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Captain Crutchely had taken the precaution to have the cable bitted at a short range with a view to keep it, as much as possible, off the bottom; coral being known to cut the hempen cables that were altogether in use, in that day, almost as readily as axes.
The latter were quietly eating, with saddles on their backs and bridles thrown on their necks, ready to be bitted and mounted at the shortest warning. Lawton excused himself for a moment, and entered his quarters. He soon returned, holding in his hand one of the common, stable lanterns, and led the way towards a large orchard that surrounded the buildings on three sides.
He became aware of the depths in her nature, of things volcanic and primitive, and the English stuff in him recoiled. So he was to be bitted and bridled, it seemed, in the future. Daphne Floyd would have bought him with her dollars, and he would have to pay the price. Something natural and wild in him said No! If he married this girl he would be master, in spite of her money.
"I guess you like it better than I do," was my answer. "Ah, my lad, I know the heart o' youth! Ye'd like to be puttin' yer arms around her wouldn't ye, now? Sure, there's time enough! You two young colts are bein' broke' an' bitted. Ye've a chance now to show yer quality yer faith, yer loyalty, yer cleverness. If either one o' ye fails that one isn't worthy o' the other.
"The nigh one is my favorite, but the off one is the best goer, though she's dreadfully hard bitted," answered Ben the younger, with such a comical assumption of a jockey's important air that his father laughed as he said in an undertone, "Come, boy, we must drop the old slang since we've given up the old business.
They are vicious brutes as ever were bitted, and it makes my blood run cold sometimes to see their devilish antics when Mrs. Gerome insists on driving them. They will break her neck, if I don't contrive to break theirs first." "I should judge from their appearance that it was exceedingly unsafe for any lady to attempt to control them. They seem very fiery and unmanageable.
With the headstrong passions, lusts, appetites, and tempers of flesh and blood bridled and bitted by these restrictions, and with no motives to obedience beyond the awards of a short life on earth, the human soul groped its way through twenty centuries after the Revelation of Sinai, feeling for the immortality which was not yet revealed to it, even "as through a glass darkly."
"Well, have you bitted the poor fellow within," said Mason, "that he can take his last ride under the curb of divinity, old gentleman?" "There is evil in thy conversation, profane man," cried the priest, raising his hands and casting his eyes upwards in holy horror; "so I will depart from thee unhurt, as Daniel was liberated from the lions' den."
Another shout to the ostler, a second glass swallowed, the reckoning paid, Silvertail bitted, and away went Sampson once more at his speed, through the now deserted town, the road out of which to his own place, skirted partly the banks of the river, and partly those of the lake.
Desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man; whether the land can be bitted and broken to that purpose is not proven. Void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil. This is the nature of that country. There are hills, rounded, blunt, burned, squeezed up out of chaos, chrome and vermilion painted, aspiring to the snowline.
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