SHETLAND HOSPITALITY.

"GUIDE! Where are we?"

"I can't say for certain."

"Have you lost your way?"

The guide looks slowly all round him, and then looks at me. That
is his answer to my question. And that is enough.

The lost persons are three in number. My traveling companion,
myself, and the guide. We are seated on three Shetland ponies--so
small in stature, that we two strangers were at first literally
ashamed to get on their backs. We are surrounded by dripping
white mist so dense that we become invisible to one another at a
distance of half a dozen yards. We know that we are somewhere on
the mainland of the Shetland Isles. We see under the feet of our
ponies a mixture of moorland and bog--here, the strip of firm
ground that we are standing on, and there, a few feet off, the
strip of watery peat-bog, which is deep enough to suffocate us if
we step into it. Thus far, and no further, our knowledge extends.
This question of the moment is, What are we to do next?

The guide lights his pipe, and reminds me that he warned us
against the weather before we started for our ride. My traveling
companion looks at me resignedly, with an expression of mild
reproach. I deserve it. My rashness is to blame for the
disastrous position in which we now find ourselves.

In writing to my mother, I have been careful to report favorably
of my health and spirits. But I have not confessed that I still
remember the day when I parted with the one hope and renounced
the one love which made life precious to me. My torpid condition
of mind, at home, has simply given place to a perpetual
restlessness, produced by the excitement of my new life. I must
now always be doing something--no matter what, so long as it
diverts me from my own thoughts. Inaction is unendurable;
solitude has become horrible to me. While the other members of
the party which has accompanied Sir James on his voyage of
inspection among the lighthouses are content to wait in the
harbor of Lerwick for a favorable change in the weather, I am
obstinately bent on leaving the comfortable shelter of the vessel
to explore some inland ruin of prehistoric times, of which I
never heard, and for which I care nothing. The movement is all I
want; the ride will fill the hateful void of time. I go, in
defiance of sound advice offered to me on all sides. The youngest
member of our party catches the infection of my recklessness (in
virtue of his youth) and goes with me. And what has come of it?
We are blinded by mist; we are lost on a moor; and the treacherou
s peat-bogs are round us in every direction!

What is to be done?

"Just leave it to the pownies," the guide says.

"Do you mean leave the ponies to find the way?"

"That's it," says the guide. "Drop the bridle, and leave it to
the pownies. See for yourselves. I'm away on _my_ powny."

He drops his bridle on the pommel of his saddle, whistles to his
pony, and disappears in the mist; riding with his hands in his
pockets, and his pipe in his mouth, as composedly as if he were
sitting by his own fireside at home.

We have no choice but to follow his example, or to be left alone
on the moor. The intelligent little animals, relieved from our
stupid supervision, trot off with their noses to the ground, like
hounds on the scent. Where the intersecting tract of bog is wide,
they skirt round it. Where it is narrow enough to be leaped over,
they cross it by a jump. Trot! trot!--away the hardy little
creatures go; never stopping, never hesitating. Our "superior
intelligence," perfectly useless in the emergency, wonders how it
will end. Our guide, in front of us, answers that it will end in
the ponies finding their way certainly to the nearest village or
the nearest house. "Let the bridles be," is his one warning to
us. "Come what may of it, let the bridles be!"

It is easy for the guide to let his bridle be--he is accustomed
to place himself in that helpless position under stress of
circumstances, and he knows exactly what his pony can do.

To us, however, the situation is a new one; and it looks
dangerous in the extreme. More than once I check myself, not
without an effort, in the act of resuming the command of my pony
on passing the more dangerous points in the journey. The time
goes on; and no sign of an inhabited dwelling looms through the
mist. I begin to get fidgety and irritable; I find myself
secretly doubting the trustworthiness of the guide. While I am in
this unsettled frame of mind, my pony approaches a dim, black,
winding line, where the bog must be crossed for the hundredth
time at least. The breadth of it (deceptively enlarged in
appearance by the mist) looks to my eyes beyond the reach of a
leap by any pony that ever was foaled. I lose my presence of
mind. At the critical moment before the jump is taken, I am
foolish enough to seize the bridle, and suddenly check the pony.
He starts, throws up his head, and falls instantly as if he had
been shot. My right hand, as we drop on the ground together, gets
twisted under me, and I feel that I have sprained my wrist.


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