The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 221: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

164 THE STEAM PACKET. Mr. Buckram’s hat, which the ball struck, was carried genteelly off his head into the canal: he himself, alarmed at the incident, and pro- bably entertaining the somewhat unpleasant impression that the next aim might be taken the least thing lower down, and that a ‘ coneus- sion of the brain” might be the awkward result, glanced anxiously around; and in another moment he fell flat upon the ground with his face dowwarie “ Tres bien /” said the pean complacently ; “ at all event I shall secure one of the runaways ;”"—and hurrying up to the tailor, he discovered to his surprise that this gallant personage was wholly un- hurt, but nearly dead with fright. The chains were now affixed to feet and hands; and, as soon as he had secured his prisoner, the gen- darme mounted his horse, which he urged into a gallop after the other fugitive. The part of the country where these little incidents took place was considerably intersected with ditches, and divided by hedges and rail- ings. The progress of the gendarme was therefore considerably im- peded in his pursuit; and he had spent an hour in fruitless researches in that direction which he supposed the captain to have taken, when he suddenly perceived a hat floating down a ditch leading towards the eanal of which we have before spoken. The gendarme instantly re- newed his search with fresh vigour; and in the course of another half hour he had the satisfaction of beholding some portion of the object ef his solicitude. We say some portion—because it was, in fact, merely the head of the gallant captain which first caught the eagle eye of the police-officer, as it protruded above the muddy water and green weeds of the ditch down which the hat had previously been dis- covered floating; and indeed never did the countenance of the captain present so deplorable an aspect to human eye. Those huge black whiskers which might have made the envy of a French grenadier, were covered with slime: upon those moustaches which had often formed the admiration of Aramintha Pifpaf, were the seeds of the ditch-weeds ; and those hyperion-glittering locks, which had so long constituted a locomotive advertisement for Rowland’s Macassar oil, were dripping. with filthy water, thereby resembling rats’ tails after an immersion. Then, as if his face were not already sufficiently miserable in appear- ance, the captain dived his head under water the moment his visual rays encountered the unwelcome form of the gendarme. But this sage precaution was useless: the police-officer dismounted from his horse, stepped down the bank of the stream, and speedily compelled the captain to avail himself of the help of the very chain which was im- mediately afterwards to-bind him once more, to effect his escape from omicbooks (E(0) -_