It stopt steam for that hitch, that's a fact, for he thort I was
mad. He sent it down to the Admiralty to get it ciphered right, and it
took them old seagulls, the Admirals a month to find it out.

"And when they did, what did they say? Why, cuss 'em, says they, 'any
fool knows that.' Says I, 'If that's the case you are jist the boys then
that ought to have found it out right off at oncet.'

"Yes, Old Clay ought to go free, but he won't; and guess I am able to
pay freight for him, and no thanks to nobody. Now, I'll tell you what,
English trottin' is about a mile in two minutes and forty-seven seconds,
and that don't happen oftener than oncet in fifty years, if it was ever
done at all, for the English brag so there is no telling right. Old Clay
_can_ do his mile in two minutes and thirty-eight seconds. He _has_ done
that, and I guess he _could_ do more. I have got a car, that is as light
as whalebone, and I'll bet to do it with wheels and drive myself. I'll
go in up to the handle, on Old Clay. I have a hundred thousand dollars
of hard cash made in the colonies, I'll go half of it on the old hoss,
hang me if I don't, and I'll make him as well knowd to England as he is
to Nova Scotia.

"I'll allow him to be beat at fust, so as to lead 'em on, and Clay is
as cunnin' as a coon too, if he don't get the word g'lang (go along)
and the Indgian skelpin' yell with it, he knows I ain't in airnest, and
he'll allow me to beat him and bully him like nothin'. He'll pretend to
do his best, and sputter away like a hen scratchin' gravel, but he won't
go one mossel faster, for he knows I never lick a free hoss.

"Won't it be beautiful? How they'll all larf and crow, when they see me
a thrashin' away at the hoss, and then him goin' slower, the faster I
thrash, and me a threatenin' to shoot the brute, and a talkin' at the
tip eend of my tongue like a ravin' distracted bed bug, and offerin'
to back him agin, if they dare, and planken down the pewter all round,
takin' every one up that will go the figur', till I raise the bets to
the tune of fifty thousand dollars. When I get that far, they may
stop their larfin' till next time, I guess. That's the turn of the
fever--that's the crisis--that's my time to larf then.

"I'll mount the car then, take the bits of list up, put 'em into right
shape, talk a little Connecticut Yankee to the old hoss, to set his
ebenezer up, and make him rise inwardly, and then give the yell," (which
he uttered in hi