they passed neat little shops and slave pens with heavily barred windows , passed elegant hotels and smoky grog shops full of surly free niggers , passed close , humid alleys and airy courtyards each with its well or fountain , passed haughty creole ladies with their escorts and chaperones and a gang of runaway slaves in iron collars and chains cleaning the gutters under the careful watch of a hard-eyed white man with a whip .