Her effervescent spirit can only be likened to champagne just before the cork flies off. Perched upon the front seat of a drag, with Colonel Buchanan, she noted every stroke and counter-stroke, every point gained and lost, with the practised knowledge of a man, and the one-sided ardour of a woman. She had already cheered herself hoarse; but still kept up a running fire of comment, emphasised by an occasional pressure of the Colonel's coat-sleeve, to the acute discomfiture of that self-contained Scot.
"We'll not be far off the winning post now," she assured him at this juncture. "Our ponies are playing with their heads entirely, and the others are losing theirs because of the natives and the cheering. There goes the ball straight for the boundary again!—Well done, Geoff! But the long fellow's caught it—Saints alive! 'Twould have been a goal but for Theo. How's that for a fine stroke, now?"
For Desmond, with a clean, splitting smack, had sent the ball flying across three-fourths of the ground.
"Mind the goal!" he shouted to his half-back, Alla Dad Khan, as Diamond headed after the ball like a lightning streak, with three racers—maddened by whip and spur and their own delirious excitement—clattering upon his tail; and a fusilade of clapping, cheers, and yells broke out on all sides.
The ball, checked in mid career, came spinning back to them with the force of a rifle-bullet. The speed had been terrific, and the wrench of pulling up wrought dire confusion. Followed a sharp scrimmage, a bewildering jumble of horses and men, rattling of sticks and unlimited breaking of the third commandment; till the ball shot out again into the open, skimming, like a live thing, through a haze of fine white dust, Desmond close upon it, as before; the Hussar "forwards" in hot pursuit.
But their "back" was ready to receive the ball, and Desmond along with it. Both players struck simultaneously. Their cane-handled sticks met with a crack that was heard all over the ground. Then the ball leapt clean through the goal-posts, the head of Desmond's stick leapt after it, and the crowd scattered right and left before a thundering onrush of ponies. Cheer upon cheer, yell upon yell, went up from eight thousand throats at once. British soldiers flung their helmets in the air; the band lost its head and broke into a triumphant clash of discord; while Colonel Buchanan, forgetful of his Scottish decorum, stood up in the drag and shouted like any subaltern.
He was down in the thick of the melée, ready to greet Desmond as he rode off the battlefield, a breathless unsightly victor, covered with dust and glory.
"Stunningly played—the whole lot of you!"
"Thank you, sir. Good enough, isn't it?"