The Argosy — page 395: what you’re looking at

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

372 Letters from Majorca. neither breath to remind him, nor words to be understood. H. C. trembled with agitation, as every moment our hope of Paolo’s memory and goodwill grew less. You see H.C. knew nothing about the forty-eight eggs any more than I did. And, after all, it is impossible to eat eggs without an accompaniment of dry bread, at the very least. Butter, as I have told you, is an unknown quantity in Mallorca—if anything can be said to be a quantity that has not yet been called into existence. The very last house was passed, our hope died out, we went on, and the storm continued with unabated fury. How Paolo on his perch withstood it, is a mystery for ever. Mallorcan coachmen evidently possess some hereditary virtues unknown to fame. One hardly wondered at his forgetting anything. We had still a forlorn hope left: perhaps on his return journey that night he would remember us. ‘That is to say, if there ever should be a return journey. The chances at present seemed that we should be blown into the depths of the sea, or overturned by the raging of the wind, or drowned in the descending waterfloods ; our nerves shattered and extinguished by the roar and roll of the thunder, or reduced to ashes by the vivid lightning. It played about the hills, and lighted up the dark heavens and seemed literally to cross our path. Flash after flash, fork after fork ; the grandest most sublime spectacle you can possibly imagine, filling one with untold emotion, one’s nerves roused and responding with a thousand vibrations. All the mighty artillery of Heaven seemed to be battling and crashing and falling about our ears, gathered together and overshadowing this wild and mountainous, this grand and romantic spot of earth. The hissing, roaring rain, falling with a force we had never seen equalled, or anything like equalled; the fierce blasts of icy wind; these appeared more earthly elements, and were poured out with furious and unsparing hand. But we rather trembled for our experiences at Miramar. Was all this the commencement of the rainy season? If so we should be simply shut up for three days in the gloomy depths of the Hospiteria. Our occupation like Othello’s would be gone. ‘True, H. C. might draw atmospheric pictures: “Miramar in a Storm,” ‘‘Continuation of Miramar in a Storm :” giving a picture to every hour of the day by way of variation. And I might indulge you with reams of prose to match H. C.’s reams of rhymes. But all this would hardly save us from a melancholy madness. H.C. made a feeble attempt to sing “ Wait till the clouds roll by:” but at the very first line the wind caught his open mouth, and rushed with hurricane force down his throat, and I thought he would have expired in the struggle to get his breath back again. We left Valdemosa behind us, and went round by the coast. There was nothing to be seen, but I can tell you now that the sea was GOmMmiiGcdooks (E(@)