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Nevill Tyson set her teeth with a determined air, planted her feet firmly on the floor of the trap to give herself a good purchase; she gave the reins a little twist as she had seen Stanistreet do, she balanced the whip like a fishing-rod, with the line dangling over Scarum's ears, and then she rattled away over the wrinkling roads at a glorious pace; she reeled over cart-ruts, she went thump over sods and bump over mud-heaps, she grazed walls and hedges, skimmed over the brink of ditches, careened round corners, and tore past most things on the wrong side; and Stanistreet's sense of deadly peril was lost in the pleasure of seeing her do it.
But, once you have left your starting-point, it looks as if there were nothing else in the world but a wilderness of shell craters. Then you realise that there is a certain regularity in the irregular mud-heaps some way ahead of you the top of a muddy steel helmet moves between two earth-heaps on the ground's surface then another helmet and another; and you have found your bearings.
My front-window looked out upon a long, straggling, ill-paved street, with its due proportion of mud-heaps, and duck pools; the houses on either side were, for the most part, dingy-looking edifices, with half-doors, and such pretension to being shops as a quart of meal, or salt, displayed in the window, confers; or sometimes two tobacco-pipes, placed "saltier-wise," would appear the only vendible article in the establishment.
While this was being constructed the elder brother went down to the edge of the water and made half-a-dozen mud-heaps well within gunshot, which when the artificial heads and necks were attached to them, formed such exact counterparts of geese that the wild birds might well be excused for mistaking them for friends.
The result of this discovery was, that the whole place was speedily riddled with pits and their concomitant mud-heaps, and, to walk about after night-fall, was a difficult as well as a dangerous amusement. Many of the miners pulled down their tents, and began to work upon the spots on which they previously stood.
Seen nearer at hand, the dun-coloured desert resolved itself into uncountable pimpling clay and mud-heaps, of divers shade and varying sizes: some consisted of but a few bucketfuls of mullock, others were taller than the tallest man.
There was plenty of water near us, for a heavy rain during the night had filled several vacated holes, and as there were five pair of hands, we hoped, before evening, greatly to diminish our mud-heaps. Now for an account of our proceedings. Two large wooden tubs were firmly secured in the ground and four set to work puddling, whilst Frank busied himself in fixing the cradle.
The whole valley was cut up and converted into a net-work of holes and mud-heaps, and the mountain slopes were covered with the cabins, huts, and canvas tents of the miners. About the centre of the settlement, which was a very scattered one, stood a log-house or cabin, of somewhat larger dimensions than the generality of those around it.
While they were in camp the weather had been favorable; but they were scarcely housed when a cold, persistent rain poured down in floods that would have drenched their flimsy tents and turned their huts of turf into mud-heaps, robbing the sick of every hope of recovery. Even now they got little comfort from the shattered tenements of Louisbourg.
He will come to it through marshes and through swamps, crossing a deserted backwater, finding firm land beyond, then coming to further shallow patches of wet, out of which the tree-stumps stand, and beyond which again mud-heaps and banks and groups of reeds leave undetermined, for one hundred yards after another, the limits of the vast stream.
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