midnight
The air was cold and misty . The paving-stones , loosened from their beds , lay in wild disorder amid the tall , rank grass , which sprang up around the feet and ankles . Fallen houses choked up the streets . The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed ; -- and by the aid of that ghastly light which , even at midnight , never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential atmosphere , might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys , or rotting in the windowless habitations , the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery . -- But it lay not in the power of images , or sensations , or impediments such as these , to stay the course of men who , naturally brave , and at that time especially , brimful of courage and of `` humming-stuff ! '' would have reeled , as straight as their condition might have permitted , undauntedly into the very jaws of Death . Onward -- still onward stalked the grim Legs , making the desolate solemnity echo and re-echo with yells like the terrific war-whoop of the Indian : and onward , still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin , hanging on to the doublet of his more active companion , and far surpassing the latter 's most strenuous exertions in the way of vocal music , by bull-roarings in basso , from the profundity of his stentorian lungs .