Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 362 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 362: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Analysis This is a page of running prose from a Victorian penny dreadful serialized as "Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil" (page 342). The text depicts a dramatic scene in a guard-room where two characters, Unaka (Cherokee) and Tom, stand by a barred window. Unaka gives Tom sacred objects—a Voodoo emblem and a knife—connected to a conflict involving Cherokee honor and a man named Emathla. The passage culminates in Tom telling a lie when questioned about two enslaved workers seen on the parade-ground, followed by a bugle-call and the arrival of Tom's friends as a column of grenadiers enters. The prose emphasizes emotional intensity, honor codes, and mounting tension typical of melodramatic sensation fiction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
342 Tom ANDERSON, Dare-DEVIL ' There was but one window to the guard-room. Close to its bars stood Unaka and Tom. The Cherokee had repeated to his white brother sub- stantially the story told by the Bishop. The facts were not matters of dispute. They did not understand that the son of a chief could not suffer a blow without laying low his enemy. Emathla knew he had done only that which the son of Going Snake should do. Had he not Tommi- Chi-Chi to his father? Was not Going Snake the son of the mighty Tommi-Chi-Chi? Verily Emathla was the only one of them all who understood! Unaka put into Tom’s hand the ancient emblem of Voodoo sorcery recovered from Macaya. The knife of Going Snake, also, was Emathla’s now. No word could Tom utter. He wound his arm about the Cherokee’s neck, as if it had been Troupe’s. His heart hammered against the Indian’s breast. Unaka’s somber eye was turned on the setting sun, which hung upon the horizon a ball of copper in a sea of greenish vapor. He seemed to see nothing else, but his quick glance noted a movement at the extremity of the parade-ground, where was a descending slope. wo ne- groes came suddenly into sight at this point in the field. They had come up the slope. They mopped their faces; and scraped white, sticky, tallowlike clay from their clothes and from some picks and shovels they carried. The tools were shouldered, and they went off, whistling. Unaka pointed to them. “What are they doing?” he asked in Cherokee. And then ‘Tom lied! He would have lied then, though his tongue had been cut out for it! “IT don’t know!” he groaned. Came a bugle-call. Tom felt a touch on his arm, and there were his friends. The column of grenadiers had filed into the parade- ground when the guard stationed at the gate through which ECOMMICOOOKS. (© m