- end_line
- 6860
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:05.594Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6831
- text
- he cunningly dropped himself overboard the same night, and after the
narrowest risk from the muskets of the man-of-war’s sentries (whose
gangways he had to pass), succeeded in swimming to shore, where he fell
exhausted, but recovering, fled inland, doubly hunted by the thought,
that whether as an Englishman, or whether as an American, he would, if
caught, be now equally subject to enslavement.
Shortly after the break of day, having gained many miles, he succeeded
in ridding himself of his seaman’s clothing, having found some mouldy
old rags on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building,
which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised,
left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he
should with avidity seize these rags; what the suicides abandon, the
living hug.
Once more in beggar’s garb, the fugitive sped towards London, prompted
by the same instinct which impels the hunted fox to the wilderness; for
solitudes befriend the endangered wild beast, but crowds are the
security, because the true desert, of persecuted man. Among the things
of the capital, Israel for more than forty years was yet to disappear,
as one entering at dusk into a thick wood. Nor did ever the German
forest, nor Tasso’s enchanted one, contain in its depths more things of
horror than eventually were revealed in the secret clefts, gulfs, caves
and dens of London.
But here we anticipate a page.
- title
- Chunk 4