Yet again, after some twenty years more: "Æsop Smith" was one dark evening creeping up a hill after a hard ride on his grey mare Brenda, when he was aware of two rough men on the tramp before him, one of whom needlessly crossed over so that they commanded both sides, and soon seemed to be approximating; which when Æsop fortunately noticed, with a quick spur into Brenda he flashed by the rascals as they tried to snatch at his bridle and almost knocked them over right and left whilst he galloped up the hill followed by their curses: was not this an escape worth being thankful for?
Once more: the same equestrian has had two perilous dog-cart accidents, noticeable, for these causes; viz.--broken ribs, and a crushed right hand, have proved to him experimentally how little pain is felt at the moment of a wound; which will explain the unconscious heroism of common soldiers in battle; very little but weakness through loss of blood is ever felt until wounds stiffen: further, a blow on the head not only dazes in the present and stupefies further on, but also completely takes away all memory of a past "bad quarter of an hour." At least I remembered nothing of how my worst misadventure happened; and only know that I crawled home half stunned by moonlight for three miles, holding both sides together with my hands to enable me to breathe: no wonder,--all my elasticity was gone with broken ribs. Though these two accidents cost me, one three months, and the other much longer of a (partly bedridden) helplessness, were they not good providences to make one grateful? I write my mental thanksgiving with the same healed broken hand.
So much of perils by land, by way of sample: here are three or four by sea, to match them. Do I not remember how a rash voyager was nearly swept off the _Asia's_ slippery deck in a storm, when a sudden lurch flung him to cling to the side rail of a then unnetted bulwark, swinging him back again by another lurch right over the yawning waves--like an acrobat? Had I let go, no one would have known of that mystery of the sea,--where and when a certain celebrity then expected in America, had disappeared! Captain Judkin after that always had his bulwarks netted; so that was a good result of my escape: I was the only passenger on deck, a favoured one,--the captain being on his bridge, two men at the wheel in their covered house, the stormy wind all round in a cyclone, and the raging sea beneath,--and so all unseen I had been swept away,--but for good providence.