'D--mn me, where do you expect to go to?' 'To bed. It's high time.' 'I never heard such a dare devil dog in all my life!' 'Don't let that trouble you; for you will never be like me.' 'What is that?' 'What is what?' 'I saw a head.' 'Where?' 'Behind the tub.' '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 Caesar 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. Clarke, brave as he was, had lost all his intrepidity in this golgotha, this place of skulls; the very scent of which, knowing whence it proceeded, was abhorrent. No: it was not their arms, nor their numbers, but these fears that induced me, when he that saw my eyes move was in danger of giving the alarm, to close them; and, profiting by the fellow's sympathetic terror, counterfeit the death by which I was environed. Here then we were. And must we here remain? To sleep was impossible. Must we rise and grapple with the dead; trample on their limbs, and stumble over their unearthed bones, in endeavouring to get out?