The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

142 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. her, and she stood glaring on the awful spectacle that was now going on so close to her. ‘*Come, lift him up higher,” said one of the men, as he tried to fix the running knot he had made at the other end of the handkerchief, to catch fast hold of the nail. “All right,” said the man, when he had fixed the handkerchief on the nail securely. ‘When shall I let him go?” ‘Now; but gently.” Gradually the man withdrew the support he gave to the body, and the sufferer began to kick and plunge, making a suppressed sound in his throat. ‘Hold his legs and arms.” They did so; but the nail gave way, and the half-strangled man came to the earth with a dreadful fall. Then commenced a2 dreadful struggle. It was now life and death for all. During the struggle the door flew open from the violence of their attempts; but, fortunately, it escaped Mabel, who still stood terrified and incapable of motion, gazing on the horrid and deadly fray. “‘Take out your knife, while I hold on by the handkerchief,” said one, as he grasped it, and tightened it round the man’s roat. The other made no reply, but took from his pocket a Spanish clasp-knife, which he opened with his teeth, and then dashed it, with a heavy blow, into the prostrate man’s breast, as he lifted his arms to free himself from the strangulation that he was suffering. A sudden convulsion passed through his body, and the man was a corpse. He straightened himself on the floor, and the life-blood welled out of the gaping wound which the Spanish knife bad caused. “That was a d——d good blow, in the right place, and at the right moment.” ‘“ Yes,” replied the man, coolly wiping his knife on the dead man’s leg. ‘‘I thought it bad been carried on too far, and in another minute or two he would have got his jaw loose, and then the neighbors would be called in. Eh!——” ‘“What’s the matter? Why, d——e, youare as white as a sheet. Have you seen a ghost, or——” The speaker had followed the direction of the gaze of his com- panion, whose eyes were nearly starting from their sockets, and his under jaw fell; and on looking round he discovered the ob- ject of his compauion’s terror, which was now also his own. What that was we will now explain. Mabel, who was unable to move or speak, had stood staring, with a gaze she could not withdraw, at the deed that had been done, and the bloody spectacle before her. When she first got off the bed to peep through the chink in the door, she had wrapped a coarse white quilt around her in the dark, as it was very cold. Her appearance at the door was, therefore, to say the least of it, in keeping well with the supernatural. The men, through their falls and struggles with their victim, comicbooks. com