I saw that there had happened to me permanently
and in the light of day some such thing as happens to a man, but to a
child more often, when he awakes before morning in some strange room
and sees a high, grey window where the door ought to be and unfamiliar
objects in wrong places and though knowing where he is yet knows not
how it can be that the place should look like that.
A flock of sheep came by me presently looking the same as ever, but
the man who led them had a wild, strange look. I spoke to him and he
did not understand me. Then I went down to the river to see if my
boat was there and at the very spot where I had left it, in the mud
(for the tide was low) I saw a half-buried piece of blackened wood
that might have been part of a boat, but I could not tell. I began to
feel that I had missed the world. It would be a strange thing to
travel from far away to see London and not be able to find it among
all the roads that lead there, but I seemed to have travelled in Time
and to have missed it among the centuries. And when as I wandered
over the grassy hills I came on a wattled shrine that was thatched
with straw and saw a lion in it more worn with time than even the
Sphinx at Gizeh and when I knew it for one of the four in Trafalgar
Square then I saw that I was stranded far away in the future with many
centuries of treacherous years between me and anything that I had
known. And then I sat on the grass by the worn paws of the lion to
think out what to do.
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