58 Lhe Mysterious Tailor : [Juxy, 
go down into the tomb—and such a tomb !—unwept, unknown, the very 
lights from the English coast still discernible in distance, yet not a friend 
to hold forth aid; the idea was inexpressibly awful. Just at this crisis, 
while grasping the bannister with weak hands, I lay faint and hope- 
less on the deck, I fancied I saw a dark figure crawling up the cabin- 
steps towards me. [I listened ; the sound drew near, the form advanced, 
already it touched that part of the stair-case to which I clung. Was it 
the phantom of one of those wretches who had just met death ? Had it 
come fresh from eternity, the taint of recent earth yet hanging about it, 
to warn me of my own departure? A sudden vivid flash enabled me to 
dispel all doubt ; the dull grey eye, and thin furrowed form, were not to 
be so mistaken ; the voice too—but why prolong the mystery? it was my 
old unforgotten persecutor, the Mysterious Tailor of High Holborn. 
What followed I know not: overpowered by previous excitement, and 
the visitation of this infernal phantom, my brain spun round—my heart 
ticked audibly like a clock—my tongue glued to my mouth—I sank 
senseless at the cabin door. 
On recovering from my stupor, I found myself with a physician and 
two apothecaries beside me, in bed at the George Inn, Ramsgate. I had 
been, it seems, for two whole days delirious, during which pregnant 
interval I had lived over again all the horrors of the preceding hours. 
The wind sang in my ears, the phantom forms of the unburied flitted pale 
and ghastly before my eyes. I fancied that I was still on the sea ; that 
the massive copper-coloured clouds which hovered scarcely a yard over- 
head, were suddenly transformed into uncouth shapes, who glared at me 
from between saffron chinks, made by the scudding wrack ; that the 
waters teemed with life, cold, slimy, preternatural things of life ; that their 
eyes after assuming a variety of awful expressions, settled down into that 
dull frozen character, and their voices into that low, sepulchral, indefin- 
able tone, which marked the Mysterious Tailor. This wretch was the 
Abaddon of my dreamy Pandemonium. He was ever before me: he lent 
an added splendour to the day, and deepened the midnight gloom. On 
the heights of Boulogne I saw him ; far away over the foaming waters he 
floated still and lifeless beside me, his eye never once off my face, his 
voice never silent in my ear. He was the shadow that threw forward 
its blighting darap upon my head ; the mute, expressive, eternal curse 
beneath which my mind sickened and died. This, the reader will say, 
was mere madness, the fever of a distempered fancy. Alas! mad— 
frantic though I was, dead to all external common places around me, I 
was sensitively alive to suffering. I was bled, blistered, physicked, 
reduced almost to a skeleton ; yet even this, so far from assuaging, only 
changed the character of my dreams. Before, I was familiar with 
horror ; my fancy now took a more melancholy east. I roved on sum- 
mer evenings beside the still waters of my native Towy, when the sheep- 
bell was tinkling, and the rich glowing purple light was momently fading 
off the sky. I heard the voices of birds in the woods, the ploughman’s 
whistle, the sweet distant village chimes, and the loud laugh from the 
thronged ale-house. While mellowed, as it were, into peace, by the 
witching influence of the hour, a strange shadow thrown suddenly from 
some gigantic form behind me, would let fall its chill gloom upon my 
head—a low voice would breathe in my ear—a dull heavy dead eye— 
Ais eye—would catch my averted glance. Once, in particular, I was 
