“So now let us mount, my boy,” said he, and we shoved along until the evening fell, and the sun bid us good-by very abruptly. “Cheep, Cheep,” sung the lizards—“chirp, chirp,” sung the crickets, “snore, snore,” moaned the tree-toad—and it was night.
“Dame Nature shifts the scene without much warning here, Thomas,” said Massa Aaron; “we must get along, Doechez, mon cher—doechez, diggez votre spurs into the flankibus of votre cheval, mon ami,” shouted Aaron to our guide.
“Oui, monsieur,” replied the man, ‘mais’
I did not like this ominous “but,” nevertheless we rode on. No more did Massa Aaron. The guide repeated his mais again. “Mais, mon filo,” said Bang, “mais—que meanez vous by baaing comme un sheep, eh? Que vizzy vous, eh?”
We were at this time riding in a bridle-road, to which the worst sheep paths in Westmoreland would have been a railway, with our horses every now and then stumbling and coming down on their noses on the deep red earth, while we as often stood a chance of being pitched bodily against some tree on the path-side. But we were by this time all alive again, the dullness of repletion having evaporated; and Mr Bang, I fancied, began to peer anxiously about him, and to fidget a good deal, and to murmur and grumble something in his gizzard about “arms—no arms,” as, feeling in his starboard holster, he detected a regular long cork of claret, where he had hoped to clutch a pistol, while in the larboard, by the praiseworthy forethought of our guide, a good roasted capon was ensconced. “I say, Tom tohoo mind I don’t shoot you,” presenting the bottle of claret. “If it had been soda water, and the wire not all the stronger, I might have had a chance in this climate—but we are somewhat caught here, my dear we have no arms.”
“Poo,” said I, “never mind—no danger at hand, take my word for it.”
“May be not, may be not—but, Pegtop, you scoundrel, why did you not fetch my pistols?”
“Eigh, you go fight, massa?”
“Fight! no, you booby; but could not your own numscull—the fellow’s a fool—so come—ride on, ride on.”
Presently we came to an open space, free of trees, where the moon shone brightly; it was a round precipitous hollow, that had been excavated apparently by the action of a small clear stream or spout of water, that sparkled in the moonbeams like a web of silver tissue, as it leaped in a crystal arch over our heads from the top of a rock about twenty feet high, that rose on our right hand, the summit clearly and sharply defined against the blue firmament, while, on the left, was a small hollow or ravine, down which the rivulet gurgled and vanished; while ahead the same impervious forest prevailed, beneath which we had been travelling for so many hours.