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It is an instructive lesson in human history to look through the cloud of dissimulation in which the actors of this remarkable epoch were ever enveloped, and to watch them all stabbing fiercely at each other in the dark, with no regard to previous friendship, or even present professions.
On our left the wild miners had been broken at the first rush, but had fought so savagely, throwing themselves upon the ground and stabbing upwards at the stomachs of the horses, that they had at last beaten off the dragoons. The Devonshire militiamen, however, had been scattered, and shared the fate of the men of Frome.
Many soldiers, some wearing the badge of the Red Cross, approached their victims by the light of small lanterns, and passed through their ranks, clubbing them with the butt end of their rifles, and stabbing with bayonets. A perfect shambles! In these horrors we do not discern the musical note, or the acknowledgment of the "Old German God." Yet, here is a specimen:
Towards evening, when it was twilight, Shing-Chi-liang seeing Amaral, the Governor, approach on horseback, went up to him under the pretence that he had a petition to hand him, saying that he had a complaint to prefer, and whilst Amaral was stretching out his hand to receive the paper, Shing-Chi-liang drew a sharp knife he had concealed in the handle of his umbrella, and commenced stabbing him in the arm and shoulder, until he fell from his horse, when Shing-Chi-liang immediately cut off his head and hand, and they all ran, each his own way.
It seemed beyond belief that they could gain footing on the decks with Blackbeard's demons stabbing and hacking and shooting at them, but in such manner as this was many a great sea fight won in the brave days of old. Lieutenant Maynard gained his lodgment in the bows amid a swirl of pirates who tried to pen him in front of the forecastle house.
To these gibbets infamous criminals, whose crimes are regarded as deserving of a lingering death, are tightly bound with cords, and are then slowly hacked to pieces with sharp knives, unless the friends of the culprit are rich enough to bribe the executioner to terminate the death agony early by stabbing a vital part. These facts do not require to be dressed out with words.
Uncle Jim, blaspheming dreadfully and with dire stabbing intimations in either hand, came through the splintering paddle like a circus rider through a paper hoop, and once more Mr. Polly dropped his weapon and fled.
With the first stabbing drops horses turned their heads away, trembling, and no whip or spur could bring them up to it. It drove through mackintoshes as if they were blotting-paper. The air was filled with hissing; underfoot you could see solid earth melting into mud, and mud flowing away in water. It blotted out hill and dale and enemy in one grey curtain of swooping water.
When our men, in their turn, made a stand, they, according to their practice, leaped from their horses to their feet, and stabbing our horses in the belly and overthrowing a great many of our men, put the rest to flight, and drove them forward so much alarmed that they did not desist from their retreat till they had come in sight of our army.
Now they are seated upon a fallen tree, and thus he speaks: "Were you lonely without me, Maria?" Most surely it is the first question he will put to her; but she is able to carry the dream no further for the sudden pain stabbing her heart. Ah! dear God! how long will she have been lonely for him before that moment comes! A summer to be lived through, an autumn, and all the endless winter!
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