Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 145 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 145: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Description This is a page of running prose—page 129 of what appears to be a Victorian penny dreadful titled "A Treasure Goes Up in Smoke." The text depicts a dramatic scene in which characters flee a cabin that has caught fire after someone (Troupe) deliberately set dry cornstalks alight. Tom rushes back to rescue a dog named Unaka, and the passage climaxes with an explosive destruction of the cabin described in vivid, sensational language—flames sweeping through the roof, a tremendous roar, and volcanic smoke shooting skyward. The scene ends with darkness and silence falling over the forest.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A TREASURE GOES UP IN SMOKE 129 minute within those dreadful walls. He relocked the door, threw the key as far as he could send it, and came back. ‘It must be midnight.” | “Yes. Shall we bunk under the prow of the boulder? It’s dry as a powder-horn.” Something kindled upon the huddling cedars that was brighter than the midnight moon, now shining like day. Tom gave a cry of dismay. A nimble white light was whirling among the trees. It streamed from every crevice in the cabin. “Troupe! What have you done?” ‘Poured a bushel of live coals over those dry cornstalks in that pest-hole yonder. We’ll consume contagion in a funeral pyre!” “Run! Run! — for your life, Troupe! Run!” There was a rush along the path to the linn tree, [om in the lead. But as they burst the meeting boughs apart, a sound smote on their ears — the sharp, vixenish bark of a dog. Tom groaned. “Go on, Troupe! Go on! I must go back.” He was gone. In a few seconds he was close to the cabin. As he rushed toward it, the flames swept through the roof. [he open glade, the dense forest stood salient in orange light, the spring leaves shining like polished jade. There they were! Hot on Tom’s track, the little Indian dog, barking crazily; behind him, loaded with game, Unaka. “Back, Unaka! Run for your life!”’ In a few minutes they were hundreds of yards away. A tremor ran along the ground. A roar like a salvo of artillery rent the wilderness. The light of a bursting sun hung between earth and sky; and in it, trees, burning logs, the cabin walls, uptorn rocks and soil, volcanic smoke, all staggering skyward — in a Devil’s device of a waterspout. Midnight darkness. The crash of rocks and splintered growth, raining down on the quaking forest. Shudderings and rumblings. Silence. CORNICIOO® SS (¢©) im