To my utter relief he turned away from me and began walking towards the door that led to the jetty. He raised his face as if he had sensed the river close by. He did not open the door; he pushed himself past it, overthrowing it with one blow of his right arm. He seemed to relish the scents of the night and the river, the tar and the smoke and the filth that accrue to the foreshore. He surveyed the scene of both of the banks, and then seemed to look keenly downstream towards the sea. He raised his arms above his head, in a gesture of celebration or supplication, and plunged into the water. He was able to swim at an extraordinary speed, and within a very few moments he was out of my sight.

My first sensation was one of relief, that my odious handiwork had left me, but that was quickly followed by a fear and horror so intense that I could scarcely stand. I could not bring myself to remain in my workshop, the site of that terrible rebirth, and I staggered along the foreshore until I reached Limehouse Stairs. It was not an area to be visited by night, but I had lost all sense of physical danger. I was beset by a horror more frightful than any with which a human being could threaten me. I sat upon the damp steps, with bowed head, seeing nothing ahead of me but darkness. I hoped that the foul being might disappear for ever-might even be lost in the sea, if that was indeed his destination. It was possible that he might have no memory of his origin, and never return to Limehouse or to London in search of the mystery of his existence. Nevertheless I had created a being that might become a terror to the world, unhewn and endowed with unnatural strength. A rat scuttled past me and dropped into the water. Or perhaps he might quickly lose his strength, as my hand had done, and revert to a position of incapacity or weakness? In that case he would be a wretched being indeed, but not one to instil panic fear. Yet what kind of being was he? Was he aware that he possessed human existence? Did he even possess a consciousness?

I stood up, and walked from the stairs to the church of St. Lawrence by the Causeway. Never had I felt so strong a need for comfort and consolation, from whatever source it might come, and I mounted the worn steps towards the great door. I could not bring myself to cross the threshold. I was an accursed thing. I had taken my stand outside the range of God’s creation. I had usurped the Creator himself. This was no place for me. It was then, I believe, that the fever fell upon me. I do not remember where I wandered, but I was in a mist of fears and delusions. I recall entering a public house, and being served gin and other spirits until I dropped unconscious. I must have been robbed, and left in the street, because I woke up in a stinking alley. Still I wandered. For a few moments I must have believed that I had returned to my native Geneva, for I spoke a few words in French and German; then I was buffeted by the crowds along the highway, and I recall that my body was soaking with sweat and ague. It began to rain, and I crept down a side street where the overhanging roofs were able to shield me. I had never been more wretched-I, who had dreamed of renown, was no more than a wanderer in the streets of men. I heard a sudden sound behind me, at the other end of the street, and a cat screeched. I turned around in horror. I was struck by the terror that he might be pursuing me; I fled back into the highway and, joining without choice or thought the steady stream of people, I made my way eventually into the central neighbourhoods of London. I had been weeping-for how long, I do not know-and a gingerbread seller passed me a red cloth as I leaned against the wall beside her stall.

“Do you know what you are doing?” she asked me.

“I must go on.” I wanted to ask her the direction in which I lived, but for that moment I could not remember the name of the street. I could not remember anything. She gave me one of her cakes; my mouth was too dry and inflamed to swallow it, and I spat it out before moving on. Some instinct, common to all life, led me home. I found myself in Piccadilly. I staggered and fell against a horse post, but then who helped me to my feet but Fred?

“Whatever has happened to you, Mr. Frankenstein?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what has happened to me.”

“You have had a mauling, you have.”

“Have I?”

“Do you know who did it?”

“I did it.”

He led me down Piccadilly and around the corner into Jermyn Street. I recognised the neighbourhood but then I became delirious again, and Fred explained to me later that I had been muttering words and phrases to myself that he could not understand. He washed me, put me in my bed, and called his mother. Mrs. Shoeberry ministered to me during the whole period of my fever. I discovered later that she piled the sheets and blankets on me “to force it out,” as she put it; all the windows and doors to my room were closed, and a fire was left perpetually burning in the grate. I wondered that she did not stifle me to death. The first thing I recall is her sitting by me, with a piece of needlework on her lap.

“Oh, there you are again, Mr. Frankenstein. I am ever so glad to see you.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose you would like some small beer, would you?”

“My throat.”

“It will be dry, sir. It has been torrid in here. It has been something fierce. Fred, bring some beer.”

“Saloop,” I said weakly. I scarcely recognised where I was, and was dimly aware of the old woman as someone I had met in the past. “Fred will brew it rich,” she said. “He is a good boy.”

Then I saw Fred standing at the foot of the bed, grinning at me and hopping from one foot to the next in his excitement. All at once the memory of my situation came back to me. “I knew you was coming round,” he said, “when you took some water from me.” I had no memory of this. “Before that, you was raving.”

“Raving? What was I saying?”

“Don’t you worry a bit about it,” Mrs. Shoeberry replied for him. “It was a lot of nonsense, Mr. Frankenstein. Fred, get on with that saloop.”

“But what kind of nonsense?”

“Devils and fiends and such stuff. I paid no attention to it.” I hoped that I had not said too much, and made a note to question Fred later on the subject. He brought me in a dish of saloop, and I drank it down greedily.

“How long have I lain here?”

“A little over a week,” she said. “The children have been doing the laundry. Would you be requiring some dry toast, Mr. Frankenstein?” I shook my head. I felt too weak to eat. Yet slowly, during that day and over the next week, I recovered my strength. When Mrs. Shoeberry had departed, quite satisfied with her payment of seven guineas, I questioned Fred about my ravings.

“There was a song you sung,” he said.

“A mountain song?”

“I would not know about that, sir. But there was no mountains in it.” Then he stood quite still, his arms hanging down against his sides, and recited:

It was all the more horrible coming from the mouth of an innocent boy. I knew the lines at once, since they came from one of Mr. Coleridge’s poems, but I do not remember being particularly impressed by them at the time of reading them. They must have been in the air around me, as I lay in a fever.

I was able to bathe, and dress, myself on the following morning. The one subject of course oppressed and haunted me like some giant despair. My enforced retirement had also left me restless and fretful: I could not keep still. I hailed a cab in Jermyn Street, and was taken to Limehouse where I leapt out and all but ran along the path towards my workshop. As soon as I came close to it I knew that he had returned: the door facing the river had been smashed by the giant blow he had delivered on first gaining his freedom; but now part of the brick wall beside it had been dislodged, and there were pieces of broken glass on the muddy ground that led to the jetty. I slowed my pace, and my immediate impulse was to flee or at least to conceal myself. But some graver sense-of responsibility, or of submission, I do not know which-overcame me. I walked towards the workshop, and entered through the gaping hole which he had left. The place was in ruinous disorder: the great electrical columns had been overturned and lay smashed upon the floor, and my experimental apparatus had been systematically destroyed. My notes and papers, as well as some bills of lading for the electrical equipment, had been removed from my desk; the cloak and hat that I had left behind, on that dreadful night, were also gone. He had taken some kind of revenge, and had then left the scene of his rebirth.