Page:Vailima Letters - Stevenson, Colvin - 1894.djvu/33

VAILIMA LETTERS 7

once — mark you, how Mayne Reid is on the spot — a strange thing happened. I saw a liana stretch across the bed of the brook about breast- high, swung up my knife to sever it, and — behold, it was a wire! On either hand it plunged into thick bush; to-morrow I shall see where it goes and get a guess perhaps of what it means. To-day I know no more than — there it is. A little higher the brook began to trickle, then to fill. At last, as I meant to do some work upon the homeward trail, it was time to turn. I did not return by the stream; knife in hand, as long as my endurance lasted, I was to cut a path in the congested bush. At first it went ill with me; I got badly stung as high as the elbows by the stinging plant; I was nearly hung in a tough liana — a rotten trunk giving way under my feet; it was deplorable bad business. And an axe — if I dared swing one — would have been more to the purpose than my cutlass. Of a sudden things began to go strangely easier; I found stumps, bushing out again; my body began to wonder, then my mind; I raised my eyes and looked ahead; and, by George, I was no longer pioneering, I had struck an old track overgrown, and was restoring an old path. So I laboured till I was in such a state that Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs could scarce have found a name for it. Thereon desisted; returned to the stream; made my way down that stony track to the garden, where the smoke was still hanging and the sun was still in the high tree-tops, and so