The note was unfinished. I stowed the book, picked up my ever-sparkling Diamond (for I had spent many a half hour in brightening it), and vaulted into the saddle as the hind wheel was going to bump. There was a moment's strain and doubt as to whether the bicycle could be upright as the wheel endeavoured to climb out of the abyss, then we were off bump, bump, bump, kangaroo-fashion.
There was a reason for this unusual haste—a heavy black mass away back on the southerly horizon. The clouds overhead, too, were moving up fast from that direction; and as these ominous signs to me betokened the quick occurrence of that dreaded rain—
On, Diamond, on!
* * * *
The clouds held back, and I was industriously persuading myself that they were only smoke, when out of the treacherous 'Biscay' we passed unharmed, Diamond and I, through a narrow opening in an apparently never-ending and sharply-defined wall of thickly-packed tropical vegetation, of glistening leafy trees and trailing plants, bright flowers and rank undergrowth.
Fifteen anxious miles of bumpy, desolate, barren wretchedness, and now, all suddenly, a cyclist's paradise, dense foliage and deep shade, with a winding track, hard and level and strewn with ironstone gravel.
A fairy land; and fairy fingers pulled hard upon the wheels and stopped them. Then, as in some delightful dream, I led Diamond to a hedgewood tree, and stood stock still to drink in the melody—silent melody; for there was no sound to woo the eyes from the feast of tropic beauty.
And, drinking, I tingled with delight, and gloated on this prodigal glory in form and color as a miser might in secret upon his piled-up hoards of gold.
O marvellous Nature, supreme master-artist, what human brain could conceive so glorious a transformation scene—so swift, so entrancing, so unexpected!