As I looked, the poor animal, whose head was beginning to droop, gave a sudden start, flung up his antlers, and with a desperate staggering leap disappeared up the valley. I had not caught my breath again, when down through the opposite gorge came a train of hounds, leaping forward with cruel ferocity, some breast to breast, others in single file, but all with great, savage eyes and open jaws, howling and baying out their blood-thirsty eagerness. They rushed by me, some on one side of Jupiter, some on the other, spotting his black coat with flakes of foam, and making him start with the fury of their noise.
For myself, I struck at the dogs with my whip, and madly flung it after them. My sympathy for the poor stag was a pang of such agony that it made me wild. But they swept away like the wind, howling back, as it seemed to me, their brutal defiance and derision of my helplessness.
Then like the rush of a tempest, heavy with thunder and red with lightning, came the hunt. The flaming uniforms; those dark horses; the long riding shirts, streaming back like dusky banners; ostrich plumes flashing blackly upon the strong current of wind created by the quick motion of their owners. All this rushed by me, as I have said, like a sudden storm.
Directly over the spot where we stood bore down the hunt, sweeping us away with it as a swollen stream tosses onward the straws which it encounters.
The stag was nearly run down; the hunters were becoming tired; but Jupiter was fresh as a lark, and held his own bravely with the most noble-blooded hunter of them all.
The hounds were yelling, like fiends, ahead. Some one called out that the stag was at bay. A huntsman, all in scarlet, shot out from the rest onward like an arrow. Jupiter made a sudden bound. It may be in the fierce excitement that I urged him; but he gave a great leap, and kept neck and neck with the huntsman.
Beneath a pile of rocks that choked up one end of the valley, the poor stag was run down. With his delicate fore hoofs lifted up with a desperate effort at another spring, he stood one instant with his head turned back, and his great, agonized eyes fixed upon the dogs. The rocks were too high. His poor limbs exhausted, he could not make the leap, but wheeled back and desperately tossed the first hound, who fell with a yelp upon the stones.
But the whole pack was upon him, scrambling up the rocks, and making fiercely for his throat from all points.
“Save him—save him!” I shouted, striking Jupiter with my clenched hand. “Save him—save him!”
I rushed by the huntsman. Hitherto we had kept, as I have said, neck and neck; but Jupiter felt the sting of my blow, and gave a mad bound that brought us in the midst of the dogs. I still urged him on, striving to trample down the fierce brutes beneath his hoofs. The stag knew it, I do believe. The poor animal felt that I was his friend. No human eyes ever had a deeper agony of appeal in them. I sprang from Jupiter’s back down among the dogs, and cast myself before their victim.