University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
Another adventure of a more terrible cast, in which the Sleeping
Beauty performs the part of a heroine.

In the meanwhile, my entertainer, enraged at my
interference, sprang to his feet, and made another
dart at the maiden, to snatch her from my arms; in
which he would have, perhaps, succeeded, had not a
fourth person now rushed into the room, with a pistol,
which he fired at the gentleman, though without doing
him any harm; and then, with a chair which he snatched
up and wielded with both hands, knocked him
down. The intruder, as I saw at a glance, was the
original of the portrait that hung as the pendant to
the effigy of Mrs. Bloodmoney—to wit, the gentleman
with powdered hair, stern countenance, and vigorous
frame; and the sight of him brought I know
not what strange fancies and suspicions into my head.
But I had little time to entertain them; for having
knocked Mr. Bloodmoney down, he began to vociferate
in terms of wrath and alarm, “Here! John,
Tim, Dick, George! Robbers, thieves! Fetch the
watch—murder! help! George, Dick, Tim, John,
watch! thieves, robbers!” And immediately three
or four negro-men, very spruce and active looking,
though but half dressed, came tumbling into the
room, with looks and cries of astonishment and indignation,
following the gentleman, who now made

an assault upon me, bidding me “surrender for a
house-breaking dog,” and strengthening his exhortation
by the same argument he had used in the case
of my worthy host—that is, by knocking me down
with the chair. At the same moment, some of the
blackies whisked the young lady out of my hands,
and helped her, now recovering her senses, out of the
room; while the others, holding fast upon my entertainer
and myself, imitated the leader in the nocturnal
onslaught, in brawling to “fetch the watch,”
and “to bring ropes to tie the robbers.”

The weight of the chair, applied without any consideration
of what might be the consequences, to a
head considerably softer than usual, had somewhat
stunned and muddled my faculties; and their confusion
was rather increased than abated by the outcries
of the strange gentleman and his attendants, and
their violent proceedings in regard to my friend and
myself. Nevertheless, I was not so much stupefied
as to be incapable of forming my own opinions of
the true state of matters and things; but, had I been,
all uncertainly must have been put to flight by what
followed.

The negroes having secured my hands behind
me with a handkerchief, pulled me upon my feet,
that the powdered gentleman might see, as he said,
“who the rascal was.” He gave me a furious stare,
told me I was “a bloody-minded looking villain—
young for a housebreaker, but old enough to hang;”
to not one word of which friendly and flattering
address did I return an answer, being, in truth, so
unutterably confounded, that my tongue, as I may say,
clove to the roof of my mouth.

He then turned to my entertainer, who being
helped to his feet in like manner, received him
with a volley of drunken oaths and maledictions,

called him “Old Commodore,” and demanded, with
every appearance of honest indignation, “If that
was the way he treated an old friend and visiter.”

“A visiter!” quoth the white-headed gentleman,
starting at sight of him as at a basilisk, and in his
surprise, uttering a name that made my flesh creep
on my bones—it was the name of the redoubtable
Captain Brown, alias Hellcat!

I understood my position at once, or, at least, I
thought I did: the white-headed gentleman, and no
other, was the true Mr. Bloodmoney, and the other
a villanous sharper, pirate, cut-throat—every thing
that was roguish, who had taken advantage of my
ignorance and simplicity, choused me out of my
letter of recommendation, with its enclosure of
money, and, what was worse, inveigled me into the
commission of a felony, made me his accomplice in
a burglary, and a burglary, too, in the house of the
very man to whom I was bearing the letter of recommendation.

If I was confounded before, I was now in a trance
of confusion a hundred times worse than ever, being
thrown into such a fit of consternation at the discovery
of my deplorable condition, that I not only
was incapable of seeing what it was proper for me
to do, to extricate myself from the dilemma—to
wit, to inform Mr. Bloodmoney who I was, and how
I had been entrapped—but lost my seven senses
along with my wits, so that I no longer saw or
heard any thing that passed around me, being conscious
only of a multitude of sounds as of men in
wrathful argument, whom I could no more see than
I could distinguish their words. In this condition I
was dragged away, at the order, I believe, of Mr.
Bloodmoney, into another room, where one of the
blackies remained in watch over me, armed with a

poker, with which he gave me to understand, twenty
times a minute, he would knock out my brains, if I
made any attempt to escape; to render which the
more difficult, he was at the pains to produce a
second handkerchief with which he bound my legs,
leaving me lying like a log on the floor.

I now began to recall my wits a little, and could
then hear the hum of loud and angry voices from
the saloon, and presently a greater hubbub as of
altercation; then a yell and cry of murder, followed
by other sounds not less frightful; upon which the
negro who had charge of me, ran out to join the fray,
leaving me in the dark, and as much terrified as
himself. To increase the din, there was now heard
a prodigious banging at the door and ringing of
what I supposed was the street bell, and the shrieking
of women up stairs; which, together with the
storm that still rattled as furiously as ever, made up
such a chorus of horrible sounds as I had never heard
before—no, not even at the execution of the dethroned
tyrant, M'Goggin.

In the midst of the hubbub, the young lady, the
heroine of the night, suddenly appeared before me,
pale with affright and excitement, yet with something
of resolution marked on her beautiful visage.
She entered the room, closed the door, and stepping
hastily to where I lay, looked me intently in the
face, and then muttered, in tones slightly distinguished
by a foreign accent, and low and tremulous,
yet expressive of the energy of passion—“You are
a robber, a house breaker, and a villain; but you
have saved me—Dios mio! I know not from
what!—You shall escape.”

With these words, she tore the handkerchiefs from
my hands and feet, and throwing open a window
that seemed to look into a garden, bade me leap

through it and begone; an injunction in which I was
extremely willing to obey her, being as eager, in fact,
to get out of the horrible scrape I was in, as ever
was mouse to fly his narrow prison of wire. Nevertheless,
I could not leave such a beautiful creature,
without some attempt at retrieving my character in
her opinion. “I am no robber, no villain,” I said,
“but a miserable dupe of—” I would have added,
“the villain, Captain Brown and my own egregious
folly;” but she interrupted me impatiently, waving
with one hand to the window, and with the other
pointing warningly to the door of the room, at which
I heard, or fancied I heard, the steps and voices of
men, coming to make sure of me. “Begone,” she
muttered; “and, if you are honest, God will go with
you.”

I leaped, as commanded, my heart full of gratitude,
my head again teeming with romantic notions, which
not even the peril of my situation could prevent returning,
at this second encounter with the lovely
Spaniard; for such, by her exclamation, Dios mio,
I knew she must be.

But what peril could not do in the way of curing
me of my sentiment, a very trivial mischance soon
did; for, dropping from the window, which was
some six or seven feet from the ground, I had the
misfortune to plump into a rain-hogshead, then brimfull;
that is, I plumped into it with one leg, bestriding
it as a dragoon his war-horse; and the vessel
being unsettled by the jar, toppled over with me to
the ground with a violence that must have done
much damage to my exterior leg, had not the fury
of the deluge it immediately shot over me, washed
me, as I may say, clean out of it, before I had
reached the ground.

The worst consequence of this misadventure was

my being now, for the second time, drenched to the
skin; but this I did not long lament, as it was raining
as furiously as ever, and I perceived, I must, at
all events, have been, in a few moments, as thoroughly
soaked as ever. I had no time to lose in
bewailing my misfortunes; and therefore thought of
nothing so much as making my escape from Mr.
Bloodmoney's garden; which I effected by climbing
a gate, and dropping into a little alley, whence I
made my way into a street.

Here I was in some danger of falling into the
hands of a watchman, who was running along towards
Mr. Bloodmoney's house, as I supposed, making
a terrible din with his rattle; but I avoided him by
slipping behind a corner, till he had passed; after
which, I took to my heels, and ran, I knew not
well whither, until I found myself out of breath, and
in the suburbs of the city.

This discovery, or rather the latter part of it, was
the more agreeable, as I was now heartily sick of
the City of Brotherly Love; which, after such a feat
of burglary, however innocent my own part in it, did
not seem the safest place in the world for me to remain
in. I pursued my way, therefore, without so much
caring whither it might lead me, as desiring it should
bear me as far as possible from Philadelphia; and
was, in half an hour more, outside of the town, waddling
along (for I cannot call it walking) through a
long puddle of fluid brick-clay, knee-deep at least,
which, I afterwards ascertained, was one of the principal
highways from Philadelphia to the South.