There was a great fire in the middle of the square, and round this was a tatterdemalion crew of men and women. They were roasting an ox, and, as they waited for it, they sang and danced. When we approached near enough to hear what they were singing I blushed and felt aggrieved for Audrey. Many of the men and women were perfectly shameless in their gestures, and I wished to go back the way we had come. However, we had been seen, and were drawn into the light of the fire and asked to give an account of ourselves. I told them I was an American citizen only too anxious to return to my own country now I had seen the pass to which theirs had been brought. Audrey clung to me, and I said she was my little cousin whom I had come to deliver, and that, having wandered hungry for so many days, we had taken refuge in the town in the hope of faring better. We were given stools to sit on, and slices of the best cut of the ox were put before us. The rest drank spirits and wine from some cellar in the town and were soon more crazy than ever, and more obscene, but with my belly full of good meat I was not offended and preferred their debauchery to the icy virtue which had so horribly oppressed me at the homestead. Audrey was excited by it all, but I knew that her innocence could take no harm. Presently there was only one man sober besides myself. He came towards me and invited me to stay the night in his house where he lived alone with his son. I liked the looks of the man. He was poorly clad, but in the old fashion of coat and trousers, whereas the costumes of the men in the square were strange and bizarre. As we walked through the dark streets our new friend told me that all the great cities of Fatland were in this condition, abandoned to the dregs of the population, degraded men and women, idle and lawless, with the leaven of the few proud spirits who would not accept the new regime and found a world governed by women as repulsive as a world governed by men. I was astonished at this, for I could not then see, as later I saw, the abomination of civilised life as I had known it at home. Perhaps a sailor, for whom life ashore means pleasure and relief from responsibilities, cannot feel injustice and inequality. On the sea he has his own way of dealing with those poisons.