This advice would have been thrown away upon Solomon, though, had he comprehended it, the effect might have been beneficial. For, whatever knowledge the donkey might have possessed about the flood, he did not realise the fact that since he last tickled his palate with the spinous thistle—an herb which probably assumed to his throat the flavour that pepper does to ours—there had been a considerable depth of water over the fen, and that it was very soft. The result was, that while the lads stopped short, and then began to pick their way from tussock to tussock, and heather patch to patch, Solomon blundered on, made a splash here, a bit of a wallow there, and then a bound, which took him in half-way up his back; and as he plunged and struck out with fore-legs and heels, he churned up the soft bog and made it softer, so that he sank in and in, till only his spine was visible with, at the end, his long neck and great grey head, upon which the ears were cocked out forward, while an expression of the most intense astonishment shone out of his eyes.
“Oh, Tom, what shall we do?”
He-haw—he-yaw—he-yaw!
Solomon burst out into the most dismal bray ever heard—a long-drawn misery-haunted appeal for help, which was prolonged in the most astounding way till it seemed to be a shrill cry.
“I don’t know,” responded Tom, wiping the tears out of his eyes.
“Oh, come, I say,” said Dick, “it isn’t anything to laugh at!”
“I know it isn’t,” cried Tom; “but I can’t help it. I feel as if I must laugh, and—Ha! ha! ha!”
He burst into a tremendous peal, in which his companion joined, for anything more comic than the aspect of the “Solemn-un” up to his neck in the bog it would be hard to conceive.
“Here, this won’t do,” cried Dick at last, as he too stood wiping his eyes. “Poor old Sol, we mustn’t let you drown. Come on, Tom, and let’s help him out.”
How Dick expected that he was going to help the donkey out he did not say; but he began to pick his way from tuft to tuft, avoiding the soft places, till he was within twenty feet of the nearly submerged animal, and then he had to stop or share his fate.