reconnoitre the ship. But there I saw my prison. I kissed my hand to
Captain Welsh's mainmast rather ironically, though not without regard
for him. Miss Goodwin lifted her eyelids at our reappearance. As she
made no confession of her treason I did not accuse her, and perhaps it
was owing to a movement of her conscience that at our parting she drew
me to her near enough for a kiss to come of itself.

Four-and-twenty German words of essential service to a traveller in
Germany constituted our knowledge of the language, and these were
on paper transcribed by Miss Goodwin's own hand. In the gloom of the
diligence, packed between Germans of a size that not even Tacitus had
prepared me for, smoked over from all sides, it was a fascinating study.
Temple and I exchanged the paper half-hourly while the light lasted.
When that had fled, nothing was left us to combat the sensation that
we were in the depths of a manure-bed, for the windows were closed,
the tobacco-smoke thickened, the hides of animals wrapping our immense
companions reeked; fire occasionally glowed in their pipe-bowls; they
were silent, and gave out smoke and heat incessantly, like inanimate
forces of nature. I had most fantastic ideas,--that I had taken root and
ripened, and must expect my head to drop off at any instant: that I was
deep down, wedged in the solid mass of the earth. But I need not repeat
them: they were accurately translated in imagination from my physical
miseries. The dim revival of light, when I had well-nigh ceased to hope
for it, showed us all like malefactors imperfectly hanged, or drowned
wretches in a cabin under water. I had one Colossus bulging over my
shoulder! Temple was blotted out. His face, emerging from beneath a
block of curly bearskin, was like that of one frozen in wonderment.
Outside there was a melting snow on the higher hills; the clouds over
them grew steel-blue. We were going through a valley in a fir-forest.

CHAPTER XV. WE ARE ACCOSTED BY A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE LADY IN THE FOREST

Bowls of hot coffee and milk, with white rolls of bread to dip in them,
refreshed us at a forest inn. For some minutes after the meal Temple and
I talked like interchangeing puffs of steam, but soon subsided to our
staring fit. The pipes were lit again. What we heard sounded like a
language of the rocks and caves, and roots plucked up, a language of
gluttons feasting; the word ja was like a door always on the hinge in
every mouth. Dumpy childr