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 w^ild 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] 



