Perhaps horsewhips for this particular purpose could be obtained from the Army and Navy Stores.

It should be about three feet long, flexible and tapering to a point.
Unconsciously his inventive faculty began to work.

When he had devised an adequate instrument, made of fine steel wires ingeniously plaited, he awoke, somewhat shame-facedly, to the commonplaces of the original problem.
What was to be done?
He pondered for some hours, then he sighed and sought consolation in his bassoon; but after a few bars of "Annie Laurie" he put the unedifying instrument back in its corner and went out for a walk.

It was a starry night of frost.

Nunsmere lay silent as Bethlehem; and a star hung low in the east.