John Smith's Funny Adventures on a Crutch: Or The Remarkable Peregrinations of a One-legged Soldier after the WarHill, A. F. (Ashbel Fairchild)
History
John Smith's Funny Adventures on a Crutch: Or The Remarkable Peregrinations of a One-legged Soldier after the War
Hill, A. F. (Ashbel Fairchild)
Disabled veterans -- United States -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Veterans -- Fiction
I will not take it upon myself to say that Mrs. “Pheel” had drank too
much, as I should not wish to do her the slightest injustice: it may
have been the extreme heat of the climate; it may have been her obesity;
it may have been her anxiety; it may have been that she was not blessed
with a strong constitution; it may have been all or part of these
combined that governed her conduct: but certain it is, that Mrs.
“Pheel,” acted strangely and unlike a lady at the beach. Some little
delay was occasioned there, by the fact that the native who engaged to
take us to the steamer, had to go and hunt up his partner; and during
the interval, Mrs. “Pheel” not only talked strangely, walked strangely,
and bore herself in an unaccountable manner; but actually became
unreasonable, unmanageable, and even pugnacious. She first opened our
eyes by declaring that we were going to rob her, and adding:
“Bedad, I’ll make Pheel put a head on yez all!”
This was somewhat startling to me, as I had one head that suited me very
well, and, with my means of perambulating, did not desire to be
encumbered with another.
“Madam,” I remonstrated, “I pray that you will be quiet. We are your
friends, and you are welcome to go with us to the steamer. I hope——”
“Where’s my fan?” she interrupted, springing with some abruptness to a
new theme of conversation.
“I do not know. Have you lost one?”
“Bedad some one’s sthole it,” she vociferated.
By this time a dozen natives had collected on the beach, and were
viewing the female Caucasian with mingled wonder and amusement.
Mr. Hawes was sitting on an old spar at this time, calmly fanning
himself with a palm-leaf fan he had carried all day. The object, at this
unfortunate moment, caught the eye of Mrs. Pheel.
“Ye _blaggard_ ye!” she fairly screamed, staggering clumsily toward the
startled Englishman; “ye hov me fan! Bad luck to ye, ye divil! Give me
that!”
Without waiting for a word of remonstrance from Mr. Hawes, she dealt him
a blow on the cheek bone that sent him backward over the spar, with his
feet elevated in the night air; and, at the same time, staggered,
herself, whirled round and fell prostrate on the rough stones and sand
of the beach.
She was actually crazy. She screamed, struggled convulsively, swore a
few regular brimstone oaths, then lay a little while apparently
insensible, and gasping as though she were in a retort and the air had
suddenly been pumped away.
By this time, quite a concourse of curious natives had collected around
us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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