The following passage is from James Joyce's short story "Araby":
The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the
lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our
bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent streets. The career of our play brought us
through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the rough
tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours
arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and
combed the horse or shook music from the buckled harness.
What does the phrase gauntlet of the rough tribes convey about the narrator's perception
of his experience?
that he believed the lanes behind the houses were a passageway to a secret, hidden garden
that he feared playing behind the houses because of the darkness and the slippery mud
that he saw the children from the cottages as rivals and their territory as possibly dangerous