Volume VII - Modernist Magazines Project

By Hubert Crackanthorpe 237up the stragglers, rousing the sleeping drivers with fine bursts ofthe vernacular. And so, up and down the line, till we were hoarsewith shouting, and till the last waggon had left the outskirts of thetown.*4 a.m.—For an hour we had been leading the way, joggingalong the straight, broad road. Jim had dropped to sleep, and wasswaying heavily from side to side, his battered face resting on myshoulder.Behind us the continuous, somnolent rumbling of the waggonwheels, and the rhythmical tramp of the horses' feet. Now andthen, a boy on a thoroughbred would gallop past us, cracking hisstock-whip, chasing a drove of foals. The treeless plain layaround us, all dark and mysterious ; at intervals, we brutally brokethe silence of some sleeping village street.By-and-by, a rift broke in the clouds ; a slab of dark-blue skyappeared ; and the rain ceased to beat in our faces.And a strange, drowsy sensation crept over me—a sensation thatI had been sitting there always, driving the cream-coloured mare,endlessly journeying through the night, with the long line ofwaggons lumbering behind.6 a.m.—When I awoke, the sun had risen, and the great plainof corn, stretching away and away to the'horizon, was rippling inthe fresh morning breeze like a glittering golden lake. Crowds ofpeasants were running from their harvesting to the road-side to watchus go by. Moving ahead I could see a dark, shifting mass ; theelephants were still some two miles away. I fell to wonderingcuriously concerning this strange little world with whom I hadthrown