* * * * *
He excels his brother for a coward, yet his brother is reputed
one of the best that is: in a retreat he outruns any lackey;
marry, in coming on he has the cramp.
We had not long sat sketching and basking in the genial glow of a summer
afternoon among the mountains, when it began to be borne in upon us that
the weather was going to change, and that the usual thunderstorm was
meditating a descent upon us. Black clouds came boiling up over the
mountain peaks, and the too familiar grumble of distant thunder sent us
hurrying along the lovely ravine, through which the path leads to Aru.
Only a seven miles' journey, but ere we had gone half-way the storm broke,
and a thick veil of sweeping rain fell between us and the surrounding
mountains.
Presently we found a serious solution of continuity in the track, which,
after leading us along a precarious ledge by the side of the river,
finished abruptly; sheared clean off by a recent landslip.
We were very wet, but the river looked wetter still, and it boiled round
the rocky point, where the road should have been but was not, in a
distinctly disagreeable manner.
However, Jane dismounting, I climbed upon the cream-coloured courser, and
proceeded to ford the gap. The water swirled well above the syce's knees,
but the noble steed picked his way with the greatest circumspection over
and among the submerged boulders, till, after splashing through some
hundred yards of water, he deposited me, not much wetter than before, on
the continuation of the high-road, whence I had the satisfaction of
watching Jane go through the same performance.
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