A few days after the triple excitement of Mars, the Orontes, and the Mail, two blood-stained travellers arrived at our encampment towards sunset, with torn clothes and limping gait. At first sight of them I felt a thrill of alarm, but was soon relieved by a familiar voice calling out cheerily, “Halloo, Gill, we have not fallen among thieves, only upon the clinker—the horse bolted with us, made too free with the road, and a big bump threw us out on the top of each other.”

Here was a thrilling tale wherewith to stir up our quiet life, and after hearing it in full detail I registered an inward vow, never to drive across the clinker with that horse. Our friends, happily, did not seem hurt, beyond a few bruises and some slight cuts about the arms, but these were enough to stain their torn sleeves and give them an air quite touching and heroic.

Of course there was considerable abuse of our thoroughfare, and we now heard for the first time, that the day the Orontes was in harbour, several of her officers, with two lady passengers, had set out with the intention of paying us a visit. But the bumping had been such as to bump a wheel off one cart; and some accident, I forget what, having happened to the other, the whole party was obliged to return to Garrison without having been able to reach our inaccessible retreat.