Penny Dreadfuls, 1923 · page 91 of 116
The Taking of Helen by John Masefield — page 91: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Description This is a page of running prose from the novel *The Taking of Helen* (page 79). The text depicts a dialogue scene in which a character named Nireus questions Helen about her day while hiding from soldiers. Helen describes being concealed in a woollen store and then in a hidden recess (apparently made historically to shelter women from pirates). The conversation then shifts as Paris and Nireus discuss whether they should flee to Nireus's ship, fearing discovery when Paris hears what may be a footstep outside their location. The passage emphasizes danger and the need for immediate escape.
📄 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 79 that the rats were making merry in the wall. He looked at the dear face of Helen and at the proud face of Paris, with the thought that he was helping them to ruin. “Ts the girl back?” he asked. bé No.”’ “Have you been searched again ?’’ éc No.”’ “How have you passed the day, Helen?”’ “First in the woollen store, where the soldiers moved the wool close to me, till one of them said, ‘They can’t be here; no one could breathe.’ After they had gone the girl came to me and moved the wool so that I could climb out, and she had a sponge and some icy-cold water to revive me. ‘Then she said she would call me if there were any danger. She put me in her bed (she had decked it all with flowers for me) and I slept. Then she called me up and -hid me in a little recess, which she said had been made long ago for women, in the old days, when there were pirates on the coast. I was there for a long while, and heard them routing about. Since then, I have been here.”’ “Tf we go to my ship now,” Nireus said, ‘““we may fall in with soldiers or people anywhere. If we stay here, that boy has seen me again, and he may be bring- ing people here.”’ “We had better go,” Paris said. ‘‘Was not that a footstep outside ?”’ GOMIIGIOO <S (CO)