The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 341: what you’re looking at

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

312 REYNOLDS’ WORKS congratulate himself on the spectacle he had just witnessed, for it was probably the tiger which had carried off the snake- charmer that had thus met its death amidst the infuriate elephants. At all events there was one wild beast the less in the vicinity of the cavern, and such a circumstance was a subject for self-felicitation on the part of the Burker. He remained for some while seated on the top of the hill, and then, having again slaked his thirst with the gushing waters of the pellucid spring, he passed around the rocky eminence in order to reach the entrance of his cavern, that he might partake of his evening meal. Having eaten of his provisions, he felt an exceeding drowsiness stealing upon him, most probably from having remained so long upon the eminence exposed to the sultry fervour of the sun. So strong became this inclination to sleep that he could not battle against it, and yet he knew that the projecting barrier was not raised at the mouth of the cavern. After a vain effort to shake off the increasing somnolence, the Burker yielded himself to it, and falling back on the ground of the cave, he sank into sleep. Horrible dreams speedily began to troop in unto his mind; a hideous nightmare seized upon him, and he felt an oppression upon the chest that it appeared as if the hand of death itself were thus lying heavily on him. Never had his visions been so horrible before, frightful though many of his dreaming experiences had been beneath the roof of that very cavern. How long he slept he knew not, but he was suddenly startled up into complete wakefulness, and then a monstrous cobra upreared its hooded head from his breast and hissed at him. The man shrieked out in his mental agony; the cobra darted his head forward as if to seize him on the face with its fangs, and the Burker sank back in- sensible. When he came back to consciousness, he shuddered with the awful recollection of what he had endured, and which - now appeared to be a hideous dream. The dusk was closing in, and he started up to his feet, mechanically clutching his club which lay by his side. Still trembling and quivering all over under the influence of his hideous recollections, with the perspiration standing cold and clammy upon his fore- head, the Burker was rushing out of the cavern, when a horrible hissing smote his ears, and within a yard of his foot Gomiuicbdoc 6S (E(©)