We Rode Through Endless Thickets Of Yellow-Pollened Cassi - If Riding
It Could Be Called; For Those Fragrant Thickets Were Inhabited By
Wasps.
And such wasps!
Great yellow fellows the size of small
canary birds, darting through the air with behind them drifting a
bunch of legs a couple of inches long. A stallion abruptly stands
on his forelegs and thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws
them from the sky long enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then
returns them to their index position. It is nothing. His thick
hide has merely been punctured by a flaming lance of wasp virility.
Then a second and a third stallion, and all the stallions, begin to
cavort on their forelegs over the precipitous landscape. Swat! A
white-hot poniard penetrates my cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed
in the neck. I am bringing up the rear and getting more than my
share. There is no retreat, and the plunging horses ahead, on a
precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse overruns
Charmian's horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at the
psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the
other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and
half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger.
I am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse,
whose pain and panic are only exceeded by mine.
"Get out of the way! I'm coming!" I shout, frantically dashing my
cap at the winged vipers around me.
On one side of the trail the landscape rises straight up. On the
other side it sinks straight down. The only way to get out of my
way is to keep on going. How that string of horses kept their feet
is a miracle; but they dashed ahead, over-running one another,
galloping, trotting, stumbling, jumping, scrambling, and kicking
methodically skyward every time a wasp landed on them. After a
while we drew breath and counted our injuries. And this happened
not once, nor twice, but time after time. Strange to say, it never
grew monotonous. I know that I, for one, came through each brush
with the undiminished zest of a man flying from sudden death. No;
the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer from ennui on
the way.
At last we arose above the vexation of wasps. It was a matter of
altitude, however, rather than of fortitude. All about us lay the
jagged back-bones of ranges, as far as the eye could see, thrusting
their pinnacles into the trade-wind clouds. Under us, from the way
we had come, the Snark lay like a tiny toy on the calm water of
Taiohae Bay. Ahead we could see the inshore indentation of
Comptroller Bay. We dropped down a thousand feet, and Typee lay
beneath us. "Had a glimpse of the gardens of paradise been revealed
to me I could scarcely have been more ravished with the sight" - so
said Melville on the moment of his first view of the valley.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 82 of 157
Words from 41696 to 42213
of 80724
