The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of
Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road.  On the bridge
a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came
drifting down the stream in patches.  The sun was just setting, and the
Clock Tower and the Houses of Parliament rose against one of the most
peaceful skies it is possible to imagine, a sky of gold, barred with
long transverse stripes of reddish-purple cloud.  There was talk of a
floating body.  One of the men there, a reservist he said he was, told
my brother he had seen the heliograph flickering in the west.