Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 291 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 291: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful. Chapter XXVIII, titled "A Wild Challenge," depicts a dramatic confrontation in what appears to be a Caribbean colonial setting. Dick Knatchbull, angry that someone has escaped by sea, discusses whether a purchased person is of mixed racial descent ("octoroon") or white, threatening to return him to a calaboose (jail) if he doesn't comply. The scene shifts to observing a brown man in the street greeting "a ragged, well-nigh naked savage." The text concerns property ownership, enslavement, and racial classification within a sensational melodramatic framework typical of the genre.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CHAPTER XXVIII A WILD CHALLENGE “WARRANT for him? Why, man; he’s gone. Look at that!’? White with fury, Dick Knatchbull pointed to a speck at sea. “That’s the slaver. Lying down the Bay when the bill of sale was made out.’ “Arranged to revenge himself on the American, dupe you, and slip away with two thousand pounds! Infamous scoundrel.” ‘| swear, if she ever shows herself in the Caribbean Sea again, I’ll make my Caribs scuttle the stinking slaver!”’ Knatchbull rammed his hands into his pockets, and paced the ship-broker’s office on the Bay where the Marquis had - found him. “Ts old Mac certain the fellow’s not an octoroon? Got one drop of slave-blood in him, he’s mine. I bought him. And I'll have what I paid for — unless Mac can prove the boy’s white. This thing must be sifted to the bottom, De la Jonquiére.”’ “That ’s the duty of all concerned, Dick. We'll con- state the evidence.” Knatchbull stepped to the open window, and beckoned a brown fellow in white cottonades standing on the pave- ment in the shade of a plane tree. He glanced up at the young planter, and went on lifting first one bare foot, and then the other, as the heat from the sun-smitten bricks scorched his soles. “Does n’t move, by Geary ’Pon my word, De la Jonquiére, I shall put him back in the calaboose till he comes to his senses. There was a burst of laughter from the street. The two young men looked out. [here was the brown fellow wring- ing the hand of a ragged, well-nigh naked savage, with a GomiGcsoo SS (EO) mn