“Yes, in the Jackson, which starts to-morrow, we are told.”
“Ah, the Jackson! a mighty good steamboat too—ain’t it now? But I guess you ain’t a thinkin’ of takin’ that thing and your horse with you?” continued the Yankee, pointing to our gig.
“Yes, we are.”
“Oh, you are! Well.—You haven’t seen two women in a dearborn on the road, have you?”
“No, we have not.”
“Well, then,” continued the man in the same indifferent tone, “it’s a’most too late now to get to Bainbridge; and yet you might try it, too. Better turn your horse round, and follow the road till you come to a big walnut-tree; there it divides. Take to the right hand for half a mile, till you come to neighbour Dims’s hedge; then you must go through the lane; and then, for about forty rods, right through the sugar-field; keep to your left till you come to some rocks, but then turn to your right, if you don’t want to break your necks. There’s a bit of a stream there; and when you are over that, the left-hand road will take you straight to Cox’s ferry. You can’t miss it,” concluded he, in a self-satisfied tone, striking his horse a blow with his riding-whip. The animal broke into a smart trot, and in ten seconds our obliging friend had disappeared into the fog.
My countenance, during the Yankee’s interminable directions, must have somewhat resembled that of a French recruit, to whom some scarred and mustached veteran is relating his Egyptian campaigns, and telling him wonderful stories of snakes and crocodiles at least half a mile long—monsters who made nothing of swallowing a drum-major to their breakfast, bearskin cap, cane, and whiskers, included. I was so completely bothered and confounded with the rights and lefts, that the metal-buttoned individual was out of sight and hearing before I thought of explaining to him, that, dark as it then was, we should never be able to find even the walnut-tree, let alone neighbour Dims’s hedge and the break-neck rocks. Patience is by no means one of my virtues; but the man’s imperturbable phlegm and deliberation, in the midst of the most pouring rain that ever wetted poor devil to the skin, tickled my fancy so exceedingly, that the sound of his horse’s hoofs had hardly died away, when I burst into an almost interminable fit of laughter. “First right, then left—look out for the big walnut-tree, and don’t break your neck over the crags!” repeated I, in a tone between merriment and despair. Richards, however, saw nothing to laugh at.
“The devil take the Yankee!” cried he. “May I be hanged if I know what you find so amusing in all this!”
“And hang me if I know how you manage to look so grave!” was my answer.
“How could we possibly have missed the ferry?” cried Richards; “and, what is still more stupid, to come back instead of going forward!”