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Updated: July 10, 2025
As I rode my vagrant thoughts might turn back to home, and in my heart I might feel the old dull pain and longing, but when a pack-horse was running away with half my commissariat on his back such moody meditations had to be broken short. Some days the question of mere bread for a crying stomach became vital, or a flask of water for a parched throat.
That afternoon, while the biggest and the youngest brothers divided the cattle, putting those that were to be wintered into the wire pen, the eldest shod four ponies, three for riding and one for a pack-horse.
But the enemy, by this, had my fellows on the run, and were driving them at stretch gallop. To worsen my plight, as I pursued I caught sound of hoofs pounding behind and, as it seemed, overtaking me; supposed that a horseman was riding me down; and, reining the mare back fiercely, slued about to meet his onset. It proved to be the poor pack-horse I had left in the valley!
I thought to myself, No wonder they are so poor and small. Horses addicted to the use of oil must expect to be of light construction. But it was time to be off. A cup of excellent coffee and a few biscuit were amply sufficient to prepare me for the journey. Our pack-horse carried two boxes and a small tent all we required.
To this the men carried the canoe which was to bear us over. The water was not deep, so our attendants merely took off the pack from Brunet and my side-saddle from Le Gris, for fear of accidents, and then mounted their own steeds, leading the two extra ones. My husband placed the furniture of the pack-horse and my saddle in the centre of the canoe, which he was to paddle across.
Weston pulled up the pack-horse and looked significantly at Devine, who nodded. "Yes," he assented, "he said a low divide. The lake lay just beyond it." Then he cast about with his eyes fixed on the loose gravel over which they had scrambled, until he came to a spot where a wide patch of half-rotted needles lay beneath another belt of pines. "He stopped here and sat down," he commented.
The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a loud cry from the Shagird, and a snort and struggle from the pack-horse behind, attracted my attention. This time the beast had slipped with a vengeance, and was half-way over the edge, making, with his fore feet, frantic efforts to regain terra firma while his hind legs and quarters dangled in mid-air.
He was a wifeless man, an', by the look o't, had given up all wish to coax the female eye: for he dressed no better'n a jockey, an' all his diversion was to ride in to Tregarrick Market o' Saturdays, an' hang round the doorway o' the Pack-Horse Inn, by A. Walters, and glower at the men an' women passin' up and down the Fore Street, an' stand drinkin' brandy an' water while the horse-jockeys there my-lord'ed 'en.
To make matters worse just at the start of the famous cavalry charge which brought Sir Philip such distinction, his pack-horse bolted into the German lines carrying all his luggage, and leaving him nothing but a toothbrush!
G., his servant, and packmule took the lower trail, and I, with a native, a string of mules, and a pack-horse, the upper. Our plans for intercepting the good man were well laid and successful, but turned out resultless. This has been an irresistibly comical day, and it is just as well to have something amusing interjected between the sublimities of Kilauea, and whatever to-morrow may bring forth.
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