ll
him! Kill Shadbelly, with his praying clothes on!' (which was a profane
designation of myself and my religious profession), and casting my head
over my left shoulder in a manner somehow reluctantly, thus, (throwing
his head to one side), and perceiving their near approximation, I
augmented my speed into what might be denominated a gentle slope, and
subsequently augmented the same into a species of dog-trot. But all
would not do. Gentlemen, the destroyer came. As I reached the fence, and
was about propelling my body over the same, felicitating myself on my
prospect of escape from my remorseless pursuers, they arrived, and James
William Jones, called by nickname, Buck Jones, that red-headed character
now at the bar of this honorable court, seized a fence rail, grasped it
in both hands, and, standing on tip-toe, hurled the same, with mighty
emphasis, against my cerebellum, which blow felled me to the earth.
Straightway, like ignoble curs upon a disabled lion, these bandit
ruffians and incarnadine assassins leaped upon me, some pelting, some
bruising, some gouging,--'everything by turns, and nothing long,' as the
poet hath it; and one of them,--which one unknown to me, having no eyes
behind,--inflicted with his teeth a grievous wound upon my person;
where, I need not specify. At length, when thus prostrate on the ground,
one of those bright ideas, common to minds of men of genius, struck me.
I forthwith sprang to my feet, drew forth my cutto, circulated the same
with much vivacity among their several and respective corporeal systems,
and every time I circulated the same I felt their iron grasp relax. As
cowardly recreants, even to their own guilty friendships, two of these
miscreants, though but slightly perforated by my cutto, fled, leaving
the other two, whom I had disabled by the vigor and energy of my
incisions, prostrate and in my power. These lustily called for quarter,
shouting out 'Enough!' or, in their barbarous dialect, being as corrupt
in language as in morals, 'Nuff!' which quarter I magnanimously extended
them, as unworthy of my farther vengeance, and fit only as subject of
penal infliction at the hands of the offended laws of their country, to
which laws I do now consign them, hoping such mercy for them as their
crimes will permit; which, in my judgment (having read the code) is not
much. This is my statement on oath, fully and truly, nothing extenuating
and naught setting down in malice; and if I have omitte