506 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



the fore-end of the boat into the sand, and prevented her float- 

 ing for an hour later in the rising tide. So we should have 

 been little better off had we been already enjoying their society 

 in the barge. Now we found a friend in the driver of a Chaplin 

 and Co.'s goods-truck, who, volunteering the observation that 

 perhaps our horse would not like the water, offered us a lead, 

 as he was bound for a load from a cargo-boat lying half recum- 

 bent in the low tide. (Never did I welcome lead at strong 

 timber or blind ditch more gladly than this kindly help.) 



Our trapper followed the cart cheerfully, snorting only now 

 and again at the patches of seaweed, and giving a single wild 

 plunge when she felt the first wavelet ripple round her fetlocks. 

 It was at the moment that he turned us, as it were, adrift, by 

 shooting on beside our barge, that a sense of danger and in- 

 security really fell. " When in doubt, play trumps." Down 

 went the unaccustomed lash. With one spring the mare landed 

 on the platform, and, wild at a second stinging cut, flung her- 

 self, and the trap after her, into the barge — to pull up, with 

 nostrils expanded and forelegs extended, right among the pigs. 

 For a moment there was a panorama. The pigs took the offen- 

 sive, became a bristling, squealing mass of upturned snouts, then 

 formed square, and elected to defend their own corner against 

 the intruder. The calves on either quarter were much more 

 aggressively troublesome. Finding they could not break their 

 lanyards, to which they were tied, they went head down against 

 the wheels, making the phaeton rattle from stem to stern and 

 the wdiole bay resound with their bellowing. The mare soon 

 recovered herself, submitted peaceably to being unhitched and 

 stabled with the trap between her and the swine — and we 

 thought the voyage was to begin. Not yet, by any means, " all 

 along o' them blamed pigs " again. They weighted the boat 

 down so obdurately that for an hour she could not raise her 

 head, while we kept the stray swine from among the wheels, 

 and the pig men smoked placidly, or jested according to their 

 bent. A standing formula they passed continuously, and I 

 leave it to your superior acumen to determine whether it was 

 intended to be suggestive, or was merely a sarcastic lament on 



