects that he might use or sell; on one occasion, he told me, he had found an ancient dagger that he had sold for a shilling to a tobacconist in Church Row. It was now on display in the shop window. “But some nights,” he said, “there is something happening in the river.”
“Happening?”
“Something arriving. From downstream.”
“You mean some kind of boat?”
“No boat. No. Something moving fast under the water. All the shore is silent when it passes.”
“A whale?”
“No. No fish. A thing.”
“I do not understand you, Job.”
“Have you been hearing, sir, how the estuary is haunted? Down by Swanscombe Marshes?” I shook my head. “No one goes near. Even the fishermen will not work there.”
“What is this apparition? Does it have a name?”
“No name, sir. It is a dead thing living. It is greater than a man.”
“How do you know this, Job?”
“It is my supposal. My mother told me the stories she had heard.”
“These were the stories of the slaves?”
“Yes, sir. But the stories come from far back. When there were not slaves. My mother told me of the dogon. It is a dead man brought to life by magic. Living in the forests and the mountains. A phantom, sir, with eyes of fire.”
“Surely you do not believe that such a thing lives on the estuary?”
“I know nothing, sir. I am a poor black sweeper. But I wonder what this thing is that moves under the water.”
At this point the carriage arrived, with Holborn as its destination. Job stood up and went over to the horses, which seemed to recognise him. They became still when he spoke to them and stroked them. I called up to the driver. “Do you have a seat?”
“Inside, sir. One of the parties is leaving.”
So I mounted the step and, within a short time, the carriage was on its way to the city.
WHEN I CAME BACK to Jermyn Street, I went at once to my study where I had left some of my calculations. I renewed my work with fresh enthusiasm, knowing that I was close to a precise formula for the reversal of the electrical charge in the process of its formation. If I were able to create and to maintain this negative force, it might subvert and utterly undo the power of the original charge.