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Hodge spoke up quickly: "What do you mean by taking turns? Is one to jump three times, and then the other jump three times?" "No, I mean for us to alternate," explained Frank. "First one jumps, and then the other." Hodge nodded his satisfaction. "That is fair, and it is much better than the other way," he declared. The rivals made preparations for the contest. By lot it fell to Rains to lead off.
A forlorn, pathetic blot upon the land of the mist was Newtake, seen even under conditions of sunlight and fair weather; but beheld beneath autumnal rains, observed at seasons of deep snow or in the dead waste of frozen winters, its apparition rendered the most heavy-hearted less sad before the discovery that there existed a human abode more hateful, a human outlook more oppressive, than their own.
It was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped. There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow's nest, and all complete, and labelling her a whaler.
But, although the climate is so variable, being often changed in a few hours, from the great heat which the reflection of the sun occasions in the valleys, to the cold rains which proceed from the surrounding mountains, yet these sudden transitions do not appear to have an ill effect on the health of the inhabitants.
Next to the rapidity with which it can be cleared, the adaptation of a great part of the soil to irrigation during the rains, has greatly aided the bringing of it under cultivation.
The Habb river, which divides Las from the British province of Sind, is another case in point. It possesses permanent banks, is fed from the Pabb chain of mountains, and after heavy rains in these hills a large body of water is formed, which rushes down to the sea with great force and velocity. But at other times water is only to be found in a few small pools in its rocky bed.
Rain is copious most of the year; at night it sometimes rains continuously; but a day of uninterrupted downpour did not occur during my two years of travel. It comes in showers, usually lasting an hour or two, when it clears as suddenly as it began, and within half an hour all is dry again.
"In the case of spreading fire, water is the great friend and helper of man; and in the case of these spreading inundations of water, it is wind that he relies upon. The only mode that the Dutch had to pump out the water in former times was the wind mills. When the rains or the tides inundated the land, they called upon the wind to help them lift the water out to where it could flow away again.
At such moments even the Fork seemed a haven. The mountains offer a splendid camping-place for the young and the vigorous, but they are implacable foes to the disabled man or the aged. They do not give loathsome diseases like pox, but they do not aid in defence of the sick. Coldly aloof, its clouds sail by. The night winds bite. Its rains fall remorselessly.
One day he was obliged to kneel on the broad back of an alligator who tried to bite off his foot. He drove the long body down into the muddy bottom, and no living creature, except possibly the catfish that burrow in the mud, ever saw it again. He loved the rains that flashed through the jungles, the swift-climbing dawns in the east, the strange, tense, breathless nights.
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