before the upstairs windows,
and small cellars of shops on the ground floor. The street was paved
with rough cobble stones, and sloped from each side toward the centre,
through which ran a kennel or gutter encumbered with garbage and filth
of every description, through which a foul stream of evil-smelling water
wound its devious way. The street had apparently at one time been one
of some pretensions, but had now fallen upon evil days and become the
abode of a number of petty tradesmen, such as cobblers, sellers of fruit
and cheap drinks, dealers in second-hand goods of every description, and
riffraff generally. It swarmed with dirty, slatternly women, still
dirtier half-naked children, lean and hungry-looking dogs, and lazy,
hulking men with brass ear-rings in their ears, the rags of tawdry
finery upon their bodies, and their sashes perfect batteries of
murderous-looking knives. They were a villainous, scowling,
criminal-looking lot of ruffians without exception, and low murmurs of
anger and astonishment, not unmingled with dismay, passed from one to
another when the English suddenly wheeled into the street.

They gradually seemed to acquire courage, however, as they noted the
small number of the intruders, and the fact that the latter took no
notice of them, and presently, when the mob which had followed the
English from the wharf swung into the street and began to explain in
response to the questions with which they were eagerly plied, many of
the tenants and frequenters of the Calle de Santa Catalina joined the
procession, which by this time numbered some three or four hundred and
completely blocked up the narrow street in the rear of the English. It
was becoming an ugly, dangerous-looking crowd, too, the kind of mob
whose courage grows with the consciousness of increasing superiority in
numbers, and it now began to flaunt its fearlessness before its admiring
women folk by joining vociferously in the insulting epithets which were
now being raucously yelled after the little band of strangers. The
situation was becoming distinctly threatening, and Bascomb quietly
dropped to the rear, for it was in that direction that trouble seemed to
loom largest.

He had just joined the rearmost file when one boastful ruffian, egged on
by the rest, suddenly ran out in front of the crowd and whipping a long,
murderous-looking knife from his sash, hurled it with deadly aim at him.
Luckily for the master, he caught the movement o