With every contortion that labour and difficulty could suggest, yet
with incredible rapidity, he crawled to the very top of one of the
trees, and tore down a huge leaf, which he threw on the ground, and
himself after it, rebounding like a ball. He then laid the leaf on the
water, held it by the stem, and told Richard to get upon it. He did so.
It went down deep in the middle with his weight. Toadstool let it go,
and it shot down the stream like an arrow. This began the strangest and
most delightful voyage. The stream rushed careering and curveting down
the hill-side, bright as a diamond, and soon reached a meadow plain.
The goblin rolled alongside of the boat like a bundle of weeds; but
Richard rode in triumph through the low grassy country upon the back of
his watery steed. It went straight as an arrow, and, strange to tell,
was heaped up on the ground, like a ridge of water or a wave, only
rushing on endways. It needed no channel, and turned aside for no
opposition. It flowed over everything that crossed its path, like a
great serpent of water, with folds fitting into all the ups and downs
of the way. If a wall came in its course it flowed against it, heaping
itself up on itself till it reached the top, whence it plunged to the
foot on the other side, and flowed on. Soon he found that it was
running gently up a grassy hill. The waves kept curling back as if the
wind blew them, or as if they could hardly keep from running down
again.
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