“‘Well,’ he said, ‘this must be considered a kind of picnic, them’s my notions, and as you’re far from well yet, I’ll have a horse and you a hammock.’
“Both horse and hammock were soon brought round to the door. The hammock was borne by two perspiring half-caste Portuguese, and was attached to a pole, and on board I swung, while James got on board the horse. The saddle was a hard and horrid contrivance of leather and wood, the stirrups a pair of old slippers, and the horse himself—well, he was a beautiful study in equine osteology, and I really did not know which to pity most, James or his Rosinante. But in my hammock I felt comfortably, dreamily happy.
“We passed through the quaint old town of Funchal, then upwards, and away towards the mountains. The day was warm and delightful—hot indeed James must have found it, for he soon divested himself of coat and waistcoat, and even then he had to pause at times to wipe his streaming brow. The peeps at the beautiful gardens I caught while being carried along were charming in the extreme; the verandaed and trellised villas, canopied with flowers of every hue and shape, the bright green lawns where fairy-like children played, and the flowering trees—the whole forming ever-changing scenes of enchantment—I shall never forget. Then the soft and balmy air was laden with perfume.
“‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘to be an invalid! How kind of James to treat me as one! And he jogging along there on that bony horse’s back, with the boy holding fast by the tail! Dear, unselfish, but somewhat silly fellow!’
“Upwards still, steeper and steeper the hill. And now we seemed to have mounted into the very sky itself, and were far away from the tropics and tropical flora.
“We came at last to a table-land. For the life of me I could not help thinking of the story of ‘Jack and the Bean-stalk.’ Here gorgeous heaths and heather bloomed and grew; here birds of sweet song flitted hither and thither among the scented and the yellow-tasselled broom; and here solemn weird-like pine-trees waved dark against the far-off ocean’s blue.
“Under some of these trees, and close to the cliff, we disembarked to rest. We were fully half a mile above the level of the sea. Yet not a stone’s throw from where we sat was the edge of the awful cliff that led downwards without a break to that white line far beneath where the waves frothed and fumed against the rocks.
“But far as the eye could reach, till lost in distance and merged into the blue of the sky, lay the azure sea, with here and there a sail, the largest of which looked no bigger than a white butterfly with folded wings.
“A delicious sense of happiness stole over me, and for the first time, perhaps, since leaving England I forgot the sweet young face that had so completely bewitched me.
“I think I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I was sensible of was James tuning a broad guitar.