CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



but once, we were involved in the glory of that event. 

 The creature had been in a dream of some river or 

 lake in Kamtschatka — or ideally listening, 



'^ Across the waves'* tumultuous roar^ 

 The wolfs long howl from Oonalashkas shore,'''' 



when, guided by our good genius and our brightest 

 star, we suddenly saw him sitting asleep in all his 

 state, within gunshot, in a bay of the moonlight 

 loch! We had nearly fainted — died on the very spot 

 — and why were we not entitled to have died as well 

 as any other passionate spirit, whom joy ever divorced 

 from life? We blew his black bill into pieces — not 

 a feather on his head but was touched; and like a 

 little white-sailed pleasure-boat caught in a whirl- 

 wind, the wild swan spun round, and then lay mo- 

 tionless on the water, as if all her masts had gone by 

 the board. We were all alone that night — not even 

 Fro was with us; we had reasons for being alone, for 

 we wished not that there should be any footfall but 

 our own round that mountain-hut. Could we swim? 

 Ay, like the wild swan himself, through surge or 

 breaker. But now the loch was still as the sky, and 

 twenty strokes carried us close to the glorious crea- 

 ture, which, grasped by both hands, and supporting us 

 as it was trailed beneath our breast, while we floated 

 rather than swam ashore, we felt to be in verity our — 

 [89] 



