I said, never mind--I preferred a safe horse to a fast one--I
would like to have an excessively gentle horse--a horse with no spirit
whatever--a lame one, if he had such a thing. Inside of five minutes I
was mounted, and perfectly satisfied with my outfit. I had no time to
label him "This is a horse," and so if the public took him for a sheep I
cannot help it. I was satisfied, and that was the main thing. I could
see that he had as many fine points as any man's horse, and so I hung my
hat on one of them, behind the saddle, and swabbed the perspiration from
my face and started. I named him after this island, "Oahu" (pronounced
O-waw-hee). The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip
nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resisted
argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of
that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street.
I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he
crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen gates, and in
the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave
the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration.
He abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceably
enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance,
and it soon began to fill me with apprehension. I said to my self, this
creature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other--no
horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just
for nothing.
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