BENN AND DORGIO
Adam wrote:"Agreed," he says, looking around for the gendarmes to escort them to the crime scene.
THE TWO GENDARMES
hustle along,leading BENN and Dorgio halfway down the block to a waiting cart.
One clambers onto the crosswise plank that serves as a driver's seat, and gets the draft horse moving with gentle giddyups and the light tough of a stick.
Clop, clop, clop.
The cart rolls down the street , headed west toward the river...
LATER
The ride isn't too far. Twenty minutes , perhaps, have elapsed.
BENN and Dorgio recognize the neighborhood and some local landmarks: Odell's Eats, a fish oil shop, a brick wall plastered with peeling handbills and manuscript notes, and a jetty sticking out into a canal that connects with the Musarde.
Now that true night has fallen over the city, most of the reputable places around here appear closed;locked and shuttered.
But a ruddy, flickering light shines through the front windows of Odell's Eats and a lantern burns on a dangling chain hung above the ground level floor of a two-and
-a-half story limestone and black timber building that rises a short distance behind the Arkandale restaurant.
This close to the Musarde, a wet, fishy smell permeates the cool air.
"The boarding house back there." The gendarme driving slows the horse, then guides it to a halt beside Odell's, in front of the dark mass of the boarding house.
" She's in the garret. I'll take you up, monsieurs."
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)