Description
Run to Earth
CHAPTER I.
WARNED IN A DREAM.
Seven-and-twenty years ago, and a bleak evening in March. There are
gas-lamps flaring down in Ratcliff Highway, and the sound of squeaking
fiddles and trampling feet in many public-houses tell of festivity
provided for Jack-along-shore. The emporiums of slop-sellers are
illuminated for the better display of tarpaulin coats and hats, so
stiff of build that they look like so many sea-faring suicides, pendent
from the low ceilings. These emporiums are here and there enlivened by
festoons of many-coloured bandana handkerchief’s; and on every pane of
glass in shop or tavern window is painted the glowing representation of
Britannia’s pride, the immortal Union Jack.
Two men sat drinking and smoking in a little parlour at the back of an
old public-house in Shadwell. The room was about as large as a
good-sized cupboard, and was illuminated in the day-time by a window
commanding a pleasant prospect of coal-shed and dead wall. The paper on
the walls was dark and greasy with age; and every bit of clumsy,
bulging deal furniture in the room had been transformed into a kind of
ebony by the action of time and dirt, the greasy backs and elbows of
idle loungers, the tobacco-smoke and beer-stains of half a century.
Product ID: 9781776773756
Sku: 9781776773756
