Pauline Stood Like A Statue By My Side,
Her Shadow Falling Upon The Scorching Rock; And In This Shade, For
There Was No Other, I Lay For Some Time, Scarcely Able To Move A
Limb.
All around the black crags, sharp as needles at the top, stood
glowing in the sun, without a tree, or a bush, or a blade of grass,
to cover their precipitous sides.
The whole scene seemed parched
with a pitiless, insufferable heat.
After a while I could mount again, and we moved on, descending the
rocky defile on its western side. Thinking of that morning's
journey, it has sometimes seemed to me that there was something
ridiculous in my position; a man, armed to the teeth, but wholly
unable to fight, and equally so to run away, traversing a dangerous
wilderness, on a sick horse. But these thoughts were retrospective,
for at the time I was in too grave a mood to entertain a very lively
sense of the ludicrous.
Raymond's saddle-girth slipped; and while I proceeded he was stopping
behind to repair the mischief. I came to the top of a little
declivity, where a most welcome sight greeted my eye; a nook of fresh
green grass nestled among the cliffs, sunny clumps of bushes on one
side, and shaggy old pine trees leaning forward from the rocks on the
other. A shrill, familiar voice saluted me, and recalled me to days
of boyhood; that of the insect called the "locust" by New England
schoolboys, which was fast clinging among the heated boughs of the
old pine trees.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 229 of 486
Words from 60987 to 61251
of 129303
