The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 291: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

262 REYNOLDS’ WORKS self thus lonely, thus friendless, thus unprotected and for- lorn? The scene itself was in India, the place was a jungle, and that man was the Burker. | He had escaped from Inderabad, but now how bitterly did he curse himself for having taken that step! At least a hundred miles lay betwixt him and the capital of Queen Indora’s kingdom; he might possibly retrace his way, he might go back to his fortress, but he dared not; for in order to effect his flight he had slain the sentinel who guarded the passage from which his cell opened, and he could not entertain the hope that Queen Indora or her royal husband would so far overlook the crime as to leave him in possession of his life. Yet, on the other hand, of what value was that life amidst the horrors of this jungle? He knew not where to place himself in order to be insafety. If he sat beneath the shade of a tree, the hideous idea would creep over him that a huge snake might at any instant dart down with its tremendous length and wind its loathsome coils around him. If he sought the groves, he dreaded lest the silence should sud- denly be broken by the howl of a wild beast and its claws should be struck deep into his palpitating flesh. If he made his way through the underwood, he felt every instant as if the deadly cobra were winding around his legs. If he rested himself upon the grass by the side of a stream or pool, his blood still curdled with the apprehension that some in- sidious reptile was gliding through the rank luxuriance of that herbage toward him. This man lived an entire age of horrors 1n every passing minute. — At an early hour in the morning of that day he had passed through a little village where some bullock-drivers, cooking their rice in the public khan, had from charity given him a portion of their food. Thence journeying onward, he had insensibly plunged deeper and deeper into this wild scene of fearful beauty, which, when too late to retreat, he discovered to be a jungle swarming with the brute and reptile enemies of man. It were vain for the Burker to ask himself what he should do; his imagination could suggest nothing, unless now and then he reflected that it were better to attempt to make his way back to Inderabad, and dare whatever fate might attend him there, than wander about in this abject wretchedness CONNIE OC CS (E()