they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.
() After Shakepseare, in Macbeth, act iv, scene 3, where Macduff learns his wife and entire family are murdered:
: Ro. Wife, Children, Seruants, all that could be found.
: Macd. All my pretty ones?Did you ſay All? Oh Hell-Kite! All?What, All my pretty Chickens, and their DammeAt one fell ſwoope?