One side of the street glittered like a brilliant eruption with the light
from a row of shops; the other, lined with houses, was almost deserted,
for the people, drawn like moths by the glare, crowded and jostled
under the lights.

It was Saturday night, and Waterloo, by immemorial habit, had flung itself
on the shops, bent on plunder. For an hour past a stream of people had
flowed from the back streets into Botany Road, where the shops stood
in shining rows, awaiting the conflict.

The butcher's caught the eye with a flare of colour as the light played
on the pink and white flesh of sheep, gutted and skewered like victims
for sacrifice; the saffron and red quarters of beef, hanging like the
limbs of a dismembered Colossus; and the carcasses of pigs, the unclean
beast of the Jews, pallid as a corpse. The butchers passed in and out,
sweating and greasy, hoarsely crying the prices as they cut and hacked
the meat. The people crowded about, sniffing the odour of dead flesh,
hungry and brutal--carnivora seeking their prey.

At the grocer's the light was reflected from the gay labels on tins
and packages and bottles, and the air was heavy with the confused odour
of tea, coffee and spices.

Cabbages, piled in heaps against the door-posts of the greengrocer's,
threw a rank smell of vegetables on the air; the fruit within, built
in pyramids for display, filled the nostrils with the fragrant, wholesome
scents of the orchard.

The buyers surged against the barricade of counters, shouting their