CHAPTER XXVIII.
HOW WE WALKED INTO THE TIGER'S MOUTH Cherbourg was at that time a town of mean-looking houses and narrow streets, ill-paved, ill-lighted, a rookery for blackbirds of every breed.
It was a great centre for smuggling and privateering, the fleet brought many hangers-on, and the building of the great digue drew thither rough toilers who could find, or were fitted for, no other employment.
Low-class wine-shops, and their spawn of quarrellings and sudden deaths, abounded.

Crime, in fact, attracted little attention so long as it held no menace to the public peace.

Life had been so very cheap, and blood had flowed so freely, that the public ear had dulled to its cry.
Le Marchant led the way through the dark, ill-smelling streets to a cafe in the outskirts.
The Cafe au Diable Boiteux looked all its name and more.

It was as ill-looking a place as ever I had seen.

But here it was that the free-traders made their headquarters, and here, said Le Marchant, we might find men from the Islands, and possibly even from Sercq itself, and so get news from home.
The cafe itself opened not directly off the road, but off a large courtyard surrounded by a wall, which tended to privacy and freedom from observation.
It was quite dark when we turned in through a narrow slit of a door, in a larger door which was chained and bolted with a great cross-beam.