CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



up like racing barks when down goes the helm, and 

 one after and another, bowsprit and boom almost en- 

 tangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the 

 starboard tack, upon a wind and in a close line, head 

 to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet 

 again, all open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to 

 drive, and go with her over the cliff. 



We are all on foot and pray what horse could 

 gallop through among all these quagmires, over all 

 the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the water-cressy 

 and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and 

 thither side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle 

 or knee up that hill on the perpendicular strewn 

 with flint-shivers down these loose-hanging cliffs 

 through that brake of old stunted birches with stools 

 hard as iron over that mile of quaking muir where 

 the plover breeds and finally up up up to 

 where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cin- 

 ders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptar- 

 migan for a patch of snow ? 



The thing is impossible so we are all on foot 

 and the fleetest keeper that ever footed it in Scotland 

 shall not in a run of three miles give us sixty yards. 

 "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"" 

 we exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the 

 go-by on the bent. But see see they are bringing 

 her back again down the Red Mount glancing aside, 

 [37] 



