‘Now, Moifaa,’ shouts Allan Maclean, ‘it’s time for you to test your “mana.” Death or glory! He’s going strong; Kirkland and The Gunner also. Ambush II., enjoying himself without a rider, keeps well up, but cannoning into Detail—turns him into “another detail” (pace Mr. Kipling). There is a fall in the dry ditch. Benvenir breaks down. Loch Lomond breaks his neck. Moifaa draws clear of Kirkland and The Gunner on the flat, and, striding along, beats Mr. Bibby’s Kirkland by eight lengths; The Gunner a neck behind him.’
‘Who was fourth horse?’
‘Shaun Aboo—Robin Hood fifth. Poor dear old Manifesto last!’ concluded Vanda. ‘
“And that’s how the favourite was beat,” as Gordon sings.’
. . . . . . . . .
The great race is over. Nothing more until next year. The winners retire to count up their gains, the losers to calculate how they may liquidate. This last is a more serious affair. As Moifaa was led in towards the weighing-stand, a burst of applause greeted horse and rider. There were very few of the cheering company who had not [286] ]lost upon him, but a British crowd is chiefly just, and upholds a fair field and no favour.
With regard to the performance, to quote an eminent sporting authority, ‘no finer exhibition of jumping ability has ever been seen at Aintree than that afforded by the New Zealand horse. He seemed to go half a foot higher than anything else in the field, and to land in the most collected manner. For the last mile it looked like a match between Moifaa, Kirkland, and The Gunner. But when once on the race-course, any one could see that Moifaa was a certain winner if he stood up.’
The muster of colonials was alarming. Was there going to be another Boer War? Indeed, had occasion arisen, a formidable contingent could have been recruited there and then. North and south, and east and west—the bronzed, desert-worn, weather-beaten Sons of Empire turned up in the paddock, never so crowded before. Men were shaking hands enthusiastically who had last met in Sydney or Melbourne—Perth or Brisbane—Calcutta, Peshawur, Nigeria, or New South Wales—the back blocks of Queensland or the northern territory of West Australia, where the pearling luggers with their Malay crews make high festival when the ‘shell takes’ are good.
How far, how widely, the roving Englishman wandered in his quest for fame or fortune, was abundantly demonstrated by the number and quality of the ‘Legion that never was listed,’ on that auspicious day. Such companies and troops—rank upon rank, as they closed round the [287] ]champion of the day—the first Australasian horse that had ever won against Britain’s best ‘chasers,’ in the classic race of world-wide fame that had no fellow in the contests of horse and man since the world began.