D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Avoid a New Inn. 13 reined in his steed to that steed’s satisfaction, however, though it was one of those slab-sided, raw-boned, long- legged brutes, called, in France, “clamponmers,’ from “clamp,” that is, a heaviness of tread. In fact, this one’s big hoofs opened like a camel’s in the soft sand and en- abled him to get a foothold which had the one defect that he went in so deeply that he could barely draw it out, and when it came, it made a sound of suction like reports of a mortar. | The man looked around and sighed, like one thor- oughly disenchanted—his illusion dispelled. He must have been furnished with a description of the spot before the beast descended and the people destroyed the village, as the Jews destroyed the Holy Gity to spite the Emperor Titus. It had been a hot day, and while he might be of cast bronze, having that complexion of southrons, baked from birth, and did not show fatigue, it was not so with his ugly mount. It did not care to move a step farther in the trying and fickle sands, so different a footing to the turf on the mountains. The sea was tolerably calm for this part, but it tremu- lously refreshed the long streakings of purple across the whitish golden glare; by the tint, one could understand the Spanish discoverers calling platinum white gold. The illimitable swell softly rolled in with slow gran- deur, the deep just heaving as though Neptune, slum- bering in the wave-hollowed caverns, troubled the mass with his ponderous breathing. Only a few tiny sails dotted the enormous green ex- panse, like daisies on a well-tended pasture. All the fishers were out at sea. Their families were in their kennels, enjoying the sole luxury of the poor—idle- ness. The traveler had come over the inland, not the coast, high along the shore, sloping down to it or rising abruptly, all the scene visible from below. With the melancholy of a stricken pine, a tall mast rose mockingly of trees like a gallows, for it had a cross- piece, the signboard of the vanished tavern dangling by a corner, one bent spike refusing to let go its hold. It was the sternboard of a rowboat anciently, which, per- (C@) 3 com ElNOOKS