'What then? Is there any wonder in seeing a head, or a body either, in this place?'
'Nay, but, a living head!'
'A living ass!'
'I am sure, I saw the eyes move.'
'Ah! white-livered lout! I wonder what the devil made such a quaking pudding poltroon think of taking to our trade! Come: I am hungry: let us go into the kitchen, and get some grub; and then to bed. Pimping Simon, here, will see his grandmother's ghost, if we stay five minutes longer.'
CHAPTER VIII
The scene continued; and our terrors increased: An interesting dialogue, that unravels the mystery: The beginning of a new acquaintance
Here to our infinite ease they quitted us, went through an inner door that led to the house, locked it after them, and left us, not only with the dead hand, not only with the dead body, but in the most dismal human slaughterhouse that murder and horror ever constructed, or ever conceived. Such were our impressions: and such, under the same circumstances, they would have been, perhaps, of the bravest man, or man-killer, that ever existed. Alexander and Cæsar themselves would have shook, lying as we lay, hearing what we heard, and seeing what we saw: for, by the light of the lanthorn, we beheld limbs, and bones, and human skeletons, on every side of us. I repeat: horror had nothing to add.
The dancing lights we had seen, the shrill signals and the dreadful howls that we had heard, were now no longer thought mysterious. It was no ignis fatuus; but the lanthorn of these assassins: no dog or wolf, baying the moon; but the agonizing yells of murder!
The men were four in number. The idea of attacking them several times suggested itself. Nor was it so much overpowered by the apprehension of the arms with which I concluded such men must be provided, as that my mind was rendered irresolute by the dreadful pictures, real and imaginary, which had passed through my mind.