96 Wild Life in a Southern County 



piest time with the ploughboys is when they are out with 

 the waggon, having a little change, no harder work than 

 walking, sips at the ' pots ' handed to the captain by his 

 mates, and nothing to think about. Nor was there ever a 

 more popular song in the country than — 



Well jump into the waggon, 

 And well all take a ride I 



Though in winter, when the horses' shoes have to be 

 roughed for the frost, or, worse, when the wheels sink deep 

 into the spongy turf, and rain and sleet and snow make 

 the decks slippery, it is not quite so jolly. Yet even then, 

 so strong is the love of motion, a run with the waggon is 

 preferred to stationary work. 



The captain, when bound on a voyage, generally slips 

 his cable or weighs anchor with the rising sun. His crew 

 are first-rate helmsmen : and to see them sweep into the 

 rickyard through the narrow gateway, with a heavy deck 

 cargo piled to the skies, all sail set, a stiff breeze, and the 

 timbers creaking, is a glorious sight! Not a scrape 

 against the jetty, though 'touch and go' is the sign of a 

 good pilot. His greatest trouble is when his cargo shifts 

 out of sight of land : sometimes the vessel turns on her 

 beam-ends with a too ponderous and ill-built load of straw, 

 and then the wreck lies right in the fairway of all the 

 ships coming up the channel. To load a waggon success- 

 fully is indeed a work of art: on the hills, where the 

 waggons have to run ' sidelong ' to pick up the crops, one 

 side higher than the other, no one but an experienced hand 

 can make the stuff stay on. Then there is often a tremen- 

 dous bumping and scraping of the keel on the rocks of the 

 newly-mended roads, and the nasty chopping seas of the 

 deep ruts, besides the long regular Atlantic swells of the 



