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.
[Illustration: THEN THE WILD MAN, CATCHING MARTIN UP, LEAPED UPON THE
BACK OF ONE OF THE HORSES.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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