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We turned at last sharply to the left, and began a descent through a narrow ravine towards the creek. We were nearing its widening mouth when a half-dozen sharp reports of fire-arms broke upon our ears. A halt was ordered and the men directed to prevent the animals from betraying our presence by whinnying or braying.
These asses were accustomed, in times of excitement and danger, to set up a very terrific braying. It was, in fact, all that they could do.
Or who, upon hearing that memorable expedition of the gods against the giants, when the braying of Silenus' ass greatly contributed in putting the giants to flight, does not clearly conceive that this directly points to the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects, which are frequently disappointed and frustrated by vain fears and empty rumours.
The air was in anguish with the din of tree-felling and log-chopping, of stamping, neighing, braying, whooping, guffawing, and singing all the daybreak charivari beloved of a camp of Confederate "critter companies."
It was these last that emitted the unearthly braying, bellowing sounds already mentioned. To this hideous medley of sounds a figure in the middle of the circle was dancing, a figure so queer that for a second or two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it.
The whole story came to be known and spread abroad through the villages of the neighbourhood; and the devil, who never sleeps, with his love for sowing dissensions and scattering discord everywhere, blowing mischief about and making quarrels out of nothing, contrived to make the people of the other towns fall to braying whenever they saw anyone from our village, as if to throw the braying of our regidors in our teeth.
The provincial Excellency assumed a weary superiority, tilting his chair far back near an open window in the true Costaguana manner. The military band happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza just then, and twice he raised his hand imperatively for silence in order to listen to a favourite passage.
"Ah!" exclaimed his master in a passion. "Does not hay please you either? Leave it to me, my fine donkey; if you are so full of caprices I will find a way to cure you!" And by way of correcting him he struck his legs with his whip. Pinocchio began to cry and to bray with pain, and he said, braying: "Hee-haw! I cannot digest straw!"
This evening the forbidden subject of politics crept into our quiet community, and the result was an explosive contention which drowned even the braying of the agonizing trumpets outside. The gentlemanly Frenchman is a sensible and consistent republican, the old filateur a violent monarchist, while Absalom, as I might have foreseen, is a Red, of the schools of Proudhon and Considerant.
A large crowd got up in this style created an indescribable hubbub, heightened by the blowing of horns and the beating of seven nogaras of various notes. Every dancer wore an antelope's horn suspended round the neck, which he blew occasionally in the height of his excitement. These instruments produced a sound partaking of the braying of a donkey and the screech of an owl.
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