Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 73 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 73: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from Chapter 61 of "The Taking of Helen," a Victorian penny dreadful. An officer investigates a suspicious scent in a room, which a woman named Myrtle attributes to spice bark from a foreign shipwreck three years prior. The officer remains unconvinced, noting the smell seems stronger in another area, and concludes that the people he's searching for were last seen near this location. The text suggests a mystery or crime investigation is unfolding.
📄 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 61 He stood there sniffing the air, turning his head as a dog does, to catch the scent. Nuireus knew very well that he had caught the scent of the herbs in which Paris’ cloak had been laid. A keen-scented man might easily have smelled this from a few feet away. “T expect that what you smell, sir, is the foreign bark,” Myrtle said. ‘A foreign ship was wrecked here three Septembers ago, and the men drowned. They were dark men, with thin faces, and they all wore red of some kind. And some foreign bark was washed ashore from the wreck, and what was found was laid here. Men said it was spice bark. It lay here a long time, in the corner there, and the room still smells of it a little. We had seven bales of it.”’ She went to the corner of the room from which Nireus had taken the log: the officer followed. ‘This was where we stored it,” she said, “but after- wards it was claimed and taken.”’ The officer sniffed and made a doubtful nose there. “T suppose that that was it,” he said. ‘Yet it seemed stronger over there.”’ “Yes?’’? Myrtle said. “I suppose it came in a gust of wind.” The officer did not answer, but walked uneasily about the end of the room like a dog whose bone has been taken. After all,’’ he said at length, “they were last seen near here.”’ GOMIIGIOO SS} (C(O)