Then came an incident.
Suddenly, quite near, there arose a weird and mournful cry--a cry
indescribable, and inexpressibly uncanny!
I started back so violently that how I escaped falling into the river
I do not know to this day. That cry, so eerie and so wholly
unexpected, had unnerved me; and realizing the nature of my
surroundings, and the folly of my presence alone in such a place, I
began to edge back towards the foot of the steps, away from the thing
that cried; when--a great white shape uprose like a phantom before
me!...
There are few men, I suppose, whose lives have been crowded with so
many eerie happenings as mine, but this phantom thing which grew out
of the darkness, which seemed about to envelop me, takes rank in my
memory amongst the most fearsome apparitions which I have witnessed.
I know that I was frozen with a sort of supernatural terror. I stood
there, my hands clenched, staring--staring--at that white shape, which
seemed to float.
And as I stared, every nerve in my body thrilling, I distinguished the
outline of the phantom. With a subdued cry, I stepped forward. A new
sensation claimed me. In that one stride I passed from the horrible to
the bizarre.
I found myself confronted with something tangible certainly, but
something whose presence in that place was utterly extravagant--could
only be reconcilable in the dreams of an opium slave.
Was I awake? was I sane? Awake and sane beyond doubt, but surely
moving, not in the purlieus of Limehouse, but in the fantastic realms
of fairyland.
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