They are not high, but they are fairly close together, and four in all, and a horse, blind from fear or temper, is quite as likely to let you down at the first as at the fourth.
But Jan Cuxson saw a gleam of hope.
Surely the runaway would slacken, surely no horse could possibly take four fences at that terrific speed; and if he did slacken, then the bay, as nimble as a cat in spite of his weight, would catch up, and something would be done before they dashed headlong across the tram-threaded, crowded Kidderpore Road.
Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the man she heard racing to her rescue.
"By Jove!" he cried, and "By Jove!" repeated the others behind, and "By Jove!" echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay, just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.
Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, gharries and trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous passage.
"Wah! Wah!" shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured shawls, who watched admiringly the woman's perfect seat, caring not an anna that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to death. In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman's head lent enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon her end.
A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.
Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie, then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved lightly through the dust towards the bazaar. Crouched at the foot of a tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no notice whatever of the disturbance around him.
But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front of it with Cuxson at her heels.