Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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It was a gibbet with a man hanging at the end of the beam, his head coming, according to the picture printed upon my vision by that flash of lightning, within a hand breadth of the piece of timber he dangled at, whence I guessed, with the velocity of thought, that he had been cut down and then tucked up afresh in irons or chains.

I came to a stand as though I had been shot, waiting for another glance of lightning to reveal the ghastly object afresh. I had forgotten all about this gibbet. Had a thought of the horror entered my head—that head which had been too full of the fumes of rum punch to yield space for any but the cheeriest, airiest imaginations—I should have given these sand hills the widest berth which the main road provided. I was no coward; but, Lord! to witness such a sight by a stroke of lightning! I say it was as unexpected a thing to my mood, at that moment of its revelation by lightning, as though not a word had been said about it at my uncle’s, and as though I had entered the sand hills absolutely ignorant that a man hung in chains on a gibbet, within shy of a stone from the water.