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"What are you going to do?" shouted Jess, her voice shaky with alarm. "Save that child if I can," flung back Peggy, plunging bravely up the smoke-laden stairway. In the unfamiliar house, and half blinded and choked by smoke and sulphurous fumes, Peggy had a hard task before her.
Luther Meeker was the man who had been addressed as Thirkle, and who seemed to be in command of the others. Something rolled into the smoke-laden hole and sprawled on the planks near me, and I could hear it gasping and choking. "Leggo my coat, cap'n. Leggo my coat!" said the form, and I knew it was Harris wounded to death. In a minute he was still, and then the scuttle above rattled peremptorily.
Darkness was about us now, and silence: a perfumed, slumberous darkness a silence full of mystery. For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn of the great industrial river. About the scented confines which bounded us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.
So strong was this desire that she greedily inhaled the smoke-laden air which was wafted in from the corridor and through the cabinet door. But there was a long wait before her, for the secretary, who was to deliver to the guard the order for her removal, forgetting the prisoners, engaged one of the lawyers in the discussion of an editorial that had appeared in a newspaper.
And as it passed away, and the booming and roaring became more and more distant, so did the smoke-laden atmosphere begin to clear. But a tropical heat remained behind for many hours. Even the northland chill of spring failed to temper it rapidly. Kars had achieved his purpose. No cover remained for any lurking foe. The hills across the river were "snatched" bald.
He sat back then for a time; now eyeing the liquor, as though greedy for its taste, yet greedy, too, to prolong the anticipation, since from his actions there was apparently no means of further replenishing the supply; now glancing around the smoke-laden room where, on the polished section of the floor in the centre, a score of laughing, shrieking couples whirled and pranced in the unrestrained throes of the underworld's latest dance; now permitting his eyes to rest with a sudden scowl on the man at the next table.
Here by the light of resin torches, at this late hour of the night, raw lads were being drilled into soldiers, half-naked under the cutting blast of the north wind, their knees shaking tinder them, their arms and legs blue with cold, their stomachs empty, and their teeth chattering with fear; women were sewing shirts for the great improvised army, with eyes straining to see the stitches by the flickering light of the torches, their throats parched with the continual inhaling of smoke-laden air; even children, with weak, clumsy little fingers, were picking rags to be woven into cloth again all, all these slaves were working far into the night, tired, hungry, and cold, but working unceasingly, as the country had demanded it: "the people of France in arms against tyranny!"
Many of his descriptions of typical London scenes in Lambeth Walk, Clerkenwell, or Judd Street, for instance, are the work of a detached, remorseless, photographic artist realising that ugly sordidness of daily life to which the ordinary observer becomes in the course of time as completely habituated as he does to the smoke-laden air.
The glare of light which penetrated even her closed eyelids, the choking gasps of smoke-laden, scorching air with which she struggled. Death itself must come, nor could it be far from her now. The wind rushed madly down from the hilltops. It swept over forest and plain, it howled through canyon and crevasse in its eager haste to reach the centre of the battle of elements.
Some will even endure the smoke-laden atmosphere of towns and town suburbs; which, sooner or later, is certain death to so many. It is a pity that small florists and greengrocers in London do not know more about this; and it would be a great act of kindness to them and to their customers to instruct them.
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