Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 313 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 313: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Description This is running prose text from page 295 of a Victorian penny dreadful titled *Colibri*. The narrative concerns De la Jonquiére's concern about a young man named Tom's disappearance from public view, an encounter between a messenger and a Marquis involving a sealed note, and De la Jonquiére's subsequent introduction of Tom to a Dutch sugar-merchant as a language correspondent. The text employs dialect for comic effect and hints at mysterious circumstances surrounding the characters and a secret camp on a reef.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CoLiBRI 295 and introduce him to the manager of Lincoln’s Inn Thea- tre.” These remarks reached De la Jonquiére, as he too waited. He was disturbed by Tom’s withdrawal from the public eye. Could anything be amiss with the boy? The camp on the reef was known to nobody but the young French West-Indian. Its precise location was a tacit secret. At this minute the young nobleman’s groom came up with a gigantic blue-black negro. The liveried black touched his hat to his master, folded his arms, and gazed rigidly at nothing. He washed his hands of the Ebo. The big savage managed to be intelligible. Was “baas” the Marquis? A nod. [he Ebo tendered a tiny pink note, sealed. It was addressed to “The Marquis de la Carabas.” ‘This is not for me.” Perplexity fell upon the messenger. “’E no come. Me no fin’ um. Ole Missy him quoil. Him maad. Him hell-fire!”’ Hard work had Eugéne to smother a laugh. He glanced at the sedan. [The big Ebo went back to the chair, clutch- ing the note desperately, wagging his head despondently. People who live on an island less than twenty-two miles long know a deal about their neighbors. The Marquis knew the history shut up in the old sedan chair like a snake coiled up in a hollow log. So he muttered to him- self, ‘‘ Where the devil zs he?” Subsequently De la Jonquiére came into the counting- house of a Dutch sugar-merchant on the Bay; with him, a young fellow of elegant figure, handsomely, though quietly, dressed. Gabblers said the young man’s silk stockings and kid shoes displayed the handsomest leg and instep in Bridgetown. De la Jonquiére presented his friend. He had brought Mr. Huyck some one to conduct his French and English correspondence. When ‘om had turned some letters from a Jamaica house into English, some English ones into French, and cast up some accounts, terms were made. It seemed the easiest thing in the world. Tom did not know then how potent the name of De la Jonquiére was in Barbados. Unaka had no notion of leav- GOMGIOO SS (©) mn