crushed Titans. Go, go! 'tis not for thee, puny son of clay, to wield the avenging sword of sovereign justice! Thou didst fail at thy first essay. Here, then, I renounce the audacious scheme. I go to hide myself in some deep cleft of the earth, where no daylight will be witness of my shame. (He is about to fly.)
Enter a ROBBER hurriedly.
ROBBER. Look out, captain! There is mischief in the wind! Whole detachments of Bohemian cavalry are scouring the forests. That infernal bailiff must have betrayed us.
Enter more ROBBERS.
2D ROBBER. Captain! captain! they have tracked us! Some thousands of them are forming a cordon round the middle forest.
Enter more ROBBERS again.
3D ROBBER. Woe, woe, woe! we are all taken, hanged drawn, and quartered. Thousands of hussars, dragoons, and chasseurs are mustering on the heights, and guard all the passes. [Exit CHARLES VON MOOR.] Enter SCHWEITZER, GRIMM, ROLLER, SCHWARZ, SCHUFTERLE, SPIEGELBERG, RAZMAN, and the whole troop.
SCHWEITZER. Ha! Have we routed them out of their feather-beds at last? Come, be jolly, Roller! I have long wished to have a bout with those knights of the bread-basket. Where is the captain? Is the whole troop assembled? I hope we have powder enough?
RAZ. Powder, I believe you; but we are only eighty in all and therefore scarcely one to twenty.
SCHWEITZER. So much the better! And though there were fifty against my great toe-nail—fellows who have waited till we lit the straw under their very seats. Brother, brother, there is nothing to fear. They sell their lives for tenpence; and are we not fighting for our necks? We will pour into them like a deluge, and fire volleys upon their heads like crashes of thunder. But where the devil is the captain.
SPIEGEL. He forsakes us in this extremity. Is there no hope of escape?
SCHWEITZER. Escape?
SPIEGEL. Oh, that I had tarried in Jerusalem!
SCHWEITZER. I wish you were choked in a cesspool, you paltry coward! With
Prev.
Back
Top