My winsome knight of Dee:
On lances four my knight they bore,
Who died for love and me.
Old Ballad.
Three men ride through the shivering moonlight--ride with teeth set hard and eyes that looked straight before them. Neck and neck they race across the open, and then the man on the left mutters a curse as they come to a stretch of rice fields. The long rice stalks seem planted in plate glass, but it is only water. Under the water lies three feet of mud, and beyond, like a huge dismasted hulk, rises the solid outline of the forest. The fields are divided by narrow embankments, and, as it is impossible to gallop through the quagmire, they resign themselves to circumstances, and pick their way slowly in Indian file across the narrow ridges that separate the sloppy water-logged fields. Yet they speak no word. After a time, short in itself, but which seems endless to the leader, they reached the end of the rice ground, and then the foremost horseman spoke.
"Good God! must we crawl through this as well?"
"By your favour, sahib, the road is to the right. Let me lead."
There is a scatter of dead leaves, and Serferez, galloping forward, plunged into the dark archway of foliage. Through its deep gloom they race, and the hoofs of the horses fall with a dead sound on the damp bed of leaves below them.
Shurr-r-r-sh! A sound of wild boar plunges into the thickets, with much grunting and hubbub over the strange sight that flashes past them. The old boar peers after the horsemen with his bloodshot eyes, the white foam hissing round his tushes, then with a peculiar long-drawn moan of anger he turns and shambles slowly after his tribe.
Light at last!--the fires of a native hamlet and the indescribable odours that always hang around it. They dash past. There is a yell of rage from the napless yellow pariah dog, roused from his sleep in the middle of the road. He was nearly killed, and he protests vigorously against such reckless riding. A chorus of his fellows take up his complaint, and the riders push on amid a storm of howls.