Peter Mottin was an acting Sub-Lieutenant, but even acting Sub-Lieutenants from Whale Island may hunt if they can get the requisite day's leave and can muster the price of a hired mount. The hounds poured out of Creech Wood, and Mottin glowed with intense delight as his iron-mouthed horse took the rails in and out of the lane and followed the pack up the seventy-acre pasture from whence the holloa had come. It was late in a February afternoon, and most of the dispirited field had gone home, so that there was no crowd—and a February fox on a good scenting day is a customer worth waiting for. Mottin sat back as a five-foot cut and laid hedge grew nearer, and blessed the owner of his mount as the big black cleared the jump with half a foot to spare. Two more big fences, cut as level as a rule, and the field was down to six, with three Hunt servants. The fox was making for Hyden Wood, and scent was getting better every minute. A clattering canter through a farmyard, and Mottin followed the huntsman over a ramshackle gate on to grass again. The huntsman capped the tail-hounds on as he galloped, and Mottin realised that if they were going to kill before dark they would have to drive their fox fast. Riding to his right he saw Sangatte—a destroyer officer, whom he knew only by name, but whom he envied for the fact that he seemed able to hunt when he liked and could afford to keep his own horses. As they neared a ragged bullfinch hedge at the top of a long slope, he saw Sangatte put on speed and take it right in the middle, head down and forearm across his eyes. Mottin eased his horse to give the huntsman room at the gate in the left-hand corner. The pilot's horse rapped the top bar slightly, and as Mottin settled himself for the leap, he saw the gate begin to swing open away from him. There was no time to change his mind—he decided he must jump big and trust to luck, but the black horse failed him. The hireling knew enough to think for himself, and seeing the gate begin to swing, decided that a shorter stride would be safer. The disagreement resulted—as such differences of opinion are liable to do—in a crash of breaking wood and a whirling, stunning fall. Mottin rose shakily on one leg, feeling as if the ankle of the other was being drilled with red-hot needles, and swore at the black horse as it galloped with trailing bridle down the long stubble field towards Soberton Down. He saw Sangatte look back and then wrench his brown mare round to ride off the hireling as it passed. He caught the dangling reins and swung both horses round, and came hurrying and impatient back. As he arrived he checked the mare and turned in his saddle to watch the receding pack.
"Come on," he said. "Quick—you'll catch 'em at Hyden." He turned to look at Mottin by the gate-post, in irritation at feeling no snatch at the black horse's rein. His face fell slightly. "Hullo—hurt?" he said, and leapt from his mare.
"Go on. Don't wait. Go on," said Mottin. "I'll be all right. You get on—it's only my ankle."
"Damn painful too, I expect. I'm not going on. They'll be at Butser before I could catch them now, and I bet they whip off in the dark." He threw the reins over the mare's head and left her standing. "Now," he said. "It's your left ankle; come here to the near side, and put your left knee on my hands and jump for it."
Mottin complied, and to the accompaniment of a grunt and a pain-expelled oath arrived back in the muddy saddle.
"I say, this is good of you—you know," he said; "but you've——"
"Cut it out—it won't be anything of a run, anyway," lied Sangatte gloomily.
"Come along—it's only three miles to Droxford, but you'll have to walk all the way, and we'd better get on."...