Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 315 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 315: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Content Analysis This is a page of running prose from what appears to be a serialized Victorian novel (page 297, titled "Colibri"). The text describes a conversation between characters—the Marquis and De la Jonquière—touring a Scottish estate called the Knatchbull place. They discuss a man named Dick who has business interests across Caribbean islands, then tour the property to view an ornamental spring featuring a marble lion's head sculpture that feeds into an elaborate basin surrounded by roses, cactus hedges, and colored marble mosaics. The prose is descriptive and atmospheric, detailing the architecture and tropical aesthetic of this remote location.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Co_LiBRI 297 One picture place in “Scotland,” with a bungalow built of coquina, was “the Knatchbull place.” “Does he live here?” “Oh, when he’s on the island. Dick’s a bird of passage: has interests from San Domingo to Trinidad: went in for ginger and arrowroot in Barbuda. But there’s not a spring on the island, so he does not lose much time over those plantations.” “And what does he go in for in Barbados?” The Marquis turned his fine eyes full upon the querist. “Well, he has relatives here, you know; and, talking of springs, | must show you the one on this place.” All doors were open to De la Jonquiére. They ap- proached the house, which had for background the shoulder of a bold hill, not many rods distant. ‘How pretty the pinkish coquina is against that black bluff!— Mr. Knatchbull in Tobago?” to the Carib boy who opened an inner gate for them. - The savage showed his yellow teeth, but was dumb. “Takes Dick to talk to his cannibals,” said De la Jon- quiére, with a shrug. They strolled through a lane between hedges of Jes- samine, toward the boulders behind the house. ‘There! there’s the spring, Carabas.” Originally the stream had issued from a fissure in an overhanging mass of rock; but over the fountain’s mouth a lion’s head in white marble was riveted into the stone, standing out in splendid relief —a Titanic cameo— against the smutty lichens of the rock. An eager stream, pouring from the lion’s jaws, fell downward into a marble basin. “That’s the spring; this the bathroom.” Lattices loaded with roses enclosed the basin which received the stream. However, bronze lattices were not its only walls; for they, in turn, were encircled by a ter- rific cactus hedge. What a basin it was, to be sure! Twelve feet square or so, it was composed of the most beautiful mosaics in colored marble. Tropic flowers overhung its CORNICIOOO® <S (CO) im