“Danger!” the words rousted up afresh my agonized fears. Where wuz Josiah? Where wuz my idol? The woman tried to comfort me, for I wuz now cryin’ aloud, and callin’ on his name.
She sez, “He will escape; men can git round so much easier than wimmen.”
“Have you a husband in this dretful place?” sez I.
“No,” sez she, “only their dust, I have got three in a vase on my mantle piece in Surf Avenue.” Instinctively I thought “she’d had husbands to burn, but some wimmen can’t get one to save their lives, and them that get one can’t keep track on him.”
But I d’no whether she saved her vase or not, for we wuz parted by the hustlin’, tearin’, scramblin’ mob, and I wuz carried in another 303 direction, choked and blinded, and tossted and torn.
I hearn someone say, “Black Prince is loose, the biggest lion of all!” And sure enough, wild and crazy with the fiery heat and noise, the great beast rushed up and down, the crowd givin’ him the Right of Way. And at last he clim’ up onto a battlement and looked down on the mad seen below, the shoutin’ yellin’ mob bore me onwards, so I stood only a stun’s throw from the spot.
Never agin will there be such a seen presented to the eye of man, as that kingly form, standin’ up above the crowd aginst the background of lurid flame.
But who wuz that standin’ directly beneath, in the very middle of danger? My heart bounded so it most broke through my bodist waist.
Did I not know that small boneded figger? That bald head lit up by the glare of flames? It wuz! it wuz Josiah! My pardner-huntin’ wuz ended, but wuz it to be death at the gole? That agonizin’ thought made me by the side of myself, and entirely onbeknown to me I rushed forwards and cried to the lordly beast above, jest ready to spring:
“Don’t harm Josiah! Devour me instead!”