The spectators were on their feet and the air roared with the gigantic diapason of their cheers. Jack’s nerves were steady as iron now and his spirit dilated, till the whole desperate struggle seemed to be taking place within himself, and the end foreordained.
The last barrier was seven feet high, at the top of a slight incline. Beyond was a six-hundred yard stretch to the tape.
The mandarin’s daughter, riding superbly, but near the end of her physical endurance, had the gray’s head at Miriam’s knee. Miriam, at the incline, slightly abated her pace; the other shot forward at full stride, but her mount, embarrassed by the incline, struck and snapped the top rail and fell, with the near foreleg broken on the further side. Miriam, in leaping, had to swerve to escape the sharp end of the broken rail and to avoid landing on her rival. But the latter picked herself up unhurt; the gray lay kicking on its side.
Meanwhile the Cossack, relying on the lightness of his horse, took the incline at top speed, grazing the roan’s shoulder as he went by, and he and Miriam, in unison, but on converging lines, rose in the air. With Jack between them, a catastrophe was imminent. A hush, followed by hissing of breath drawn between the teeth, showed that the spectators realized the peril.
Jack, self-possessed in that crisis, knew what to do and had the power to do it. Miriam’s white Arab cleared the bar first and unscathed; but the kicking gray beneath caused him to stumble on alighting and he fell on his right side. Miriam threw her right leg over his head as he fell and thus avoided injury, but she was unseated and thrown heavily; unprotected from the Cossack and from the hoofs of the struggling gray, she lay prostrate, partly stunned.
The Cossack leaped ruthlessly; but Jack leaped with him, at an angle which hurled the Russian aside; the fence crashed and fell, the man pitched on his shoulder, breaking his collar-bone; his horse, recovering, scurried riderless down the course.
Jack, descending, saw beneath him the pale, upturned face of Miriam, her eyes half closed. To all in the house her instant death seemed inevitable; in the horror-stricken interval shrieked out the voice of old Terence Mayne: “My girl! My girl!”
But as the roan with stiffened forelegs dropped earthward, Jack flung himself far down on the left, holding on by arm and heel, Indian fashion; and before those deadly hoofs touched the tan-bark, he gathered up the unconscious girl with his right arm, regained his seat by an incredible effort, and thundered on to the finish with Miriam across the roan’s withers.
A long-drawn roar of amazement and relief greeted them. Even in that age of unmatched horsemanship, such a feat had never before been witnessed. The roan was halted; Mayne, Sam Paladin and the maharaja were pressing through the throng. Jack slid to earth with the girl he loved still in his arm; and thanked God, humbly, in his heart.