The Argosy — page 229: what you’re looking at

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

212 Letters from Majorca. To-day, on the Puig Major, it was even worse. The mist en- wrapped us like rain, and chilled us to the bone. We all felt that we had a violent attack of rheumatic fever, without the fever—of which we should have been rather glad. ‘The wind whistled and blew through the crevices of the dry wall, and caught the backs of our necks with a paralysing effect. Dislocation could hardly have been worse. ‘That is a quick death; this was a slow one. We could see nothing, but we felt a very great deal. As I was considered the least robust of the party, I received the most atten- tion. If I was not looked upon as the ugly duckling, at least I needed more “looking up” than anyone else. So you see that a reputation for delicacy, whether deserved or not, has its occasional advantages. You are helped to the wing of the chicken, for instance, whilst some- one else takes the drumstick. B., with a self-sacrificing spirit that was simply beautiful, insisted upon lending me his ulster. Whilst we were reposing, it was grate- fully received, but, when we began to go down hill again, I felt like a man in a dressing-gown ; and not by any means his own dressing- gown. B., I think, is six feet four in his shoes, and consequently I had to hold up the ulster with both hands. I daresay it looked very eraceful, but it felt extremely awkward. Moreover, my hands were not at liberty, so that I frequently slipped and came down with a humiliating determination. In other words, as Mdlle. Bouglinval, your French governess, used to say when, as children, we often came to grief: ‘Il a pris un billet de parterre sans payer.” I fear we sometimes paid for it only too heavily in those days. To-day we encamped behind a wall. The wind whistled through the crevices and nearly cut off our heads. I caught a stiff neck, from which I am still suffering. On our return, Rosita offered to iron it (a Mallorquin remedy for stiff necks), but lightning flashed from A.’s bright eyes, and thunder issued from H. C.’s Cupid’s bow of a mouth, and Rosita fled one way and I escaped by another. I am certain that these two men, each, I have said, with such amiable capacities, will before long come to the same violent and tragic end as the Kilkenny cats that we read of in history. Under the shadow of the dry wall, the paniers were dismounted, and the patient mule heaved quite a long-drawn sigh of relief. James spread our cloth and tried to unpack. But he was quite as frozen as anyone else, and the hard-boiled eggs slipped through his hands, and A. turned pale when he took up the wine bottles, and H. C. laid violent hands upon the chickens. Going down hill later on, James asked me, with quiet resignation, if I had had a pleasant day ; and I confided to him my convictions that not one nail but many nails had been driven into my coffin by this mist-laden, path-broken expedition. Fortunately our appetites were not paralysed. H. C.’s regulation step had developed special capacities. He ate four eggs to every one CONnMIEOOOKS (E(©)