h led down into the Pit to the lairs of the Pit People. So it came
about that the Pit People, who were a poor folk and unable to afford
scientific kite-flying, developed great proficiency in the art when
their neighbors the Hill-dwellers took it up.

There was also an old sailorman who profited by this recreation of the
Hill-dwellers; for he was learned in sails and air-currents, and being
deft of hand and cunning, he fashioned the best-flying kites that could
be obtained. He lived in a rattletrap shanty close to the water, where
he could still watch with dim eyes the ebb and flow of the tide, and the
ships pass out and in, and where he could revive old memories of the days
when he, too, went down to the sea in ships.

To reach his shanty from the Hill one had to pass through the Pit, and
thither the three boys were bound. They had often gone for kites in the
daytime, but this was their first trip after dark, and they felt it to
be, as it indeed was, a hazardous adventure.

In simple words, the Pit was merely the cramped and narrow quarters
of the poor, where many nationalities crowded together in cosmopolitan
confusion, and lived as best they could, amid much dirt and squalor.
It was still early evening when the boys passed through on their way
to the sailorman's shanty, and no mishap befell them, though some of
the Pit boys stared at them savagely and hurled a taunting remark after
them, now and then.

The sailorman made kites which were not only splendid fliers but which
folded up and were very convenient to carry. Each of the boys bought a
few, and, with them wrapped in compact bundles and under their arms,
started back on the return journey.

"Keep a sharp lookout for the b'ys," the kite-maker cautioned them.
"They 're like to be cruisin' round after dark."

"We 're not afraid," Charley assured him; "and we know how to take care
of ourselves."

Used to the broad and quiet streets of the Hill, the boys were shocked
and stunned by the life that teemed in the close-packed quarter. It
seemed some thick and monstrous growth of vegetation, and that they
were wading through it. They shrank closely together in the tangle of
narrow streets as though for protection, conscious of the strangeness
of it all, and how unrelated they were to it.

Children and babies sprawled on the sidewalk and under their feet.
Bareheaded and unkempt women gossiped in the doorways or passed back
and forth with scant marketings in their a