Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 125 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 125: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful titled *The Anderson Blood* (page 109). The text depicts an intense fight scene in a cave between Tom Anderson and a Tory, with a character named Hornbuckle intervening. After the confrontation, Anderson makes an angry declaration to Major-General Leslie, then flees through an underground tunnel. The passage ends with Anderson emerging exhausted on a plateau and later discovering a cabin nearby, while he anxiously wonders about the Tories' intentions toward him.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE ANDERSON BLoopD 109 “Sho is adam Reb. His daddy’s the bigges’ dam Reb in the whole kentry!” The shilling slipped from the speaker’s fingers. He stooped to pick it up. Tom’s chance! Luck against odds! He jumped like a wildcat on that bent back, driving the Tory face down in the ashes of the dying fire. “Fair play, gentle-men /’’ Hornbuckle’s warning was like the crack of a whip. The ashes “fogged.” They got into the under man’s windpipe— another “chunk of luck” for the boy, for the Tory was more than a match for him. The man was near strangling before the mauling he got was pronounced “a plenty.” When the Tory and the Whig were on their legs, Ander- son — his blood was up now — cried out: “One word for His Lordship Major-General Leslie — from ‘Tom Anderson. Tell him this: When I saved his neck from the rope if I’d known what a black-hearted, treacherous dog he was, I’d have left him to die a dog’s death!”’ The explosion of a bombshell on the cave’s floor would hardly have stirred up more excitement. The hum of rage was like the arousing of a thousand hornets. The cocking of Hornbuckle’s pistol sounded queerly loud. “Would ’n’ devil him. Be resky,”’ and his left hand rammed [om through the open door at their backs. ‘Run fer it. Hide out!” he hissed. Run he could not, in that worming hole underground. But he blundered along in the blackness. The tunnel-like cavern terminated in a manhole — masked by a boulder. He emerged on a plateau. Every muscle sore and aching, he stretched him- self on the ground. Rest he must and would. Why struggle through forests, pathless and haunted, to be “pinked by Tory pickets’’? When day broke he discovered that the cabin was within a stone’s throw of this entrance to the Tory’s Den. All day long he pondered the events of the previous night in a vain attempt to understand the intention of the Tories toward himself. “What do they mean to do with me?” He wished that Hornbuckle would come. Night drew on in gloom and rain. Why had Hornbuckle left the CORNICE IOO@ SS} (E(©) im