Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 298 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 298: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is a running prose page from Chapter XXIX, titled "The Marquis of Carabas." Bishop Coleridge recounts a dramatic confrontation that occurred in a ship-broker's office, describing how a man named Dick challenged an American and a Cherokee to a dangerous standoff involving drawn knives. The passage depicts Victorian melodrama with period racial attitudes, showing characters becoming agitated as the Bishop narrates the escalating tension of the encounter.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CHAPTER XXIX THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS “TIT was the maddest challenge I ever knew one man give another. Lucifer himself could n’t have outdared it!” said the Bishop. Lord Mulgrave bowed. Edward Dalton, fifth Earl of Mulgrave, was a small, silent man. His sense of humor had been stunted by the English throne. His whole soul and body were absorbed in the business of doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased His Majesty to call him. Always and everywhere the obligations of being an Englishman gat hold upon him. If he had no humor, he had an apprehension of levity. The Bishop disturbed him sometimes. “Coleridge unsettles one so!”’ “The American’s a trump,’ declared Sandy Mac- glashan. “Go on,” said Lady Amy quickly. “What then?” Her chin in her palm, she leaned forward; fixing her eyes on Bishop Coleridge, who had been telling the story of what was said and done in the ship-broker’s office that after- noon. “Qh, it was good as a play. I wish you could have seen "em! My dear young lady, the American was magnificent.” “And Dick — what did Dick say?” “Oh, Dick went white with fury. I thought for a min- ute he’d lost his head. Raised his fist, you know. The Cherokee’s tongue clicked like a fusee, and there he stood, with his knife drawn. And there Dick stood —with that scalping-knife above his head — and drawled out in that lazy, icy way of his, “Do you imagine I’d cross swords with a half-blood!’ And then he got round to the savage. ‘Put up that knife— or I'll kill you.’ By that time we were all on our feet; the American had said something to Gomicbooks. Go