Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 129 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 129: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Content Analysis This is running prose from Chapter XIV of a Victorian penny dreadful. The text describes Tom's discovery that Hornbuckle has contracted smallpox. After a mysterious horn signal causes men to flee the cabin in panic, Tom finds Hornbuckle delirious and plague-stricken. The passage focuses on Tom's moral conflict: though he fears infection and the pursuing Tories threaten his life, he cannot abandon the dying man. The chapter ends with Tom recognizing he cannot escape—both from the pestilence and from his moral obligation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CHAPTER XIV HORNBUCKLE S SECRET IT was evening when Hornbuckle appeared. He came stumbling into the cabin, his face swollen, his movements blundering, his tongue thick. “Git ready! Gwineter leave here ’fo’ day. Ye air gwine on a long journey to-morrow, boy!” That night Tom lay close to the cliffs, Hornbuckle’s rifle at his side, eye and ear on the alert. At daybreak, a long blast trom a horn. The signal! He sprang to his feet and waited, rifle in hand. They were not beating the bushes for him. He reconnoitered. Daylight was vague yet. All was still, all as usual. [hen —a blood-curdling yell! A dozen men rushed out of the cabin and tore through the woods like madmen. 5o astounding was this sight that Tom dared not move. For an interminable time he crouched there, behind a fallen tree. The sun rose. He stole to the hut. There lay Hornbuckle — his face to the wall— Tom stumbled backward. “Smallpox!’’ Groaning and muttering, [hat turned its bloated face and crazed eyes toward the light. “Name er God, hain’t ye no water!’ Shaking like one in an ague, Tom carried water to the half-delirious man. Then, sick and breathless, he went out of doors. The Tories had played to win, for his life and liberty. But pestilence held the long suit in the game. The fellows he’d seen running like “stampeded cattle’? would n’t come back. Hornbuckle might die and rot, for them! “God! I’m not chained to this frightful thing?’? — He would hide from the pestilence. A wail smote upon his ears. Could he turn his back on that plague-stricken thing? . “There are some things a fellow can't do!” “And it’s too late to run, now!” CORNICLIOO® SS (©) im