VI.

Now, loit’ring in a wood, they stay’d till night

Avail’d them for their unmolested flight,

And then sought refuge in a roadside-inn;

Where the carousal scarcely did begin

Ere some great noise excites the villains’ fear—

They’re startled! therefore try to disappear.

But there remain’d no shadow of a chance;

For six determined officers advance

And seize them. But what next ensued?—

They aim resistance, and with clubs of wood

Assail the constables with awful rage;

Who, in return, assiduously engage

In direful conflict, and at length subdue

The barb’rous and antagonistic crew:—

The word “Surrender,” fraught with dreadful threat,

With due submission instantly was met.

Thus, then, o’erpower’d, dejected, and dismay’d,

Like sheep to slaughter they were instant led—

With handcuff’d wrists—each to a felon’s cell,

Where they awaited their disastrous trial.

The Original Poems of Edward Edwin Foot, of Her Majesty's Customs, London · 第 123 / 154 题