- end_line
- 10739
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10666
- text
- his hand in his pocket--"there, take that, and have the poor fellow
driven off somewhere."
Bolting his rage in him, as impossible to be sated by any conduct, in
such a place, Pierre now turned, sprang down the stairs, and fled the
house.
III.
"Hack, sir? Hack, sir? Hack, sir?"
"Cab, sir? Cab, sir? Cab, sir?"
"This way, sir! This way, sir! This way, sir!"
"He's a rogue! Not him! he's a rogue!"
Pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hackmen, all holding long
whips in their hands; while others eagerly beckoned to him from their
boxes, where they sat elevated between their two coach-lamps like
shabby, discarded saints. The whip-stalks thickened around him, and
several reports of the cracking lashes sharply sounded in his ears. Just
bursting from a scene so goading as his interview with the scornful Glen
in the dazzling drawing-room, to Pierre, this sudden tumultuous
surrounding of him by whip-stalks and lashes, seemed like the onset of
the chastising fiends upon Orestes. But, breaking away from them, he
seized the first plated door-handle near him, and, leaping into the
hack, shouted for whoever was the keeper of it, to mount his box
forthwith and drive off in a given direction.
The vehicle had proceeded some way down the great avenue when it
paused, and the driver demanded whither now; what place?
"The Watch-house of the---- Ward," cried Pierre.
"Hi! hi! Goin' to deliver himself up, hey!" grinned the fellow to
himself--"Well, that's a sort of honest, any way:--g'lang, you
dogs!--whist! whee! wha!--g'lang!"
The sights and sounds which met the eye of Pierre on re-entering the
watch-house, filled him with inexpressible horror and fury. The before
decent, drowsy place, now fairly reeked with all things unseemly. Hardly
possible was it to tell what conceivable cause or occasion had, in the
comparatively short absence of Pierre, collected such a base
congregation. In indescribable disorder, frantic, diseased-looking men
and women of all colors, and in all imaginable flaunting, immodest,
grotesque, and shattered dresses, were leaping, yelling, and cursing
around him. The torn Madras handkerchiefs of negresses, and the red
gowns of yellow girls, hanging in tatters from their naked bosoms, mixed
with the rent dresses of deep-rouged white women, and the split coats,
checkered vests, and protruding shirts of pale, or whiskered, or
haggard, or mustached fellows of all nations, some of whom seemed scared
from their beds, and others seemingly arrested in the midst of some
crazy and wanton dance. On all sides, were heard drunken male and female
voices, in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, interlarded now and
then, with the foulest of all human lingoes, that dialect of sin and
death, known as the Cant language, or the Flash.
Running among this combined babel of persons and voices, several of the
police were vainly striving to still the tumult; while others were busy
handcuffing the more desperate; and here and there the distracted
wretches, both men and women, gave downright battle to the officers; and
still others already handcuffed struck out at them with their joined
ironed arms. Meanwhile, words and phrases unrepeatable in God's
sunlight, and whose very existence was utterly unknown, and undreamed
of by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city; syllables
obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly evincing that
they were the common household breath of their utterers. The
thieves'-quarters, and all the brothels, Lock-and-Sin hospitals for
incurables, and infirmaries and infernoes of hell seemed to have made
one combined sortie, and poured out upon earth through the vile vomitory
of some unmentionable cellar.
- title
- Chunk 9