orters. The portmanteaus and carpet-bags have been stowed away,
and Mr. Weller and the guard are endeavouring to insinuate into the
fore-boot a huge cod-fish several sizes too large for it--which is
snugly packed up, in a long brown basket, with a layer of straw over the
top, and which has been left to the last, in order that he may repose
in safety on the half-dozen barrels of real native oysters, all the
property of Mr. Pickwick, which have been arranged in regular order at
the bottom of the receptacle. The interest displayed in Mr. Pickwick's
countenance is most intense, as Mr. Weller and the guard try to squeeze
the cod-fish into the boot, first head first, and then tail first, and
then top upward, and then bottom upward, and then side-ways, and then
long-ways, all of which artifices the implacable cod-fish sturdily
resists, until the guard accidentally hits him in the very middle of the
basket, whereupon he suddenly disappears into the boot, and with him,
the head and shoulders of the guard himself, who, not calculating
upon so sudden a cessation of the passive resistance of the cod-fish,
experiences a very unexpected shock, to the unsmotherable delight of all
the porters and bystanders. Upon this, Mr. Pickwick smiles with great
good-humour, and drawing a shilling from his waistcoat pocket, begs the
guard, as he picks himself out of the boot, to drink his health in
a glass of hot brandy-and-water; at which the guard smiles too, and
Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, and Tupman, all smile in company. The guard
and Mr. Weller disappear for five minutes, most probably to get the hot
brandy-and-water, for they smell very strongly of it, when they
return, the coachman mounts to the box, Mr. Weller jumps up behind, the
Pickwickians pull their coats round their legs and their shawls over
their noses, the helpers pull the horse-cloths off, the coachman shouts
out a cheery 'All right,' and away they go.

They have rumbled through the streets, and jolted over the stones, and
at length reach the wide and open country. The wheels skim over the hard
and frosty ground; and the horses, bursting into a canter at a
smart crack of the whip, step along the road as if the load behind
them--coach, passengers, cod-fish, oyster-barrels, and all--were but a
feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle slope, and enter
upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid block of marble, two miles
long. Another crack of the whip, and on they speed,