Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 15 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is page 3 of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful titled "The Taking of Helen." The text recounts a mythological narrative: multiple young men love Helen and grow jealous of Paris; her husband Menelaus learns of the jealousy. Paris asks Nireus to lend him a ship to escape the country within three days, which Nireus agrees to do in secret. The passage then shifts to poetic language describing summer moonlight before depicting Nireus wandering the castle gardens at night, lovesick and hearing someone call his name in the darkness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE TAKING OF HELEN 3 at night watching the lights in her windows and think- ing his heart out to her. And though he longed to kill his friend Paris, he could not, because he knew that she loved him. Many of the young men there were in love with Helen. They were jealous of Paris. Some of them spread tattle abroad, which came to Menelaus’ ears. And Menelaus, little, old and bald, Peered after Helen with his ferret’s eyes, And cackled at his jokes and thought them wise, And scratched his head because he had the scald. One day Paris came to Nireus and asked him if he would lend him a ship, to take him out of the country, in three days’ time. Nireus said that he had a ship at the Green Havens which could take him. Paris thanked him, and asked him to keep the sailing secret. As the ship-master was at the Court, waiting for orders, Nireus told him to be ready to sail within three days. It was the summer season, when the moth By dewy moonrise to the musk-rose go’th. t was a waning moontime; the moon’s hull Sailed late to heaven, three days from her full. That night as Nireus was wandering in the castle gardens, watching the windows and eating out his heart, he heard his name called, and there in the dark- CORIICLO® cS) (C(O)