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At either end of this vast, rampart nothing could be seen but a waste of breakers seething, hissing, like the foot of Niagara, and effectually concealing the CHEVAUX DE FRISE of rocks which produced such a vortex of tormented waters. Towards this dreadful spot, then, the four vessels were being resistlessly driven, every moment seeing their chances of escape lessening to vanishing-point.
Some nights the bungalow seemed as full of life as the tiny French homes labeled, "Hommes 40: Chevaux 8," when the hastily estimated billeting possibilities were actually achieved, and one wondered whether it were not better to be the cheval premier, than the homme quarantième.
"Magnifique, mais c'est vraiment magnifique," muttered my brother to himself, as the superb life-guards swept along with their polished steel helmets and breast-plates glittering like silver in the sunshine, and their plumes and guidons flashing and twinkling in the breeze. "Dieu de dieu! qu'ils sont geants les cavaliers, qu'ils sont colossaux les chevaux.
Coarse, black hair, always cut short, and standing erect, so as to present something the appearance of a chevaux de frise, protected a hard, round head a shape most appropriate to his lineage while, with equal propriety, ears of corresponding magnitude stood boldly forth to assert their claim to notice.
The bundles of fire-wood being placed with the branches outside, and neatly ranged, they give the peaceful settlement quite a bristling and warlike appearance, as if defended by CHEVAUX DE FRISE. The Zemindars here pay but two rupees a year to the Maharajah, but it seems a hard case that such hardly-subsisting people should have to pay anything whatever in such a sterile dreary territory as they possess.
The track of one has been observable for more than forty miles right through the heart of uninhabited forest. To cross the stupendous barrier seemed impossible to Arthur. There was a tangled chaos of interlaced and withering boughs and trunks; such a chevaux de frise might stop a regiment until some slow sap cut a path through, and he was without axe, or even a large knife.
Most of us, in our travels abroad, have observed the closed trucks which are employed upon French railways, and which bear the legend Hommes.... 40 Chevaux.... 8 Doubtless we have wondered, idly enough, what it must feel like to be one of the forty hommes. Well, now we know.
Following Gastrell along a narrow passage, we presently found ourselves in a room larger than the one we had just left. Here between forty and fifty men and women sat at several tables. At one chemin-de-fer was in progress; at another petits chevaux; at a third the game which of late years has become so popular in certain circles "Sandown Park."
There are some houses in which we are always uncomfortable. Our freedom is fettered, and we can no more take our ease in them than in a glass and china shop. We breathe with a sense of oppression, and the surroundings are like repellant chevaux de frise. Zachariah had no such feelings here.
They strolled about town to the Masque, the Jardin des Plantes, the Champ des Mars, the Marché aux Chevaux, and finally to Freckle's place, and essayed a lugubrious hour at whist. "It is poor fun, Pisgah," said Mr. Simp, at last, "if we remember that afternoon at poker when you won eight thousand francs and I lost six thousand."
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