Penny Dreadfuls, 1916 · page 399 of 400
Tom Anderson, Dare-Devil: A Young Virginian in the Revolution — page 399: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page of running prose from Chapter XL of a Victorian penny dreadful. The text describes a chaotic scene in which a character called Fool Billy, hidden under a hall table during a military skirmish at a place called Oxheart, has stolen a pistol and contemplates using it. The passage depicts Billy's confused mental state as various people and animals move around him, and ends with a character named Leslie momentarily frozen after being rebuked by someone named Dare, while "the Black Thistle" appears in the final line (seemingly a character epithet).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
CHAPTER XL THE BLACK THISTLE BLOWS AWAY In the tumult of Tarleton’s descent on Oxheart, Fool Billy was unhindered as a leaf in the wind. His feeble wits were curdled with excitement. The sweating black horses, the glittering arms, the cavalry trumpet, crazed him. The marauders were everywhere; and so was the black oaf. When Dare denounced Leslie, Billy was squatted out of sight under the hall table, hugging to his breast the pistol he had just pulled from its holster. From his place of concealment he had put out a little black claw and, quite unnoticed, slipped one from that pile of side-arms on the massy black board whereon His Majesty’s officers had thrown down two or three swords, more than one pair of pistols. Nobody heeded him. It would have been hard to make out that black object curled up under the table, in the dark hall. His crooked brain was busy. One time he’d found a pistol. But the man in the “ole Injun graveyard” had “tuk en’ tuk it.’ This time he’d shoot his pistol “befo’ whi-folks kin git it.”” A pair of legs passed close to the muzzle of the weapon. The legs were encased in fair-top boots; there were spurs on the boot-heels “des lak Marse Tom’s,”’ and Billy began to weep. A pointer puppy ca- pered through the hall, a servant in hot pursuit. Billy was too much entertained to think of either of these as a target. In fact, there was so much doing — so much com- ing and going — that everybody found Billy unprepared. The candidates for his aim were too active, and too many. It was confusing. “Wunner who dat Miss Dare a-talkin’ ter?” Leslie, stunned by Dare’s withering rebuke, for one fatal instant stood still in his tracks. The Black [Thistle bobbed CORNICLOO® SS (E©) m