Their own driver had heard and seen; the hack sprang forward, and King tumbled into Jack’s arms. At the same instant Showell struggled to his feet with pale, drawn face, and, with an inarticulate groan of terror, threw open the carriage door and leaped blindly into the road. Over and over he rolled in the path of the oncoming team. Jack pushed King from him, and in a moment was balancing himself on the sill, clinging to the woodwork beside him. Some one strove to get by him, and he pushed him back.
“Stay where you are,” he shouted.
Then he jumped.
As he did so he saw dimly the crowd crushing back against the shops, panic-stricken, struggling for safety. He landed and kept his feet, and even before the momentum had passed had swung himself about, and was racing back down the street toward the motionless form of Showell and the plunging horses. As he ran there was no fear in his heart; rather an exultant consciousness of power; here was the opportunity to wipe out forever the stigma of cowardice.
“It’s my inning at last!” he thought gladly.
If it has taken long in the telling, yet in the doing it was the matter of a moment. He reached the inert body of Showell, and, with desperate strength, sent it rolling toward the sidewalk. Then the horses were upon him. [With a gasp for breath he leaped forward], arms outstretched, as it seemed into the path of death.
[With a gasp for breath he leaped forward.]
But brief as had been his moment of preparation, he had not misjudged. His clutching hands caught at rein and mane, and he was swept off his feet and borne onward. Then his left hand found a place beside the right, and with all his weight back of the bit and the horse’s hoofs grazing his legs at every plunge, he clung there desperately with closed eyes. For an instant there was no diminishment of the pace; then the horse’s head came down, and Jack’s feet again touched earth. Plunge after plunge followed; a confusion of cries and cheers filled his ears; the team veered to the left, and his feet felt the sidewalk beneath them. There was a crash as the heavy pole splintered against one of the granite posts of the college fence, and Jack, striking violently against something that drove the last breath from his body, loosed his hold and fell backward into darkness.