ince then I have been content just to be glad I am alive.

Yes, my cousin, that mule was worse than even you knew--infinitely worse
than a wheel, thanks to which I lost some twenty-five pounds in six
weeks, while in as many days the mule reduced me to a mass of lacerated
skin, fractured bones, and maddening flea-bites. Should you and my
gracious captain friend ever meet, may the kindly Fates order my
presence elsewhere!

But for the others I have no cheering report of fulfilled predictions.

My complexion has been admired for its fairness, a quality it still
possesses--by comparison; I have searched long and vainly among the
surrounding inhabitants for even one barbarian; I have failed to feel
either sea-sickness or home-sickness; I have never been more perfectly
healthy, and no dread fever seems to have selected me for a victim; I
have found no snake coiled within my shoe of a morning, nor have I
discovered one as an unwelcome bedfellow at night. Truth to tell, you
are all wrong, but one, and now hear _me_.

Until railroads, flying machines, balloons, seven-league boots, magic
wishing-rings, or some such means of transit are adopted in _Honduras_,
I choose to stay here and grow up with the country, for _never_, while I
have breath to object or heart to consider self, will I spend another
six days "on the hurricane deck of a mule."

ALMIRA STILWELL COLE.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a
Mule, by Almira Stillwell Cole

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