The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 356: what you’re looking at

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

THE GOSSOONS 27 toward the foot of that blasted tree. For the moans still continued to reach his ears, and though disguised as it were by their very plaintiveness, yet had he the conviction that they came from a human tongue. All of a sudden the thicket through which he was advancing ceased, and then a frightful spectacle met his eyes. For there, at the foot of the tree, lay the oldest of the three gossoons, encircled in the folds of a boa-constrictor, whose tail was coiled around the lower part of that tree’s trunk. The reptile raised its head on beholding the Burker, who did not however remain there another instant to contemplate more of that scene of stu- pendous horror, but he fled, goaded by the agonizing ap- prehension that the snake might quit its hold upon the gossoon and mark himself as its prey instead. On he ran, until, breathless and exhausted, he reached a rocky eminence, and on the slope he threw himself down. There he lay for some minutes, until his presence of mind began to return, and he reflected with shuddering horror upon what he had seen. Two of the gossoons had met a hideous fate. Had the third escaped, or was he likewise doomed to perish in the jungle, to the perils of which he as well as they had aban- doned a fellow creature? And would the Burker himself issue with his life from that wilderness of dangers, that wild and awful district where death was to be confronted in so many ghastly, frightful, and appalling shapes? The Burker sat in a desponding mood, asking himself these questions, and reflecting on all these things, when it struck him that he heard a slight rustling sound higher up behind; and starting with the idea that a reptile was gliding toward him, he just escaped the noose of a lasso which was thrown at his head. For there, upon that rocky eminence, stood the Strangler, the remaining companion of him whom the Burker had slain. With a cry of vindictive rage the Burker sprang up the slope, on the top of which the shark- teethed Hindu tarried to meet him. Now for another battle, another conflict, another struggle, to which the only end that could be expected was the death of one of these mortal foes. A glance showed the Burker that the Strangler had in his hands no other weapon than the lasso; a simultaneous glance made the Hindu aware that the Englishman had no visible weapon but his club. Yet neither knew whether Gomiuicboc gs) (E(0)