The scene that met Mr. Sawyer’s eyes was amusing, though alarming. Four imperial crowners at one and the same instant—four loose horses galloping wildly away—four red-coats rising simultaneously from Mother Earth—eight top-booted legs shuffling in ludicrous haste after the departing steeds. Had our friend been Briareus himself, he could not have caught all their horses. He was a man, however, who seldom lost an opportunity, and was not likely to miss such a chance as the present. Selecting Boadicea, he galloped after her, and succeeded in pinning her against a pound: notwithstanding that the mare lashed out at him more than once, he brought her back in triumph to her panting owner.
Meanwhile, the four dismounted sportsmen condoled breathlessly with each other, as they laboured up the grassy slope.
“I’m but a poor hand at this game,” observed Struggles, who did not fancy carrying his own weight across country.
“I wish I’d gone faster at it,” said Savage, who had been grinding his teeth and hardening his heart the whole way up the field.
“My chestnut mare would have jumped it!” exclaimed Major Brush, inwardly registering a vow to abstain from “oxers” for the future; whilst the Honourable, though he held his tongue, was thinking what a capital horse that was of Sawyer’s, and dismally reflecting that if Boadicea hadn’t kicked at him when he was down, he never would have been such a tailor as to let her go.
“Catch hold!” said Mr. Sawyer, throwing the mare’s reins to her owner, whose gratitude he thereby earned for the rest of his life. “There’s no hurry,” he added, as the Honourable, in a coat plastered with mud and a hat stove in, dived wildly at his stirrup; “they’ve over-run it a mile back, and checked in the next field.”
The latter part of the sentence was true enough. His quick eye had shown him the pack at fault, as he secured Boadicea in the corner where the pound stood; the former was a bit of what theatrical people call “gag.” It was as much as to say, “Whilst you fellows are hustling and spurting, and tumbling about, I am so well mounted that I can observe matters as coolly as if I was hunting in a balloon.”
It was not without its effect on his listener. As they rode through the hand-gate together into the enclosure where the hounds were at fault, the Honourable Crasher no longer scanned Marathon with the eye of a purchaser. He looked on the horse now as his own property. He was determined to have him.
By some mysterious law of nature, whenever one individual succeeds either in what is termed pounding a field, or in getting such a start of them that nobody shall have a chance of catching him whilst the pace holds—and this, be it observed, is no everyday occurrence in countries where the best riders in England congregate for the express purpose of riding as well as they can—it invariably happens that the immediate failure of scent, or some such untoward contingency, robs the lucky one of his anticipated triumph. On the present occasion, much to Mr. Sawyer’s delight, they never hit off their fox again. By degrees, the tail of the field straggled up, having found their way by every available gate and gap; then came the second-horses, carefully ridden, cool, and comparatively clean, not having turned a hair; lastly, arrived a man in a gig, by a convenient bridle-road, hotter than any one present, wiping his face on a coloured handkerchief, which he afterwards put in the crown of his hat.
Whilst sandwiches were being munched, and silver horns drained of their contents, ginger-cordial, orange-brandy, V.O.P.,[[1]] and other enticing fluids, Mr. Sawyer was giving The Boy stringent orders about taking Marathon home. He could not feel thoroughly comfortable till that impostor was fairly out of sight, and he should find himself established on the unassuming little grey.