“He’s still warm, Larry,” he said querulously.
Larry approached, pulling at his pipe. He growled a lewd oath, expressive of contempt and indifference.
“What odds?” he added cynically. “He’ll be cold enough or ever we comes to Aldgate.” And he laughed as he took the doublet Nick flung to him.
The next moment their filthy hooks were in the garments they had left upon Holles, and they had added him to the terrible load that already half-filled their cart.
They backed the vehicle out of the alley, and then trundled on, going eastward, their destination being the pit at Aldgate. Ever and anon in their slow progress they would halt either at the summons of a watchman or at what they found for themselves. At every halt they made an addition to their load which they bore away for peremptory burial in that Aldgate plague-pit, above which on these hot nights the corpse-candles flickered almost constantly to increase the tale of portents and to scare the credulous into the belief that the place was haunted by the souls of those unfortunates whose bodies lay irreverently tumbled there under the loosely shovelled clay.
They were already approaching their destination, and the first light of dawn, pallid, cold, and colourless as a moonstone, was beginning to dispel the darkness, when, be it from the jolting of the cart, or from the flow of blood where one of those foul hooks had scraped his thigh, or yet from preserving Nature, quickening his wits that he might save himself from suffocation, the Colonel was aroused from his drunken trance.
He awakened, thrusting fiercely for air, and seeking to dislodge a heavy mass that lay across his face. The efforts that at first he made were but feeble, as was to be expected from one in his condition; so that he gained no more than brief respites, in each of which, like a drowning man struggling repeatedly to the surface, he gasped a breath of that foul contamination about him. But finding each effort succeeded by a suffocation that became ever more painful, a sort of terror seized upon him, and pulled his senses out of their drunken torpor. He braced himself and heaved more strenuously, until at length he won clear, so far, at least, as his head was concerned.
He saw the paling stars above and was able at last to breathe freely and without effort. But the burden which he had succeeded in thrusting from his head, now lay across his breast, and the weight of it was troublesome and painful. He put forth a hand, and realizing by the sense of touch that what he grasped was a human arm, he shook it vigorously. Eliciting no response, he began to grow angry.
“Afoot there, ye drunken lob,” he growled in a thick voice. “Get up, I say. Get up! O’s my life! D’ye take me for a bed that you put yourself to sleep across me? Gerrup!” he roared, his anger increasing before that continued lack of response. “Gerrup, or I’ll....”
He ceased abruptly, blinking in the glare of light that suddenly struck across his eyes from the flaming head of the torch which had been thrust upwards. The cart had come to a standstill, and above the tall sides of it, rising into his field of vision, came the two horrible figures of the carters, whom the sound of his voice had brought to mount the wheels of the vehicle.