“Would you like to see the horses a little nearer?” says Lord Ouiggins. “You had better buy a couple of tickets for the Padwick.” I do so. The Padwick—so called of an eminent British sportmans—is an enclosed space in which the true connoisseurs survey the horses before they start. As I gaze at Ventre-Tambour, I can hardly refrain from shouting, amongst all these impassible patricians, “Hourrah! Hep, hep, hep!”
Lord Ouilliam Ouiggins comes to me, hurriedly, and whispers, “Hush, I have just got the straight tip from the Admiral himself. It’s a moral; and the horse at twenty-five to one! We must get on every sov. we have. There is barely time before they start. Quick.” I hand him my purse—not without a moment of hesitation—of which I am speedily ashamed.
VIII. Rien ne va plus.
A minute sometimes seems like hours. Fortune was in my grasp.
The interval of suspense was horrible; and yet its termination, when it did come, seemed abrupt, sudden, incredible.
I was still struggling with the crowd, when a hoarse sound suddenly rose like the roar of a tempest on a rocky coast—it rose, and rose, and grew stronger; I looked; I saw a wonderful white flash of faces as the heads of the multitude turned all, in one instant, one way; and my pulses seemed as though they would kill me with their throbbing as, with one voice, that innumerable assemblage cried—
“They’re Off!”
IX. The Word of the Enigma.
They were indeed; and so was Lord Ouilliam Ouiggins of Ouapping!
Anonymous, 1869.