Hoodlum

“ I found them in the hands of a gang of hoodlums, and of course they were stolen."
"Eh? hold on—this interests me!" and Forgan proceeded to inspect the contents of the bag. "That's bad!" he commented with knit brows. A leak like that shows something rotten on the inside! ”

“ He felt that he must be popular with the seven students. In the first place, it was nice that in the presence of Marjory they should like him, and in the second place he feared to displease them as a body because he believed that he had some dignity. Hoodlums are seldom dangerous to other hoodlums, but if they catch pomposity alone in the field, pomposity is their prey. ”

“ At the sound of the first shot, Black Hood had climbed to the top of the high wire fence to leap into the factory grounds. Lightning had seen him streaking through the open areas between buildings—a weird figure in yellow tights, night-black shorts and hooded mask, his cape whipping out from his broad shoulders. He might have been mistaken for a man from Mars or a devil out of Hell, yet beneath the grotesque garb beat a heart that was warm and human. ”

“ I to be no more than an hundred paces now from the glowing of the Circle. And behold! even in that instant, there must come brutal things to destroy us; for there came an herd of squat and brutish men all about me in a moment from the shadows, where they had been hid. And they caught at me, and caught at the Maid to tear her from mine arm. And truly, it did be as that they surely to have success; for I could nowise in a moment free myself, and yet to guard the Maid and to use the Diskos. ”

“ Brought blood, and danced, blasphemed, and made wry faces, And cursed each razor's body o'er and o'er:
His muzzle formed of opposition stuff, Firm as a Foxite, would not lose its ruff; So kept it,—laughing at the steel and suds. Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws, Vowing the direst vengeance with clenched claws, On the vile cheat that sold the goods. "Razors! a mean, confounded dog, Not fit to scrape a hog!"
[Pg 289] Hodge sought the fellow,—found him,—and begun: "P'rhaps, Master Razor-rogue, to you 't is fun, That people flay themselves out of their lives. ”

“ Then did I wind my cloak to its shape, and put upon me my gear, which was the scrip and the pouch, and the Diskos to my hip; and I clomb out from that place of rest. Yet, before I did come rightly up into the open, I peered about, and made some surety that no evil Brute was anigh. And then I gat me out, and stood upon my feet, and looked for a little upwards at the mighty slope of the Great Redoubt, which did seem yet very nigh unto me, by reason of it being so monstrous in bigness. ”

“ Red Riding Hood's father has shouldered his axe, And is off to the woods again. At the thwacks and the cracks as the timber he hacks The echoing shades complain; But woe to the stem that his steel attacks, For its murmurs are all in vain. Red Riding Hood's mother has risen with day, As soon as the hens were awake, And down to the kitchen has taken her way, From the hearth all the embers to rake, And the butter and flour on the table to lay, For she's bent upon making a cake. But little Red Riding Hood's slumbering yet— She is terribly lazy, I fear ”

“ Instantly, I raised my gun and fired at the foremost, who plunged head-long, with a hideous howling. Then, I turned to run. More than halfway from the house to the Pit, I saw my sister—she was coming toward me. I could not see her face, distinctly, as the dusk had fallen; but there was fear in her voice as she called to know why I was shooting.
'Run!' I shouted in reply. 'Run for your life!'
Without more ado, she turned and fled—picking up her skirts with both hands. As I followed, I gave a glance behind. The brutes were running on their hind legs—at times dropping on all fours. ”

“ At the sight of Job so mangled and be-bled, there came over us the sudden quiet of a mortal terror, and in that space of silence, the bo'sun placed his hand over the poor lad's heart; but there was no movement, though the body was still warm. Immediately upon that, he rose to his feet, a look of vast wrath upon his great face. He plucked his torch from the ground, into which he had plunged the haft, and stared round into the silence of the valley; but there was no living thing in sight, nothing save the giant fungi and the strange shadows cast by our great torches, and the loneliness. ”

“ True speaks that ancient proverb, ‘Love is blind.’”
The term “hoodman” occurs in “All’s Well that Ends Well” (iv. 3) . The First Lord says: “Hoodman comes!” and no doubt there is an allusion to the game in the same play (iii. 6) , “we will bind and hoodwink him;” and in “Macbeth” (iv. 3) Macduff says: “the time you may so hoodwink.” There may also have been a reference to falconry—the hawks being hooded in the intervals of sport. Thus, in Latham’s “Falconry” (1615) , “to hood” is the term used for the blinding, “to unhood” for the unblinding. ”

“ Each moment, the nearing sounds of the footsteps, told me that the brutes were gaining on us, rapidly. Fortunately, I am accustomed to live, in some ways, an active life. As it was, the strain of the race was beginning to tell severely upon me.
Ahead, I could see the back door—luckily it was open. I was some half-dozen yards behind Mary, now, and my breath was sobbing in my throat. Then, something touched my shoulder. I wrenched my head 'round, quickly, and saw one of those monstrous, pallid faces close to mine. One of the creatures, having outrun its companions, had almost overtaken me. ”

“ And the Diskos did spin and roar, and made a strange light upon the faces of the men, and they to have tusks like to the tusks of pigs. And surely I did rage through them, smiting. And they to strike me a thousand times with great stones, so that mine armour rang, and was all fresh burst, and I near to sicken under the blows and new wounds; but they not to harm the Maid, for I carried her above their squat and brutish reach.
And the brute-men to seem without end. But I made alway forward unto the glowing of the Circle ”

“ And the Man came round upon me; and thought, mayhaps, to deal with me, as it had dealt with that poor maid, but not all thatwise, as you must know. And I swung the Diskos, and it did seem to sing and to cry eager in my hands. And I smote at the Squat Man, even as it did leap silent upon me, as a tiger doth leap, making no sound. But I gat not home the blow; for the Man dropt sudden down upon the hands, and the blow went overwards. And the Brute-Man caught me by the legs, to rip me; and I cut quick with the Diskos, and it did have but one monstrous talon left unto it. ”

“ Hence slaughter becomes an exalted profession; the marked, distinguished employment of what in the jargon of the world is called a gentleman.
“Hodge, poor fellow, enlists”
But for this craft operating upon this ignorance, who—in the name of outraged God—would become the hireling of the Sword? Hodge, poor fellow, enlists. He wants work; or he is idle, dissolute. Kept, by the injustice of the world, as ignorant as the farmyard swine, he is the better instrument for the world’s craft. ”

“ Black Hood caught him by the coat tails, dragged him back. The messenger turned, grappled with Black Hood. Then followed one of those grim, silent struggles, too deadly serious for oaths and threats. Rat this pawn of the Eye may have been, but even a cornered rat will fight with the courage of a lion.
Time after time the man tried to bash Black Hood's skull with the copper cased signal device—tried once too often; for Black Hood's gauntlet covered fingers closed like steel hooks upon the device. A twist, a sudden jerk, and it was Black Hood who had the signal device now. ”

“ And lo! in that moment, the Maid ran right in among the Humpt Men, and she struck the man that strove with me, and drove her belt-knife once and again through his arm, very savage and determined. And surely, the man turned upon her, and he caught her by her garments, and he ript her two garments utter from her, so that they came away and she did be free. And behold, mine utter despair for her did give me a new strength, so that I shouted to her that she run instant to the raft; and I cut the Humpt Man in twain, and did fall back then into a part swoon against the rock. ”

“ Black Hood was clear of the building now, his legs working like tireless pistons. He heard the shrill scream of police sirens, and in the basement of the building the roar of gun fire still sounded. Perhaps the criminals did not know that their opponent had left. One thing was certain: Black Hood had dealt the forces of evil a hard blow that night, and he had showed the Eye that the Black Hood was hard on his trail.
Rounding a corner, Black Hood sighted a taxi cab cruising along. He dashed into the street, waving his arm. ”

“ After all the ploughing and the sowing, the hoeing and the harvest, comes the miserable end. Strong as the labourer may be, thick-set and capable of immense endurance; by slow degrees that strength must wear away. The limbs totter, the back is bowed, the dimmed sight can no longer guide the plough in a straight furrow, nor the weak hands wield the reaping-hook, Hodge, who, Atlas-like, supported upon his shoulders the agricultural world, comes in his old age under the dominion of his last masters at the workhouse. ”

“ But it is not alone the Ghetto-dweller, the prisoner, and the pauper that starve. Hodge, of the country, does not know what it is always to have a full belly. In truth, it is his empty belly which has driven him. ”

“ And thus it happened that within five minutes of this discovery of Job's body, the whole of that hideous valley sent up to heaven the reek of its burning; whilst we, filled with murderous desires, ran hither and thither with our weapons, seeking to destroy the vile creatures that had brought the poor lad to so unholy a death. ”

“ The first object my one eye fell upon was a heap of Macadamisation, and I confess I never thought of calculating the number of stones in such a hillock, till I saw the mob preparing to cast them up!
I expected to be lithographed on the spot! Instinct suggested to me that the only way to save my life was by dying; so dropping my head and hands, and closing my last eye with a terrific groan, I expired for the present. The ruse took effect. Supposing me to be defunct, the mob refused to kill me. Shouts of “Murder! Shame! Shame! No Pillory!” ”

“ Hodge wondered, but interfered not, but at last the supernatural thieves began to busy themselves in a way still less to his taste, for each elf set about conveying the crop away, a straw at a time, with astonishing activity and perseverance. The keyhole was still their port of egress and regress, and it [186] resembled the aperture of a beehive, on a sunny day in June. The farmer was rather annoyed at seeing his grain vanish in this fashion, when one of the fairies, while hard at work, said to another, in the tiniest voice that ever was heard—
“I weat; you weat?” (I sweat; do you sweat?) ”

“ In all the writings of Hood that are not absolutely serious the grotesque is a present and pervading element. Often it shows itself, as if from an irresistible instinct of fantastic extravagance, in the wild and reckless sport of oddity. Combinations, mental, verbal, and pictorial, to ordinary mortals the strangest and the most remote, were to Hood innate and spontaneous. They came not from the outward,—they were born of the inward. They were purely subjective, the sportive pranks of Hood's own ME, when that ME was in its queerest moods. ”

“ Black Hood shot twice, pulled the trigger a third time only to hear the hammer click on an empty chamber.
Perhaps the Eye heard that click and understood its meaning, for it was then that he made his dash through the rear door. Black Hood knew that retreat was now his only course. He was without weapons in a battle of screaming lead. He turned, stumbled over a fallen form, caught his balance, and then took the stairway in long strides. ”

“ Were I to bend this good bow of mine I could send an arrow through thy heart before thou could’st even strike;’ and stepping back a pace or two he drew a shaft from his quiver and fixed it ready to shoot.
“‘Thou talk’st like a coward,’ replied the stranger; ‘with a long bow drawn against one who has but an oaken staff.’
“‘I am no coward,’ answered Robin Hood, ‘and that thou shalt see. Stay on the bridge awhile. ”

“ I have m}’self seen Hood only from the common level, but have beheld him in many moods and phases, when white, cold, and stern he towered rigidly over a winter landscape, and when draped from summit to base in a golden-tinted tissue of morning mist, through which he peeped like a girl in trying on a robe of yellow gauze,—not quite shaken down on one side, the petticoat of snow showing daintily underneath. Many are the solid old mountain’s masquerading airs, and, despite the dignity of his thousands of years, he sometimes affects the blushes of the rose. ”

“ And the moon rose, showing the gardens, apparently empty, and silent. And so, through the night, without disturbance or sound.
Toward morning, I began to grow stiff and cold, with my long vigil; also, I was getting very uneasy, concerning the continued quietness on the part of the creatures. I mistrusted it, and would sooner, far, have had them attack the house, openly. Then, at least, I should have known my danger, and been able to meet it; but to wait like this, through a whole night, picturing all kinds of unknown devilment, was to jeopardize one's sanity. ”

“ Cheer after cheer, huzza upon huzza, and presently a long line of skirmishers appear over the intervening hill. An attack beyond question. They are met unhesitatingly by our skirmishers, and a fierce fight ensues. But the dense, dark column that now comes in view compels our advance to fall back. But Hood, with his Texans, Virginians and Mississippians, are in waiting. Rapidly they approach, and musket balls are whistling in every direction. ”