A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 172: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE. 169 trees, and our view was always limited to a circle of a few yards. : At lengh late in the afternoon, when the deepening gloom of the forest was reminding us that if we did not soon get out of it we should have to stay there all night, — we came to a knoll bare of underwood, where the trees — were talland far apart. ‘‘Suppose you climb one of them?” said Mab. It was a happy thought, and I proceeded to act on it forthwith, selecting for the purpose the tree that seemed the easiest to mount, for | was fearfully tired. The first look when I got to the top was bitterly dis- appointing. ‘The prospect was magnificent, but nowhere a sign of life, and I was just about to descend with my bad news. when I caught sight of a faint blue line rising slowly ont of a mass of greenery, about two miles to the eastward. “Smoke!” I shouted, as I slithered rapidly down the tree. ‘‘I have seen smoke,” I repeated, as I reached terra firma, ‘‘and where that smoke 1s we shall find a fire and a house, and somebody to show us the way.” We resumed our journey in high spirits, and after a further tramp of half an hour or so we struck a beaten track which led us to a clearing, a field of maize, an orchard, and finally to a farmhouse. This was Weston’s, and we found Weston at home, and, despite our disreputable appearance, received a warm welcome. But Mab looked so very unlike a queen, that when I told him who she was he evidently thought we were poking fun at him. But when he heard our story hisdoubts disappeared. ‘The possibility of an incur- sion of Cariberoes alarmed him greatly; he offered to accompany us part of the way to Fairhaven, and to do everything in his power to facilitate our journey thither. We were too much fatigued to go on without rest, but we gathered that if wetook about six hours’ sleep, started at midnight, and traveled by light of moon, we might possibly reach our destination by the following evening —‘‘ possibly,” because much depended on the wind. Mab asked what the wind had to do with it, whereupon Weston explained that we could not foot it all the way to Fairhaven much under two days and a half; but at Dottrel’s, distant about six hours, wasea stream known Eomicbooks (E(@)