They did not appear to have seen
Truxton; they glanced swiftly at Conniston and seemed to forget his
presence in their hunger.
Never had Conniston seen a crowd of men like these. There were
Americans there, and from the broken bits of conversation which
floated to him he knew that they hailed from east, west, north, and
south. There were Hungarians, Slavonians, Swedes--heavy, stolid,
slow-moving men whose knowledge of the English language rose and set
in "damn" and "hell." There were Chinamen and Japs--a dozen of the
slant-eyed, yellow-faced Orientals--the Chinamen all big, gaunt men
with their queues coiled about their heads. There were Italians, the
lower class known to the West as "Dagoes." And almost to the last man
of them they were the hardest-faced men he had ever seen.
There was a big, loose-limbed giant of an Englishman who walked like a
sailor, who carried a great white scar across his cheek and upper lip,
and who wore a long unscabbarded knife swinging from his belt. There
was a wiry little Frenchman who showed a deep scar at the base of his
throat, from which his shirt was rolled back, and who snarled like a
cat when another man accidentally trod upon his foot. Conniston saw a
dozen faces scarred as though by knife-cuts; twisted, evil faces;
dark, scowling faces; faces lined by unbridled passions; brutal,
heavy-jawed faces.
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