Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy literature; Nature -- Juvenile fiction; Self-reliance -- Juvenile fiction
Suddenly a wild excited look came into his eyes, and, leaping up
with a shrill cry, which caused all the horses to look round at him,
he once more snatched Martin up, and holding him firmly gripped to
his ribby side by his arm, bounded off to where a mare was standing
giving suck to her young foal. With a vigorous kick he sent the foal
away, and forced Martin to take his place, and, to make it easier
for him, pressed the teat into his mouth. Martin was not accustomed
to feed in that way, and he not only refused to suck, but continued
to cry with indignation at such treatment, and to struggle with all
his little might to free himself. His striving was all in vain; and
by-and-by the man, seeing that he would not suck, had a fresh idea,
and, gripping Martin more firmly than ever, with one hand forced and
held his mouth open, and with the other drew a stream of milk into it.
After choking and spluttering and crying more than ever for a while,
Martin began to grow quiet, and to swallow the milk with some
satisfaction, for he was very hungry and thirsty, and it tasted very
good. By-and-by, when no more milk could be drawn from the teats, he
was taken to a second mare, from which the foal was kicked away with
as little ceremony as the first one, and then he had as much more
milk as he wanted, and began to like being fed in this amusing way.
Of what happened after that Martin did not know much, except that
the man seemed very happy after feeding him. He set Martin on the
back of a horse, then jumped and danced round him, making funny
chuckling noises, after which he rolled horse-like on the grass, his
arms and legs up in the air, and finally, pulling Martin down, he
made him roll too.
But the little fellow was too tired to keep his eyes any longer open,
and when he next opened them it was morning, and he found himself
lying wedged in between a mare and her young foal lying side by side
close together. There too was the wild man, coiled up like a
sleeping dog, his head pillowed on the foal's neck, and the hair of
his great shaggy beard thrown like a blanket over Martin.
He very soon grew accustomed to the new strange manner of life, and
even liked it. Those big, noble-looking wild horses, with their
shining coats, brown and bay and black and sorrel and chestnut, and
their black manes and tails that swept the grass when they moved,
were so friendly to him that he could not help loving them. As he
went about among them when they grazed, every horse he approached
would raise his head and touch his face and arms with his nose.
"O you dear horse!" Martin would exclaim, rubbing the warm,
velvet-soft, sensitive nose with his hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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