“Now for it,” thought the chief conspirator in the bushes, as he applied his light to the slow-match. He thought nothing more just then, for the slow-match proved to be rather quick, fired the powder at once, and the monster cannon, bursting with a hideous roar into a thousand pieces, blew Otto through the bushes and down the mound, at the foot of which he lay as one dead.
Consternation was on every face. The queen, dropping her crown, sprang to his side, Dr Marsh did the same, but Otto recovered almost immediately.
“That was a stunner!” he said, with a confused look, putting his hand to his head, as they helped him to rise.
Strange to say, he was none the worse of the misadventure, but did his part nobly at the Royal feast that followed.
That night she who had risen with the sun as Pauline Rigonda, laid her fair young head upon the pillow as—the Island Queen.
Chapter Nine.
Shows how they were tormented by an Old Familiar Fiend; How they killed him, and what befell the Queen and Otto while in the Pursuit of Legitimate Pleasure.
When the widow Lynch told Pauline that “onaisy is the hid as wears a crown,” she stated a great truth which was borne in upon the poor queen at the very commencement of her reign.