And I decided to go back through Go-by Street
and, since there was nothing left to keep me any more to the fields we
know, to offer myself as a servant in the palace of Singanee, and to
see again the face of Saranoora and those famous, wonderful,
amethystine dawns upon the abyss where the golden dragons play. And I
stayed no longer to look for remains of the ruins of London; for there
is little pleasure in seeing wonderful things if there is no one at
all to hear of them and to wonder. So I returned at once to Go-by
Street, the little row of huts, and saw no other record that London
had been except that one stone lion. I went to the right house this
time. It was very much altered and more like one of those huts that
one sees on Salisbury plain than a shop in the city of London, but I
found it by counting the houses in the street for it was still a row
of houses though pavement and city were gone. And it was still a shop.
A very different shop to the one I knew, but things were for sale
there--shepherd's crooks, food, and rude axes. And a man with long
hair was there who was clad in skins. I did not speak to him for I did
not know his language. He said to me something that sounded like
"Everkike." It conveyed no meaning to me; but when he looked towards
one of his buns, light suddenly dawned in my mind, and I knew that
England was even England still and that still she was not conquered,
and that though they had tired of London they still held to their
land; for the words that the man had said were, "Av er kike," and then
I knew that that very language that was carried to distant lands by
the old, triumphant cockney was spoken still in his birthplace and
that neither his politics nor his enemies had destroyed him after all
these thousand years.
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