Incontinently

What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness— a foul creature to be incontinently slain.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs — they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

And lest any man should think her intent was to unnestle ill neighbours, and not to aid good neighbours, or that she was readier to restore what was invaded by others than to render what was in her own hands; see if the time provided not a new occasion afterwards, when through their own division, without the intermise of strangers, her forces were again sought and required; she forsook them not, prevailed so far as to be possessed of the castle of Edinburgh, the principal strength of that kingdom, with peace, incontinently, without cunctations or cavillations, the preambles of a wavering faith, she rendered with all honour and security; and his person to safe and faithful hands; and so ever after during his minority continued his principal guardian and protector.

On such eyes as maidens cherish Let thy fond adorers gaze, Or incontinently perish In their all-consuming rays!

The image which she had called up was too much for her nerves, and she fled incontinently.