Perhaps the effect was intensified to me by the concentration of light wrought by the involuntary hindsight arrangement of my legs; possibly my perceptive faculties, stimulated by the situation, were unusually keen; but the bearing and look of the Don remain to this day indelibly impressed upon my memory. Hatless, he stood in the middle of the street, one leg advanced, and with both arms, after the fashion of ball-players, extended to the front. But it was his countenance that struck me most. His grimly-set lips, his distended nostrils, his brows intensely knit over his darkly glancing eyes, but, above all, his head, thrown back, and rocking to and fro in sympathy with the oscillations of the approaching team, gave him a look of ferocious disdain.
It is with just such a look, I can imagine, that a lion, famished and desperate, after long and vain hunting of giraffe or gazelle, prepares to spring, from his tangled ambuscade of rushes, upon the horns of an approaching bull. What must be done, saith his mighty heart, must be done—and done bravely.
’Twas Milton’s Satan stood there!
But just as the grimness of the countenance of Clearchus appeared odious to his soldiers in camp, but lovely in the hour of battle, so the look I have been describing seemed to me, at this critical juncture, to rival the beautiful disdain of Byron’s Apollo Belvedere. It was the sternly confident look of a man who scorned to rank failure among possibilities.
What would have been the result, had the horses held their straight course down the middle of the street, we can only conjecture, but such was the force of habit that, frantic as they were, they bore so far to the left just before reaching the Don, that the left wheels rattled along the gutter, within a few inches of the carriage-block, up to which they had so frequently been driven by their owner. The Don rushed to the right to intercept them, and, just as they were about to pass him, sprang upon the head of the off horse with an inarticulate cry so fierce, and a vigor so tremendous, that the animal, partly thrown back upon his haunches swerved, in his terror, violently to the left, forcing his mate upon the sidewalk. But the Don had leaped too far. Struck in the right side by the pole, he was hurled to the ground, his head striking the pavement with great force. In a moment of time both hoofs and wheels had passed over his prostrate form.
“Oh!” shrieked the girls, releasing me, and clasping their hands with mingled compassion and terror.
The V collapsed, and in an instant I went spinning over the dash-board.
The near-horse, his neck broken against the lamp-post, lay stone dead; while the other, his traces burst stood trembling in every fibre, and, as he pulled back against the reins, which still held him, uneasily snorting at his lifeless yoke-fellow.
CHAPTER XI.
I was somewhat stunned by my fall, but extricating myself from my entanglements, I rose just in time to see Alice spring from the carriage, followed by Lucy. The latter fell as she alighted from the carriage, but before I could reach her the Don had staggered up to her and lifted her from the ground. He was hardly recognizable. His clothes were soiled and torn, and blood was streaming from two ugly gashes in his face,—one on his forehead and another in his right cheek.