furnaces and converted into different grade oils from petrol to heavy
fuel oil. As a spectacle, however, I found a journey through this weird
region most fascinating and mysterious. At night it appears as a vast
plain gleaming with lights and studded with dark objects, half seen and
suggesting primitive machinery of uncouth proportions. Huge lengths of
pipes creep from the shadows on one hand into the far-off regions of
blackness on the other.

Armed with an electric torch, which the Chief carried, and a large
sketch-book which I regretted taking almost as soon as we started, we
set out on our quest of Dantesque scenery. At first our road ran along
the quays by the river side. A camouflaged Admiralty oiler was loading
fuel oil by means of three pipes that looked like the tentacles of an
octopus clutching on to the side of the ship. Near this quay was a gate,
and we entered the wire fence that surrounds the works and the area of
the tanks and struck out over a dark waste.

The novice who roams about this place in the dark spends a lot of time
falling over pipes. They are stretching all over the place without any
method that is apparent. The Chief showed up most of them with his
torch, and so I fell about only just enough to get used to the feel of
the ground as a preliminary to what was coming later. It had rained
heavily two or three days before, consequently there were lake
districts, slimy reaches of mixed oil and mud and dried, hard-looking
islands that were in reality traps to the unwary. The top only was firm,
and it had the playful property of sliding rapidly on the greasy
substratum and thus sitting you down without warning when you thought
you had reached dry land.

[Illustration: "A mysterious-looking furnace tower."]