WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 235 



back ribs. Then the fight began. Up went the beast on all-fours, 

 bucking into the air as high as a five-barred gate several times 

 in rapid succession ; and ever, as he touched the earth, again 

 plunging forward, as if impelled by a catapult. The man sat, 

 like a Centaur, incorporate with his horse ; and if his- knees had 

 been rivetted to the saddle, he could scarcely have gripped it 

 with a firmer hold. Nor did his right hand cease its work for 

 one moment ; down came the stinging cuts on rib, flank, and 

 thigh, half-a-dozen for every plunge, and leaving a weal big as a 

 man's finger after every cut. 



For ten long minutes did this fierce struggle last, when the 

 horse, apparently exhausted by his frantic efforts to unseat the 

 rider, reared straight on end, and, coming heavily backward, he 

 fell prostrate, and there lay, not a kick left in him, beaten, 

 dispirited, and groaning on the ground. With the agility of a 

 mountebank had Johnson quitted his seat at the right moment, 

 and, throwing himself off, had rolled through the wet, slushy 

 soil, clear of all danger. He was on his legs, however, in another 

 second, but not before he had been so plastered with mud that 

 every article of his dress, lately so gay and varied in hue, was 

 transformed, instanter, into one sombre colour that of a mud- 

 casing from head to foot. Never was a metamorphosis more 

 complete ; never a proud horseman more rapidly converted into 

 the form of a grimy brick-burner ! Proteus himself might have 

 envied the feat, but for the ugly fall. The consequence of this, 

 however, was merely external, namely, the disfigurement of his 

 person and the damage of his dress. Having long been accus- 

 tomed to hunt with the Hambledon Hounds, and usually mounted 

 on raw horses, Johnson was well versed in the art of falling, and 

 knew well how and when to quit his seat when his horse was in 

 a difficulty a secret not sufficiently studied by men in general ; 

 hence his escape on the present occasion, with neither a broken 

 limb nor even a bruised body. 



