Beadle's Dime Novels No. 213: Squatter Dick — page 74: what you’re looking at

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

76 SQUATTER DICK. For nearly an hour Ada Kept up the outery, with brief in- tervals for breath, without any other answer than the echoes of her own yoice and the usual sounds of the swamp. But for all that, help was near. Better fur for her had she re- mained silent, than to be the means of bringing unto her the person she did. The fringe of bushes was pushed aside, and a black face peered out from the leafy screen. Its large goggle eyes quickly fell upon the form of Ada, as she cried aloud, and the hideous features expanded in a fiendish grin of delight. Then it as silently withdrew, and cautiously began circling around the island, keeping concealed from the maiden’s view. Then, as if assured that there was no danger to be apprehended, the negro once more paused, and the sun’s rays ii upon a rusty gun as it was leveled at the alligator. The report came, with a dull, heavy roar, ial the huge reptile gave a few convulsive flounders, and then lay motion- less, with the blood streaming from the death-wound behind its shoulder. Ada uttered a cry of delight, although she saw nothing of her rescuer, and in her joy at feeling herself saved, fainted away. . The negro now came forward, and as the’ masiden did not answer to his calls, he mounted the lower branches, and sever- _ing the belt, lowered Ada to the ground. Then, after reload- ing his musket, he picked up the senseless girl and strode rapidly off through the swamp, chuckling horribly to himself, or occasionally bursting out into a wild laugh. —. He did not pause, but proceeded rapidly along for nearly a , mile, when he reached a sort of island that rose in the midst of the swamp, thickly fringed with bushes around the out- side edge. Pressing through these he soon reached a rude sort of hut, formed with limbs and bushes entwined among some young trees, and roughly thatched over. Into this he entered, and iaid Ada down upon a pile-of leaves, covered with an old and ragged blanket, and then crouched by het side, gloating over her beauty. _ He was a tull, spare negro, with ochidededinatemnented set of features, that did not appear human, and which would have shamed a gorilla. He was naked from his waist up, and had on only @ coarse pair of pants, plentation cloth.and comic ooks.comn