We travelled slowly, and the
peasants walked beside the waggons.
This I knew, because I heard their voices close to me. They
seemed to me to be very merry fellows, for they laughed heartily
as they went. What the joke was I could not understand. Though
I speak their language fairly well I could not hear anything
comic in the scraps of their conversation which met my ear.
I reckoned that at the rate of walking of a team of oxen we
covered about two miles an hour. Therefore, when I was sure that
two and a half hours had passed-- such hours, my friends,
cramped, suffocated, and nearly poisoned with the fumes of the
lees--when they had passed, I was sure that the dangerous open
country was behind us, and that we were upon the edge of the
forest and the mountain. So now I had to turn my mind upon how I
was to get out of my barrel. I had thought of several ways, and
was balancing one against the other when the question was decided
for me in a very simple but unexpected manner.
The waggon stopped suddenly with a jerk, and I heard a number of
gruff voices in excited talk.
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