suddenly, (who sprang to his feet amazed, and cried "Fire!") we
dashed down the mountain-side.

It was long after noon; we were some dozen of miles from camp; we must
speed. No glissade was possible, nor plunge such as travellers make down
through the ash-heaps of Vesuvius; but, having once worried through the
wretched little spruces, mean counterfeits of trees, we could fling
ourselves down from mossy step to step, measuring off the distance by
successive leaps of a second each, and alighting, sound after each, on
moss yielding as a cushion.

On we hastened, retracing our footsteps of the morning across the
avalanches of crumbled granite, through the bogs, along the brooks;
undelayed by the beauty of sunny glade or shady dell, never stopping to
botanize or to classify, we traversed zone after zone, and safely ran
the gantlet of the possible bears on the last level. We found lowland
Nature still the same; Ayboljockameegus was flowing still; so was
Penobscot; no pirate had made way with the birch; we embarked and
paddled to camp.

The first thing, when we touched _terra firma_, was to look back
regretfully toward the mountain. Regret changed to wrath, when we
perceived its summit all clear and mistless, smiling warmly to the
low summer's sun. The rascal evidently had only waited until we were
out of sight in the woods to throw away his night-cap.

One long rainy day had somewhat disgusted us with the old
hemlock-covered camp in the glade of the yellow birch, and we were
reasonably and not unreasonably morbid after our disappointment with
Katahdin. We resolved to decamp. In the last hour of sunlight, floating
pleasantly from lovely reach to reach, and view to view, we could choose
a spot of bivouac where no home-scenery would recall any sorry fact of
the past. We loved this gentle gliding by the tender light of evening
over the shadowy river, marking the rhythm of our musical progress by
touches of the paddle. We determined, too, that the balance of bodily
forces should be preserved: legs had been well stretched over the bogs
and boulders; now for the arms. Never did our sylvan sojourn look so
fair as when we quitted it, and seemed to see among the streaming
sunbeams in the shadows the Hamadryads of the spot returned, and
waving us adieux. We forgot how damp and leaks and puddles had forced
themselves upon our intimacy there; we remembered that we were gay,
though wet, and there had known the perfection of Ayboljockam