The aforesaid baronet suborns a ruffian of the deepest die, called “Black Hugh.”
This personage has committed an endless number of crimes; he is cast into gaol, from which he contrives, after the approved fashion, to make his escape.
He is followed by a detachment of soldiers (supers), who fire at him as he creeps over the castellated roof of his prison house.
To see him gain the rocks beyond this, and plunge from a giddy height into a foaming cataract beneath, was a sight which, happily, is only to be seen on the stage of a transpontine theatre.
He buffets the waves “with lusty sinews,” succeeds in reaching an island in an impossible sea; and from this he puts off on a raft, constructed by himself and a nigger, who is, like himself, a castaway.
He describes this in glowing language in the third act.
Eventually he is shot, and staggers on the stage. All of a sudden he becomes repentant, and makes a dying confession.
To see him point his accusing finger at the wretched baronet, and to see also the “Lily of Ludgate” let down her back hair by the footlights, and to hear the gasps and sobs she gives utterance to as she listens to the tale told by Hugh, who sets all things right before he dies, is altogether beyond our powers of description.
It had a visible and marked effect upon the house.
An itinerant vendor of lemons and oranges, who evidently belonged to the Hebrew persuasion, whispered to a companion in the gallery that the piece “wash very deep.”