498 Notes on Sport and Travel x 



my determination, retired, shaking hands with me as 

 if I was ordered for execution at eight precisely the 

 next morning. Whereon I vanished into the wooden 

 box, which it is de regie to get into in that part of 

 the world when one wants to sleep, and slumbered 

 incontinently. 



I had been asleep about five minutes, according 

 to my own computation, though, in fact, it was about 

 as many hours, when I suddenly awoke to the full 

 perception of the fact that I was ' in for it' Alas ! 

 those treacherous fumes of slibowitz no longer de- 

 luded me into the idea that I was fully up to any 

 existing mountain in the known world, that jumping 

 a ten-foot crevasse was as easy as taking a hurdle, 

 or that climbing hand over hand up rocks so per- 

 pendicular that one's nose scraped against their stony 

 bosoms was rather safer, if anything, than taking 

 sparrows' nests from the top of the stable -ladder. 

 However, the honour of England was at stake, and 

 go I must ! So I resigned myself to the certainty 

 of breaking my only neck, and jumped up, thereby 

 nearly dashing in the roof of my brain-pan against 

 the top of my box, adding, most unnecessarily, 

 another headache to the one I already possessed, 

 and turned out. 



Unfortunately there was no one awake to see my 

 magnanimity ; and it was too dark to see it if there 

 had been ; so I groped my way down, with my 

 upper garments on my arm. After barking my 

 shins against stools and trestles, and being nearly 



