Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/84

 was tethered an immense, long-haired, greyish brown goat, with an imposing beard hanging from his throat and a pair of formidable horns sweeping back from his massive forehead. This dignified-looking passenger was in a very bad temper indeed. His wishes had not been consulted in regard to the journey he was making. He had been hustled on board by the lusty deck hands with cheerful and irresistible familiarity; and he had had no chance whatever to avenge himself upon any one of them. He stood glowering, with wrath in his heart and scorn in his great, yellow, supercilious eyes, at the sweating firemen and the roaring, blazing mouth of the furnace beneath the boiler. The glare and the windy roar of the red flame, the loud pulsing of the wheel, the ceaseless vibration of the straining boat, all the inexplicable strangeness of the situation into which he had been so rudely thrust, filled him with uneasiness, indeed, but had no power to shake his defiant spirit.

The captain of the Forest Queen was a skilled river man, his intrepidity wisely tempered with discretion. But long immunity from accident had produced the usual effect. The ancient proverb of the pitcher that goes too often to the well is apt to justify itself at last. Confident in his boat and in his skill, absorbed in his determination to beat the river, he forgot how the drought had