Kitabı oku: «The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands», sayfa 10
It was not a recent gale that had caused all this damage. In the South Atlantic, several weeks before, she had encountered one of those terrific but short-lived squalls which so frequently send many of man’s stoutest floating palaces to the bottom. Hence her half-wrecked condition.
The passengers on board the Wellington did not, however, seem to be much depressed by their altered circumstances. The fact was, they had become so used to rough weather, and had weathered so many gales, and reached their damaged condition by such slow degrees, that they did not realise it as we do, turning thus abruptly from one page to another. Besides this, although still some weeks’ sail from the white cliffs of old England, they already began to consider the voyage as good as over, and not a few of the impatient among them had begun to pack up so as to be ready for going ashore. And how carefully were those preparations for landing made! With what interest the sandal-wood fans, and inlaid ivory boxes and elaborately carved chess-men and curious Indian toys, and costly Indian shawls were re-examined and repacked in more secure and carefully-to-be-remembered corners, in order that they might be got at quickly when eager little hands “at home—” Well, well, it is of no use to dwell on what was meant to be, for not one of those love-tokens ever reached its destination. All were swallowed up by the insatiable sea.
But let us not forestall. The elephant and rhinoceros were the only members of the community that had perished on the voyage. At first the elephant had been dreaded by many, but by degrees it won the confidence and affection of all. Houses innumerable had been built for it on deck, but the sagacious animal had a rooted antipathy to restraint. No sort of den, however strongly formed, could hold him long. The first structures were so ridiculously disproportioned to his strength as to be demolished at once. On being put into the first “house that Jack built,” he looked at it demurely for at least five minutes, as if he were meditating on the probable intentions of the silly people who put him there, but neither by look nor otherwise did he reveal the conclusions to which he came. His intentions, however, were not long of being made known. He placed his great side against the den; there was a slow but steady rending of timbers, as if the good ship herself were breaking up, a burst of laughter from the men followed, and “Sambo” was free. When the succeeding houses were built so strong that his side availed not, he brought his wonderful patience and his remarkable trunk to bear on them, and picked them to pieces bit by bit. Then ropes were tried, but he snapped weak ropes and untied strong ones.
At last he was permitted to roam the decks at perfect liberty, and it was a point of the greatest interest to observe the neat way in which he picked his steps over the lumbered decks, without treading upon anything—ay, even during nights when these decks in the tropical regions were covered with sleeping men!
Everybody was fond of Sambo. Neptune doted on him, and the children—who fed him to such an extent with biscuits that the bo’s’n said he would be sartin’ sure to die of appleplexy—absolutely adored him. Even the gruff, grumpy, unsociable rhinoceros amiably allowed him to stroke its head with his trunk.
Sambo troubled no one except the cook, but that luxurious individual was so constantly surrounded by a halo, so to speak, of delicious and suggestive odours that the elephant could not resist the temptation to pay him frequent visits, especially when dinner was being prepared. One of his favourite proceedings at such times was to put his trunk into the galley, take the lid off the coppers, make a small coil of the end of his proboscis, and therewith at one sweep spoon out a supply of potatoes sufficient for half-a-dozen men! Of course the cook sought to counteract such tendencies, but he had to be very circumspect, for Sambo resented insults fiercely.
One day the cook caught his enemy in the very act of clearing out the potato copper. Enraged beyond endurance, he stuck his “tormentors” into the animal’s trunk. With a shriek of rage Sambo dashed the potatoes in the man’s face, and made a rush at him. The cook fled to his sanctum and shut the door. There the elephant watched him for an hour or more. The united efforts, mental and physical, of the ship’s crew failed to remove the indignant creature, so they advised the cook to remain where he was for some time. He hit on the plan, however, of re-winning the elephant’s friendship. He opened his door a little and gave him a piece of biscuit. Sambo took it. What his feelings were no one could tell, but he remained at his post. Another piece of biscuit was handed out. Then the end of the injured proboscis was smoothed and patted by the cook. Another large piece of biscuit was administered, and by degrees the cure was affected. Thus successfully was applied that grand principle which has accomplished so much in this wicked world, even among higher animals than elephants—the overcoming of evil with good!
Eventually Sambo sickened. Either the cold of the north told too severely on a frame which had been delicately nurtured in sunny climes, or Sambo had surreptitiously helped himself during the hours of night to something deleterious out of the paint or pitch pots. At all events he died, to the sincere regret of all on board—cook not excepted—and was launched overboard to glut the sharks with an unwonted meal, and astonish them with a new sensation.
Very dissimilar was the end of the rhinoceros. That bumptious animal retained its unamiable spirit to the last. Fortunately it did not possess the powers or sagacity of the elephant. It could not untie knots or pick its cage to pieces, so that it was effectually restrained during the greater part of the voyage; but there came a tempest at last, which assisted him in becoming free—free, not only from durance vile, but from the restraints of this life altogether. On the occasion referred to, the rudder was damaged, and for a time rendered useless, so that the good ship Wellington rolled to an extent that almost tore the masts out of her. Everything not firmly secured about the decks was washed overboard. Among other things, the rhinoceros was knocked so heavily against the bars of his crib that they began to give way.
At last the vessel gave a plunge and roll which seemed to many of those on board as though it must certainly be her last. The rhinoceros was sent crashing through the dislocated bars; the ropes that held his legs were snapped like the cords wherewith Samson was bound in days of old, and away he went with the lurch of a tipsy man against the long-boat, which he stove in.
“Hold on!” roared the bo’s’n.
Whether this was advice to the luckless animal, or a general adjuration to everybody and everything to be prepared for the worst, we know not; but instead of holding on, every one let go what he or she chanced to be holding on to at the moment, and made for a place of safety with reckless haste. The rhinoceros alone obeyed the order. It held on for a second or two in a most remarkable manner to the mainmast, but another lurch of the vessel cast it loose again; a huge billow rolled under the stern; down went the bow, and the brute slid on its haunches, with its fore legs rigid in front, at an incredible pace towards the galley. Just as a smash became imminent, the bow rose, the stern dropt, and away he went back again with equal speed, but in a more sidling attitude, towards the quarter-deck.
Before that point was reached, a roll diverted him out of course and he was brought up by the main hatch, from which he rebounded like a billiard ball towards the starboard gangway. At this point he lost his balance, and went rolling to leeward like an empty cask. There was something particularly awful and impressive in the sight of this unwieldy monster being thus knocked about like a pea in a rattle, and sometimes getting into attitudes that would have been worthy of a dancer on the tightrope, but the consummation of the event was not far off. An unusually violent roll of the ship sent him scrambling to starboard; a still more vicious roll checked and reversed the rush and dashed him against the cabin skylight. He carried away part of this, continued his career, went tail-foremost through the port bulwarks like a cannon-shot into the sea. He rose once, but, as if to make sure of her victory, the ship relentlessly fell on him with a weight that must have split his skull, and sent him finally to the bottom.
Strange to say, the dog Neptune was the only one on board that appeared to mourn the loss of this passenger. He howled a good deal that night in an unusually sad tone, and appeared to court sympathy and caresses more than was his wont from Jim Welton and the young people who were specially attached to him, but he soon became reconciled, alas! to the loss of his crusty friend.
The storms ceased as they neared the shores of England. The carpenter and crew were so energetic in repairing damages that the battered vessel began to wear once more something of her former trim aspect, and the groups of passengers assembled each evening on the poop, began to talk with ever-deepening interest of home, while the children played beside them, or asked innumerable questions about brothers, sisters, and cousins, whose names were as familiar as household words, though their voices and forms were still unknown.
The weather was fine, the sky was clear; warm summer breezes filled the sails, and all nature seemed to have sunk into a condition so peaceful as to suggest the idea that storms were past and gone for ever, when the homeward-bound ship neared the land. One evening the captain remarked to the passengers, that if the wind would hold as it was a little longer, they should soon pass through the Downs, and say good-bye to the sea breezes and the roll of the ocean wave.
Chapter Thirteen.
Bob Queeker Comes out Very Strong Indeed
It is both curious and interesting to observe the multitude of unlikely ways in which the ends of justice are ofttimes temporarily defeated. Who would have imagined that an old pump would be the cause of extending Morley Jones’s term of villainy, of disarranging the deep-laid plans of Mr Larks, of effecting the deliverance of Billy Towler, and of at once agonising the body and ecstatifying the soul of Robert Queeker? Yet so it was. If the old pump had not existed—if its fabricator had never been born—there is every probability that Mr Jones’s career would have been cut short at an earlier period. That he would, in his then state of mind, have implicated Billy, who would have been transported along with him and almost certainly ruined; that Mr Queeker would—but hold. Let us present the matter in order.
Messrs Merryheart and Dashope were men of the law, and Mr Robert Queeker was a man of their office—in other words, a clerk—not a “confidential” one, but a clerk, nevertheless, in whose simple-minded integrity they had much confidence. Bob, as his fellow-clerks styled him, was sent on a secret mission to Ramsgate. The reader will observe how fortunate it was that his mission was secret, because it frees us from the necessity of setting down here an elaborate and tedious explanation as to how, when, and where the various threads of his mission became interwoven with the fabric of our tale. Suffice it to say that the only part of his mission with which we are acquainted is that which had reference to two men—one of whom was named Mr Larks, the other Morley Jones.
Now, it so happened that Queeker’s acquaintance, Mr Durant, had an intimate friend who dwelt near a beautiful village in Kent. When Queeker mentioned the circumstance of the secret mission which called him to Ramsgate, he discovered that the old gentleman was on the point of starting for this village, in company with his daughter and her cousin Fanny.
“You’ll travel with us, I hope, Queeker; our roads lie in the same direction, at least a part of the way, you know,” said the hearty little old gentleman, with good-nature beaming in every wrinkle, from the crown of his bald head to the last fold of his treble chin; “it will be such a comfort to have you to help me take care of the girls. And if you can spare time to turn aside for a day or two, I promise you a hearty welcome from my friend—whose residence, named Jenkinsjoy, is an antique paradise, and his hospitality unbounded. He has splendid horses, too, and will give you a gallop over as fine a country as exists between this and the British Channel. You ride, of course?”
Queeker admitted that he could ride a little.
“At least,” he added, after a pause, “I used frequently to get rides on a cart-horse when I was a very little boy.”
So it was arranged that Queeker should travel with them. Moreover, he succeeded in obtaining from his employers permission to delay for three days the prosecution of the mission—which, although secret, was not immediately pressing—in order that he might visit Jenkinsjoy. It was fortunate that, when he went to ask this brief holiday, he found Mr Merryheart in the office. Had it been his mischance to fall upon Dashope, he would have received a blunt refusal and prompt dismissal—so thoroughly were the joys of that gentleman identified with the woes of other people.
But, great though Queeker’s delight undoubtedly was on this occasion, it was tempered by a soul-harassing care, which drew forth whole quires of poetical effusions to the moon and other celestial bodies. This secret sorrow was caused by the dreadful and astonishing fact, that, do what he would to the contrary, the weather-cock of his affections was veering slowly but steadily away from Katie, and pointing more and more decidedly towards Fanny Hennings! It is but simple justice to the poor youth to state that he loathed and abhorred himself in consequence.
“There am I,” he soliloquised, on the evening before the journey began, “a monster, a brute, a lower animal almost, who have sought with all my strength to gain—perchance have gained—the innocent, trusting heart of Katie Durant, and yet, without really meaning it, but, somehow, without being able to help it, I am—not falling in love; oh! no, perish the thought! but, but—falling into something strangely, mysteriously, incomprehensibly, similar to—Oh! base ingrate that I am, is there no way; no back-door by which—?”
Starting up, and seizing a pen, at this point of irrepressible inspiration, he wrote, reading aloud as he set down the burning thoughts—
Oh for a postern in the rear,
Where wretched man might disappear;
And never more should seek her!
Fly, fly to earth’s extremest bounds,—
Bounds, mounds, lounds, founds, kounds, downds, rounds, pounds, zounds!—hounds—ha! hounds—I have it—
“Fly, fly to earth’s extremest bounds,
With huntsmen, horses, horns, and hounds
And die!—dejected Queeker.
“I wonder,” thought Queeker, as he sat biting the end of his quill—his usual method of courting inspiration, “I wonder if there is anything prophetic in these lines! Durant said that his friend has splendid horses. They may, perhaps, be hunters! Ha! my early ambition, perchance, youth’s fond dream, may yet be realised! But let me not hope. Hope always tells a false as well as flattering tale to me. She has ever been, in my experience” (he was bitter at this point) “an incorrigible li— ahem! story-teller.”
Striking his clenched fist heavily on the table, Queeker rose, put on his hat, and went round to Mr Durant’s merely to inquire whether he could be of any service—not that he could venture to offer assistance in the way of packing, but there might be something such as roping trunks, or writing and affixing addresses, in regard to which he might perhaps render himself useful.
“Why, Miss Durant,” he said, on entering, “you are always busy.”
“Am I?” said Katie, with a smile, as she rose and shook hands.
“Yes, I—I—assure you, Miss Durant,” said Queeker, bowing to Fanny, on whose fat pretty face there was a scarlet flush, the result either of the suddenness of Queeker’s entry, or of the suppression of her inveterate desire to laugh, “I assure you that it quite rouses my admiration to observe the ease with which you can turn your hand to anything. You can write out accounts better than any fellow in our office. Then you play and sing with so much ease, and I often find you making clothes for poor people, with pounds of tea and sugar in your pockets, besides many other things, and now, here you are painting like—like—one of the old masters!”
This was quite an unusual burst on the part of Queeker, who felt as though he were making some amends for his unfaithfulness in thus recalling and emphatically asserting the unquestionably good qualities of his lady-love. He felt as if he were honestly attempting to win himself back to his allegiance.
“You are very complimentary,” said Katie, with a glance at her cousin, which threw that young lady into silent convulsions.
“Not at all,” cried Queeker, forcing his enthusiasm up to white heat, and seizing a drawing, which he held up before him, in the vain attempt to shut Fanny out of his sight.
“Now, I call this most beautiful,” he said, in tones of genuine admiration. “I never saw anything so sweet before.”
“Indeed!” said Katie, who observed that the youth was gazing over the top of the drawing at her cousin. “I am so glad you like it, for, to say truth, I have felt disappointed with it myself, and papa says it is only so-so. Do point out to me its faults, Mr Queeker, and the parts you like best.”
She rose and looked over Queeker’s shoulder with much interest, and took hold of the drawing to keep it firmly in its position.
There was an excessively merry twinkle in Katie’s eyes as she watched the expression of Queeker’s face when he exclaimed—
“Faults, Miss Durant, there are no—eh! why, what—”
“Oh you wicked, deceptive man, you’ve got it upside down!” said Katie, shaking her finger at the unhappy youth, who stammered, tried to explain—to apologise—failed, broke down, and talked unutterable nonsense, to the infinite delight of his fair tormentor.
As for Fanny, that Hebe bent her head suddenly over her work-basket, and thrust her face into it as if searching with microscopic intensity for something that positively refused to be found. All that we can safely affirm in regard to her is, that if her face bore any resemblance to the scarlet of her neck, the fact that her workbox did not take fire is little short of a miracle!
Fortunately for all parties Queeker inadvertently trod on the cat’s tail, which resulted in a spurt so violent as to justify a total change of subject. Before the storm thus raised had calmed down, Mr Durant entered the room.
At Jenkinsjoy Queeker certainly did meet with a reception even more hearty than he had been led to expect. Mr Durant’s friend, Stoutheart, his amiable wife and daughters and strapping sons, received the youthful limb of the law with that frank hospitality which we are taught to attribute “to Merrie England in the olden time.” The mansion was old-fashioned and low-roofed, trellis-worked and creeper-loved; addicted to oak panelling, balustrades, and tapestried walls, and highly suitable to ghosts of a humorous and agreeable tendency. Indeed it was said that one of the rooms actually was haunted at that very time; but Queeker did not see any ghosts, although he afterwards freely confessed to having seen all the rooms in the house more or less haunted by fairy spirits of the fair sex, and masculine ghosts in buckskins and top-boots! The whole air and aspect of the neighbourhood was such that Queeker half expected to find a May-pole in the neighbouring village, sweet shepherdesses in straw hats, pink ribbons, and short kirtles in the fields, and gentle shepherds with long crooks, playing antique flageolets on green banks, with innocent-looking dogs beside them, and humble-minded sheep reposing in Arcadian felicity at their feet.
“Where does the meet take place to-day, Tom?” asked Mr Stoutheart senior of Mr Stoutheart junior, while seated at breakfast the first morning after their arrival at Jenkinsjoy.
“At Curmersfield,” replied young Stoutheart.
“Ah, not a bad piece of country to cross. You remember when you and I went over it together, Amy?”
“We have gone over it so often together, papa,” replied Amy, “that I really don’t know to which occasion you refer.”
“Why, that time when we met the hounds unexpectedly; when you were mounted on your favourite Wildfire, and appeared to have imbibed some of his spirit, for you went off at a tangent, crying out, ‘Come along, papa!’ and cleared the hedge at the roadside, crossed Slapperton’s farm, galloped up the lane leading to Curmersfield, took the ditch, with the low fence beyond at Cumitstrong’s turnip-field, in a flying leap—obliging me to go quarter of a mile round by the gate—and overtook the hounds just as they broke away on a false scent in the direction of the Neckornothing ditch.”
“Oh yes, I remember,” replied Amy with a gentle smile; “it was a charming gallop. I wished to continue it, but you thought the ground would be too much for me, though I have gone over it twice since then in perfect safety. You are far too timid, papa.”
Queeker gazed and listened in open-mouthed amazement, for the young girl who acknowledged in an offhand way that she had performed such tremendous feats of horsemanship was modest, pretty, unaffected, and feminine.
“I wonder,” thought Queeker, “if Fan—ah, I mean Katie—could do that sort of thing?”
He looked loyally at Katie, but thought, disloyally, of her cousin, accused himself of base unfaithfulness, and, seizing a hot roll, began to eat violently.
“Would you like to see the meet, Mr Queeker?” said Mr Stoutheart senior; “I can give you a good mount. My own horse, Slapover, is neither so elegant nor so high-spirited as Wildfire, but he can go over anything, and is quite safe.”
A sensitive spring had been touched in the bosom of Queeker, which opened a floodgate that set loose an astonishing and unprecedented flow of enthusiastic eloquence.
“I shall like it of all things,” he cried, with sparkling eyes and heightened colour. “It has been my ambition ever since I was a little boy to mount a thoroughbred and follow the hounds. I assure you the idea of ‘crossing country,’ as it is called, I believe, and taking hedges, ditches, five-barred gates and everything as we go, has a charm for me which is absolutely inexpressible—”
Queeker stopped abruptly, because he observed a slight flush on Fanny’s cheeks and a pursed expression on Fanny’s lips, and felt uncertain as to whether or not she was laughing at him internally.
“Well said, Queeker,” cried Mr Stoutheart enthusiastically; “it’s a pity you are a town-bred man. Such spirit as yours can find vent only in the free air of the country!”
“Amy, dear,” said Katie, with an extremely innocent look at her friend, “do huntsmen in this part of England usually take ‘everything as they go?’ I think Mr Queeker used that expression.”
“N–not exactly,” replied Amy, with a smile and glance of uncertainty, as if she did not quite see the drift of the question.
“Ah! I thought not,” returned Katie with much gravity. “I had always been under the impression that huntsmen were in the habit of going round stackyards, and houses, and such things—not over them.”
Queeker was stabbed—stabbed to the heart! It availed not that the company laughed lightly at the joke, and that Mr Stoutheart said that he (Queeker) should realise his young dream, and reiterated the assurance that his horse would carry him over anything if he only held tightly on and let him go. He had been stabbed by Katie—the gentle Katie—the girl whom he had adored so long—ha! there was comfort in the word had; it belonged to the past; it referred to things gone by; it rhymed with sad, bad, mad; it suggested a period of remote antiquity, and pointed to a hazy future. As the latter thought rushed through his heated brain, he turned his eyes on Fanny, with that bold look of dreadful determination that marks the traitor when, having fully made up his mind, he turns his back on his queen and flag for ever! But poor Queeker found little comfort in the new prospect, for Fanny had been gently touched on the elbow by Katie when she committed her savage attack; and when Queeker looked at the fair, fat cousin, she was involved in the agonies of a suppressed but tremendous giggle.
After breakfast two horses were brought to the door. Wildfire, a sleek, powerful roan of large size, was a fit steed for the stalwart Tom, who, in neatly-fitting costume and Hessian boots, got into the saddle like a man accustomed to it. The other horse, Slapover, was a large, strong-boned, somewhat heavy steed, suitable for a man who weighed sixteen stone, and stood six feet in his socks.
“Now then, jump up, Queeker,” said Mr Stoutheart, holding the stirrup.
If Queeker had been advised to vault upon the ridge-pole of the house, he could not have looked more perplexed than he did as he stood looking up at the towering mass of horse-flesh, to the summit of which he was expected to climb. However, being extremely light, and Mr Stoutheart senior very strong, he was got into the saddle somehow.
“Where are the stirrups?” said Queeker, with a perplexed air, trying to look over the side of his steed.
“Why, they’ve forgot to shorten ’em,” said Mr Stoutheart with a laugh, observing that the irons were dangling six inches below the rider’s toes.
This was soon rectified. Queeker’s glazed leather leggings—which were too large for him, and had a tendency to turn round—were put straight; the reins were gathered up, and the huntsman rode away.
“All you’ve to do is to hold on,” shouted Mr Stoutheart, as they rode through the gate. “He is usually a little skittish at the start, but quiet as a lamb afterwards.”
Queeker made no reply. His mind was brooding on his wrongs and sorrows; for Katie had quietly whispered him to take care and not fall off, and Fanny had giggled again.
“I must cure him of his foolish fancy,” thought Katie as she re-entered the house, “for Fanny’s sake, if for nothing else; though I cannot conceive what she can see to like in him. There is no accounting for taste!”
“I can at all events die;”—thought Queeker, as he rode along, shaking the reins and pressing his little legs against the horse as if with the savage intention of squeezing the animal’s ribs together.
“There was prophetic inspiration in the lines!—yes,” he continued, repeating them—
“Fly, fly, to earth’s extremest bounds,
With huntsmen, horses, horn, and hounds,
And die—dejected Queeker!
“I’ll change that—it shall be rejected Queeker now.”
For some time Tom Stoutheart and Queeker rode over “hill and dale”—that is to say, they traversed four miles of beautiful undulating and diversified country at a leisurely pace, having started in good time.
“Your father,” observed Queeker, as they rode side by side down a green lane, “said, I think, when we started, that this horse was apt to be skittish at the start. Is he difficult to hold in?”
“Oh no,” replied Tom, with a reassuring smile. “He is as quiet and manageable as any man could wish. He does indeed bounce about a little when we burst away at first, and is apt then to get the bit in his teeth; but you’ve only to keep a tight rein and he’ll go all right. His only fault is a habit of tossing his head, which is a little awkward until you get used to it.”
“Yes, I have discovered that fault already,” replied Queeker, as the horse gave a practical illustration of it by tossing his enormous head back until it reached to within an inch of the point of his rider’s nose. “Twice he has just touched my forehead. Had I been bending a little forward I suppose he would have given me an unpleasant blow.”
“Rather,” said Stoutheart junior. “I knew one poor fellow who was struck in that way by his horse and knocked off insensible. I think he was killed, but don’t feel quite sure as to that.”
“He has no other faults, I hope?” asked Queeker.
“None. As for refusing his leaps—he refuses nothing. He carries my father over anything he chooses to run him at, so it’s not likely that he’ll stick with a light-weight.”
This was so self-evident that Queeker felt a reply to be unnecessary; he rode on, therefore, in silence for a few minutes, comforting himself with the thought that, at all events, he could die!
“I don’t intend,” said Queeker, after a few minutes’ consideration, “to attempt to leap everything. I think that would be foolhardy. I must tell you, Mr Stoutheart, before we get to the place of meeting, that I can only ride a very little, and have never attempted to leap a fence of any kind. Indeed I never bestrode a real hunter before. I shall therefore content myself with following the hounds as far as it is safe to do so, and will then give it up.”
Young Stoutheart was a little surprised at the modest and prudent tone of this speech, but he good-naturedly replied—
“Very well, I’ll guide you through the gates and gaps. You just follow me, and you shall be all right, and when you’ve had enough of it, let me know.”
Queeker and his friend were first in the field, but they had not been there many minutes when one and another and another red-coat came cantering over the country, and ere long a large cavalcade assembled in front of a mansion, the lawn of which formed the rendezvous. There were men of all sorts and sizes, on steeds of all kinds and shapes—little men on big horses, and big men on little horses; men who looked like “bloated aristocrats” before the bloating process had begun, and men in whom the bloating process was pretty far advanced, but who had no touch of aristocracy to soften it. Men who looked healthy and happy, others who looked reckless and depraved. Some wore red-coats, cords, and tops—others, to the surprise and no small comfort of Queeker, who fancied that all huntsmen wore red coats, were habited in modest tweeds of brown and grey. Many of the horses were sleek, glossy, and fine-limbed, like racers; others were strong-boned and rough. Some few were of gigantic size and rugged aspect, to suit the massive men who bestrode them. One of these in particular, a hearty, jovial farmer—and a relative of Tom’s—appeared to the admiring Queeker to be big and powerful enough to have charged a whole troop of light dragoons single-handed with some hope of a successful issue. Ladies were there to witness the start, and two of the fair sex appeared ready to join the hunt and follow the hounds, while here and there little boys might be seen bent on trying their metal on the backs of Shetland ponies.
