The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...Sala, George Augustus
General
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...
Sala, George Augustus
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
taken by stealth,--who such a Master of Arts as our young Undergraduate?
But at his lectures and chapels and repetitions he was (although always
with a vast natural capacity) an inveterate Idler; and he did besides so
continually violate and outrage the college rules and discipline, that
his Superiors, after repeated admonitions, gatings, impositions, and
rustications (which are a kind of temporary banishment), were at last
fain solemnly to expel him from the University. Upon which his father
discarded him from his house, vowing that he would leave his broad acres
(which were not entailed) to his Nephew, and bidding him go to the
Devil; whither he accordingly proceeded, but by a very leisurely and
circuitous route. But the young Rogue had already made a more perilous
journey than this, for he had fallen in Love with a young Madam of
exceeding Beauty, and of large Fortune in her own right, the daughter of
a neighbouring Baronet. And she, to her sorrow, poor soul, became as
desperately enamoured of this young Scapegrace, and would have run away
with him, I have no doubt, had he asked her, but for a spark of honour
which still remained in that reckless Heart, and forbade his linking the
young girl, all good and pure as she was, to so desperate a life as his.
And so he went wandering for a time up and down the country, swaggering
with his boon companions, and pawning his Father's credit in whatsoever
inns and pothouses he came unto, until, in the beginning of that fatal
year '46, he must needs find himself at Manchester without a Shilling in
his pocket, or the means of raising one. It was then the time that the
town of Manchester had been captured, in the Pretender's interest, by a
Scots Sergeant and a Wench; and the notorious Colonel Towneley was about
raising the Manchester Regiment of Lancashire Lads to fight for Prince
Charlie. Desperate Jemmy Dawson enlisted under Towneley; and soon, being
a young fellow of good figure and shining talents, was made a Captain.
But the ill-fated Manchester Regiment was ere long broken up; and Jemmy
Dawson, with Colonel Towneley himself, and many other of the officers,
were captured. They were all tried at the Assizes held after the Assizes
at St. Margaret's Hill, Southwark; and James Dawson, being convicted of
high treason, was sentenced to the usual horrible punishment for that
offence. He was drawn on a hurdle to Kennington Common; he was hanged,
disembowelled, and quartered; but the young Madam of whom I have spoken
was true to him unto the last. For many days following the sentence she
vainly solicited his pardon; but finding all useless, she on the fatal
morning (having trimmed a shroud for him overnight, in which, poor Soul,
his mangled remains were not to rest) followed him in a Mourning Coach
to Kennington Common. She saw the Dreadful Tragedy played out to its
very last Act; and then she just turned on her Side in the Coach, and
with a soft Murmur, breathing Jemmy's Name, she Died. Surely a story so
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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