oofs and low ditches and
low sand-hills and low ramparts and flat streets, had not yielded
long ago to the undermining and besieging sea, like the fortifications
children make on the sea-shore.

After slipping among oozy piles and planks, stumbling up wet steps and
encountering many salt difficulties, the passengers entered on their
comfortless peregrination along the pier; where all the French vagabonds
and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to
prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected
by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as
prizes by all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a
mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off
in their various directions, hotly pursued.

Clennam, harassed by more anxieties than one, was among this devoted
band. Having rescued the most defenceless of his compatriots from
situations of great extremity, he now went his way alone, or as nearly
alone as he could be, with a native gentleman in a suit of grease and
a cap of the same material, giving chase at a distance of some fifty
yards, and continually calling after him, 'Hi! Ice-say! You! Seer!
Ice-say! Nice Oatel!'

Even this hospitable person, however, was left behind at last, and
Clennam pursued his way, unmolested. There was a tranquil air in the
town after the turbulence of the Channel and the beach, and its dulness
in that comparison was agreeable. He met new groups of his countrymen,
who had all a straggling air of having at one time overblown themselves,
like certain uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and of being now mere
weeds. They had all an air, too, of lounging out a limited round, day
after day, which strongly reminded him of the Marshalsea. But, taking
no further note of them than was sufficient to give birth to the
reflection, he sought out a certain street and number which he kept in
his mind.

'So Pancks said,' he murmured to himself, as he stopped before a dull
house answering to the address. 'I suppose his information to be correct
and his discovery, among Mr Casby's loose papers, indisputable; but,
without it, I should hardly have supposed this to be a likely place.'

A dead sort of house, with a dead wall over the way and a dead gateway
at the side, where a pendant bell-handle produced two dead tinkles, and
a knocker produced a dead, flat, surface-tapping, that seemed not to
have depth enough