It is rather hard to tell a tithe of what I saw. Much of it is
untenable. But in a general way I may say that I saw a nightmare, a
fearful slime that quickened the pavement with life, a mess of
unmentionable obscenity that put into eclipse the "nightly horror" of
Piccadilly and the Strand. It _was_ a menagerie of garmented bipeds that
looked something like humans and more like beasts, and to complete the
picture, brass-buttoned keepers kept order among them when they snarled
too fiercely.
I was glad the keepers were there, for I did not have on my "seafaring"
clothes, and I was what is called a "mark" for the creatures of prey that
prowled up and down. At times, between keepers, these males looked at me
sharply, hungrily, gutter-wolves that they were, and I was afraid of
their hands, of their naked hands, as one may be afraid of the paws of a
gorilla. They reminded me of gorillas. Their bodies were small, ill-
shaped, and squat. There were no swelling muscles, no abundant thews and
wide-spreading shoulders. They exhibited, rather, an elemental economy
of nature, such as the cave-men must have exhibited. But there was
strength in those meagre bodies, the ferocious, primordial strength to
clutch and gripe and tear and rend.
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