I could see nothing but the intense blackness of the
night before me and tried to encourage him to go on. Touching him on
the neck, I found his hair wet with the sudden profuse sweat of extreme
fear. The whip made no impression on him. He continued to back away, his
eyes apparently fixed on some object of horror just before him, while he
trembled to such a degree that I was shaken in the saddle. He attempted
several times to wheel round and run away, but I was determined not to
yield to him, and continued the contest. Suddenly, when I was beginning
to despair of getting home by that road, he sprang forward, and
regularly charged the (to me) invisible object before him, and in
another moment, when he had apparently passed it, taking the bit between
his teeth he almost flew over the ground, never pausing till he brought
me to my own door. When I dismounted his terror seemed gone, but he hung
his head in a dejected manner, like a horse that has been under the
saddle all day. I have never witnessed another such instance of almost
maddening fear. His terror and apprehension were like what we can
imagine a man experiencing at sight of a ghost in some dark solitary
place.
Yet he did not forcibly carry me away from it, as he might so easily
have done; but, finding himself maintained by a "nature superior to his
own," he preferred to face it. I have never met in the dog a more
striking example of this noblest kind of brute courage.
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