From me, however, this queer sensation
has not been withheld. It befell me a few days ago; in a cold grey
dawn, and in the Buffet of Dover Harbour.
I had spent two months far away, wandering and wondering; and now I
had just fulfilled two thirds of the little tripartite journey from
Paris to London. I was sleepy, as one always is after that brief and
twice broken slumber. I was chilly, for is not the dawn always bleak
at Dover, and perforated always with a bleak and drizzling rain? I was
sad, for I had watched from the deck the white cliffs of Albion coming
nearer and nearer to me, towering over me, and in the familiar drizzle
looking to me more than ever ghastly for that I had been so long and
so far away from them. Often though that harsh, chalky coast had thus
borne down on me, I had never yet felt so exactly and lamentably like
a criminal arrested on an extradition warrant.
In its sleepy, chilly shell my soul was still shuddering and
whimpering. Piteously it conjured me not to take it back into this
cruel hum-drum. It rose up and fawned on me. `Down, Sir, down!' said I
sternly. I pointed out to it that needs must when the devil drives,
and that it ought to think itself a very lucky soul for having had two
happy, sunny months of fresh and curious adventure.
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