a larva, mounted upon legs like a centipede. A new eagerness seemed in its thousand limbs, a vague tremor was in its folds, its slight side-to-side motion seemed accelerated of rhythm; it came along the way, beaten to stone, that it had made through so many days, crawling from mill to hall and back again; it came, gray and flaccid, creeping forward with rapidity.
Then suddenly its head, as if catching a scent, went off the path in a long sidewise rear—a movement as that of a snake which would rear like a horse. There was a moment of disorder; the body and tail, pressing forward, knotted, vertebras broke; the voices of the guards rose high and sharp—and then the head, with a gliding, submissive motion flattened out again, and came on, past the tables, the tables served with killed men that stared upward, flanked by live men with dead faces.
The line went by slowly. The guards, at the head, on the sides, delayed it with murmur and gesture, and the voice of the captain, growling, incessantly bade it look, look, look. It flowed
