Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 34 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 34: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from page 18 of *Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil*, a Victorian penny dreadful. The text describes a chaotic scene in which numerous birds—linnets, thrushes, wrens, robins, and a hundred-year-old blue heron—suddenly swarm around a character named Unaka (described as Cherokee). Tom watches eagerly as a great horned owl perches on Unaka's wrist; when Tom asks whether to wring its neck, Unaka commands the bird to leave, and then mysteriously vanishes himself.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
18 Tom ANDERSON, Dare-DEvIL blundered linnets, thrushes, wrens, robins, and migratory birds. They flocked forth tumultuously, flying drunkenly. Martins from the “martin-go’des,” and the old blue heron that had haunted the woods and waters of Oxheart for a hundred years! He came tumbling out of the sky, his long wader legs dangling down as limply as if they’d been his own Christmas stockings just hung up, and floundered to the Cherokee’s feet. The birds covered his arms and shoulders, clung to his hair, nestled in his deerskin shirt, which hung open at the throat. The savage was covered with quivering wings and sparkled with a thousand eyes. Tom’s blood was galloping. “Combegetta!’’ [Go away], said Unaka. Tumult then. They burst away, dashed blindly against limbs, flew hither and thither, helplessly. But the great horned owl sat on Unaka’s wrist, quaking. “Wring neck?” he asked in Cherokee. “No, let him go, Unaka!”’ “Begone!” clucked the Indian. Tom followed the big bird’s flight with eager eyes. But when he turned to speak to Unaka, he too was gone. CONNIE KOOKS (E(0)