ated the region beyond to be under the Pest-ban, that, in
scrambling down an alley, Legs and the worthy Hugh Tarpaulin found their
progress suddenly impeded. To return was out of the question, and no
time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close upon their heels. With
thorough-bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank-work
was a trifle; and, maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise
and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and
holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon
bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses.

Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling
footsteps must have been palsied by the horrors of their situation. The
air was cold and misty. The paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay
in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the
feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and
poisonous smells everywhere prevailed;--and by the aid of that ghastly
light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and
pestilential at atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and
alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many
a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very
perpetration of his robbery.

--But it lay not in the power of images, or sensations, or impediments
such as these, to stay the course of men who, naturally brave, and at
that time especially, brimful of courage and of "humming-stuff!" would
have reeled, as straight as their condition might have permitted,
undauntedly into the very jaws of Death. Onward--still onward stalked
the grim Legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells
like the terrific war-whoop of the Indian: and onward, still onward
rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the doublet of his more active
companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in
the way of vocal music, by bull-roarings in basso, from the profundity
of his stentorian lungs.

They had now evidently reached the strong hold of the pestilence. Their
way at every step or plunge grew more noisome and more horrible--the
paths more narrow and more intricate. Huge stones and beams falling
momently from the decaying roofs above them, gave evidence, by their
sullen and heavy descent, of the vast height of the surrounding houses;
and while actual exertion became nec