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It is a country of chalk, but not of dry, turfy chalk, like those of the English Downs; rather a chalk mixed with clay, which makes for bad going after rain. It is the soil over which, further to the east, the battle of Valmy was fought, an action largely determined by the impracticable nature of the ground when wet. On the other hand, it is a soil that dries quickly.
I was never weary of watching the long processions of snow-white geese, moving along the turfy sides of the road, solemn and stately, each garnished with that awkward appendage the "poke," which seemed to me very cruel, since, in my simplicity, I believed that the perpendicular rod in the center passed, like a spit, directly through the bird's neck.
A sudden fear darted through his mind, and dismounting, he climbed to the top of the turfy bank at the side of the road to gain a better view of the coast. "Yes, a woman a girl, surely, and a graceful girl, wearing a scarlet cloak. She carried her hat in her hand not on her head, at all events. Surely it was not Valmai in such a storm going over by such a dangerous path?
Such is fire in the burning of those parched heaths; such is the slower but constant and growing operation of the oxygenating atmosphere upon this turfy substance exposed to the air and moisture.
He followed it up, wondering much, bewildered indeed; and had got to a little turfy hollow, down the middle of which it came bubbling and gabbling along, when Willie caught sight of him, and bounded to meet him with a radiant countenance and almost inarticulate cries of delight. "Am I awake, Willie? or am I dreaming?" he asked. "Wide awake, papa," answered Willie.
Most of the inhabitants were away in the harvest-fields; but the skyds-shaffer, a tall powerful fellow, with a grin of ineffable stupidity on his face, came forward as we pulled in our horses on the turfy square between the rows of magazines. "Can we get horses at once?" "Ne-e-ey!" was his drawling answer, accompanied with a still broader grin, as if the thing were a good joke. "How soon?"
But I liked the old men for being there when the ivy rustled on the ruined old chapel wall when the wind was lost, and the starlings flew affrighted from their nests over the mural tablet that told all men to And I feared God very much, and spoke to Him often in my lonely wanderings, when I saw wee men in green coats among the heather, but oftener on the soft green turfy bits on the hill.
In front of us there stretches a sheet of limpid water which might be a lake except that it is surrounded by a raised bund, or bank, artificially made, with hewn granite slabs as steps going down at one end. We are glad of the shade of the trees falling across the short turfy grass, and we are seated on some broken blocks of granite, keeping a sharp look out for snakes.
I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles. 'The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.
When the wind stirred them, and the rattling of their stiff leaves was heard, it seemed as if the skin of the mountains trembled to shake out colored flames. The air turned radiant through a mist of running tints. Still climbing, they passed along broad glades of turfy grass between the groups.
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