The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 298: what you’re looking at

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

THE JUNGLE 269 itself, and therefore half-enclosing the open space where the two natives were reposing and feasting. They themselves were lying in such a way that their backs were toward the grove and their sides toward the Burker. It was just at the very moment when the Burker was about to issue forth and reveal himself, that he beheld some dark object, just within the trees and thick underwood behind the two natives. The next instant the branch of a tree was put aside, and the dark countenance of a man peered forth upon the two travellers. This movement was evidently executed in so stealthly and noiseless a manner that the travellers them- selves remained unsuspicious of it, for no doubt if they had heard even so much as the rustling of a leaf they would have orasped their rifles and started up to their feet. The Burker knew not what it meant, but a vague terror seized upon him, for he fancied that some mischief was intended, and he remained motionless as a statue in his hiding-place. But his eyes were riveted upon the spot where that dark coun- tenance had appeared. Again the branch was put aside in the same noiseless manner as before, and now the Burker beheld two swarthy countenances looking down upon the travellers. He was near enough to observe the sinister glare of the eyes belonging to those two countenances, and a still deeper terror was stricken into his own heart. If all this had occurred in his own native land, the Burker would have doubtless taken some decisive part, but here, in this horrible jungle, it was quite different. Indeed, his mind was attenuated by the sense of continuous perils which surrounded him, by the objects he had seen, and by his horrible dreams at night; he was in a strange land, where everything was different from what he had been accustomed to in England, and thus was it that the Burker in an Indian jungle was himself a different being from the Burker in his own country. , There he was, motionless in his hiding-place, his mind full of a dismayed suspense; there were the two travellers, reclining on the grass, unsuspicious of impending evil; and there, in the dense maze of verdure behind them, were the two sinister countenances, with eyes glaring as if upon intended victims. All of a sudden two objects were thrown forth, precisely at the same instant, from amidst those trees, and the next moment the two unfortunate travellers GOMIIGdOG SS) (F©)