We were their masters, cracking the lash of blackmail across their shoulders and sharing equally, if invisibly, in their crimes! And how I had scorned them--fools, as they seemed to me, to take such desperate chances! Yet, as the sun rose, I now saw myself as one of the beings whom I had so despised.

We were no longer their masters--they were our masters! Hawkins had us in his power.

He alone could prevent us from donning prison stripes.
Already the streets were beginning to stir.

Wagons rumbled along the pavements.

Streams of people emerged from the caverns of the east and trudged westward across the city.