quotes_dansdeath.htm



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‘…Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, ‘Cut you beggars,’ he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the golden crown close beside…’

  

This is from “The Man who Would be King”, in Wee Willie Winkie.

Two adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, have made themselves kings of a remote mountain kingdom in Kafiristan, by persuading the people that they are Gods. But when Dan seeks a wife, she finds that he is ‘Neither God nor Devil but a man !’ and the people take a terrible revenge.