"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans
first came here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other
day. . . . Light came out of this river since--you
say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a
plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live
in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps
rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine
the feelings of a commander of a fine--what d'ye call
'em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly
to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry;
put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries,--a
wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too--
used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month
or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him
here--the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead,
a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid
as a concertina--and going up this river with stores, or
orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests,
savages,--precious little to eat fit for a civilized man,
nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine
here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp
lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--
cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,--death
skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They
must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it.
Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking
much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what
he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were
men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was
cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to
the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had good friends
in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of
a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much
dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some
prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his
fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods,
and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter
savagery, had closed round him,--all that mysterious
life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the
jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation
either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst
of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And
it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him.
The fascination of the abomination--you know.
Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the
powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
