Midnight and moonlight and the Temple in the Sea Bill Smiles clearly remembers, and all the derelicts in the world were there, the old abandoned ships.  The figureheads were nodding to themselves and blinking at the image.  The image was a woman of white marble on a pedestal in the outer court of the Temple of the Sea:  she was clearly the love of all the man-deserted ships, or the goddess to whom they prayed their heathen prayers.  And as Bill Smiles was watching them, the lips of the figureheads moved; they all began to pray.  But all at once their lips were closed with a snap when they saw that there were men on the Sea-Fancy.  They all came crowding up and nodded and nodded and nodded to see if all were drunk, and that’s when they made their mistake about old Bill Smiles, although he couldn’t move.  They would have given up the treasuries of the gulfs sooner than let men hear the prayers they said or guess their love for the goddess.  It is the intimate secret of the sea.

The sailor paused.  And, in my eagerness to hear what lyrical or blasphemous thing those figureheads prayed by moonlight at midnight in the sea to the woman of marble who was a goddess to ships, I pressed on the sailor more of my Gorgondy wine that the gnomes so wickedly brew.

I should never have done it; but there he was sitting silent while the secret was almost mine.  He took it moodily and drank a glass; and with the other glasses that he had had he fell a prey to the villainy of the gnomes who brew this unbridled wine to no good end.  His body leaned forward slowly, then fell on to the table, his face being sideways and full of a wicked smile, and, saying very clearly the one word, “Hell,” he became silent for ever with the secret he had from the sea.

How Ali Came to the Black Country

Shooshan the barber went to Shep the maker of teeth to discuss the state of England.  They agreed that it was time to send for Ali.

So Shooshan stepped late that night from the little shop near Fleet Street and made his way back again to his house in the ends of London and sent at once the message that brought Ali.

And Ali came, mostly on foot, from the country of Persia, and it took him a year to come; but when he came he was welcome.

And Shep told Ali what was the matter with England and Shooshan swore that it was so, and Ali looking out of the window of the little shop near Fleet Street beheld the ways of London and audibly blessed King Solomon and his seal.

When Shep and Shooshan heard the names of King Solomon and his seal both asked, as they had scarcely dared before, if Ali had it.  Ali patted a little bundle of silks that he drew from his inner raiment.  It was there.

Now concerning the movements and courses of the stars and the influence on them of spirits of Earth and devils this age has been rightly named by some The Second Age of Ignorance.  But Ali knew.  And by watching nightly, for seven nights in Bagdad, the way of certain stars he had found out the dwelling place of Him they Needed.