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It was one of my greatest pleasures to follow the course of this stream, with a leaping-pole, up to the moors, where it flowed through a wide and desolate valley or hollow in the hills. As the aspect of a stream is continually changing with the seasons and the quantity of water, it is always new.
The very mayor and alderman went forth, at five o'clock on the summer's morning, with hawk and leaping-pole, after a duck and heron; or hunted the hare in state, probably in the full glory of furred gown and gold chain; and then returned to breakfast, and doubtless transacted their day's business all the better for their morning's gallop on the breezy downs.
It was perhaps an insensate trick; but there was so much of the frank manly British boy in Dick Winthorpe that he forgot everything in the fact that big Hickathrift, the man he had known from a child the great bluff fellow who had carried him in his arms and hundreds of times made him welcome in that wonderland, his workshop, where he was always ready to leave off lucrative work to fashion him eel-spear or leaping-pole, or to satisfy any other whim that was on the surface that this old friend was being menaced by a great savage of a stranger nearly as big as himself, and backed by a roaring excited crowd who seemed ready for any outrage.
"Ay," said the great wheelwright, who was standing in the bows with his long leaping-pole in his hand; "I do puzzle, squire. I've been looking out for a light to show where Grimsey lies, for here, in the dark, it's watter, watter, watter, and I can't see the big poplar by Tallington's. Hi! Dave, where's Grimsey, thinks ta?" he shouted. "Nay, I don't know." "Can you make it out, John Warren?"
Kennedy walked generally with Eva and Violet, while Julian often joined them, and Cyril, always with some new scheme in hand, or some new fancy darting through his brain, ran chattering, from one group to another, plucking bilberries and wild strawberries in handfuls, and trying the merits of his alpenstock as a leaping-pole.
"Well, show us how you know," said Dick, shouldering his leaping-pole, and pretending to hit his companion's head. "Nay, lad, theer's no showing a thing like that," said Dave mysteriously. "It comes to a man." "Gammon!" cried Dick. "It's a dodge you've learned." Dave chuckled and tramped on beside the lads, having enough to do to avoid sinking in. "She's reyther juicy this spring, eh?
I jumped out and ran down, thinking it was the foxes after the chickens, and walked right into the water. I knowed what it meant, and got over to the saw-pit, and just caught hold of the boat in the dark as it was floating away. Then I got my leaping-pole and run her under the window, and made my missus give me a pillow to stop the leak 'fore I could bale her out.
Beyond Earith, where now run the great washes of the Bedford Level, was a howling wilderness of meres, seas, reed-ronds, and floating alder-beds, through which only the fen-men wandered, with leaping-pole and log canoe. What in the east? The dry land neared the island on that side.
With this he could prod the sloughs and ascertain their depth, or use it as a leaping-pole; and if threatened by sturdy rogues whirl it about their heads as a quarter-staff. Wars and famines were then terrible realities men's minds were full of them, and superstition flourished. The foggers and shepherds saw signs in the sky and read the stars.
To jump from behind, to bound after the rocking, reeling curricle, to jump into it, aided by the long stick which he carried and used as a leaping-pole, and to seize the reins out of the hands of the miserable Borodino, who shrieked piteously as the dauntless valet leapt on his toes and into his seat, was the work of an instant.
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