The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 347: what you’re looking at

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

318 REYNOLDS’ WORKS to steal upon the Burker, and after several vain attempts to shake it off, he yielded to its influence. He fell asleep. Horrible dreams haunted him, as usual, for the mind reproduced with added horror the waking thoughts of the wretched man, and now in imagination he beheld the dead Strangler’s companion stealing upon him; he saw the hide- ous gossoon bending over him with a terrible ferocity of countenance, and with a long, sharp instrument in his hand. Then he fancied that he was in the depths of the jungle’s wilds, pursued by a tiger, that he strove to fly, but that his feet became as heavy as if they had turned into lead, and he could not escape the ravenous animal that was every instant gaining upon him. But all of a sudden the subject of his visions changed, and he was writhing and convulsing in the huge folds of a boa-constrictor. With a shriek of agony he awoke. He was lying in the cave; the duskiness of night still prevailed, the fire had sunk into a semicircular pile of smouldering embers, just throwing out light sufficient to show him the eyes of the gossoon staring wide open as the mendicant dervish still lay stretched along the floor of the cave at a little distance. In which direction the eye with the horrible squint was looking, the Burker scarcely knew, but the other was fixed upon himself with (he fancied) the sleaming malignity of a reptile’s. Then the gossoon began convulsing and writhing, and all of a sudden he sent forth so wild a yell that it made the Burker literally bound up in horrible alarm, while the blood seemed to congeal in his veins. The gossoon burst out into a savage laugh, and made sions to show that he was only imitating everything that the Burker had just been doing. Deep but low was the curse which in his own vernacular the Burker gave as he found himself thus rendered the sport of the malignant mockery of that hated gossoon. But the mendicant Hindu continued to laugh for some moments, and it seemed to the Burker as if he were thus listening to the malice-mirth of a fiend. When the gossoon had finished his hideous cachinnation, he composed himself to sleep again, but the Burker could not close his eyes in slumber any more. In a couple of hours the sun rose, the gossoon still saris and the Burker issued forth from the cavern. CORNIELYOOLKKS (E(©)