Chapter IX: Part II (2)

He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backward, his rear drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch (yard-switches are _very_ stubby and unaccommodating), bunted into a Red D, or Merchant’s Transport car, and, with no hint or knowledge of the weight behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and ･007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog’s tongue in his mouth, and the whole of him covered with half-burnt coal-dust.

“’Tisn’t so easy switching with a straight-backed tender,” said his little friend of the round-house, bustling by at a trot. “But you’re comin’ on pretty fair. Ever seen a flyin’ switch? No? Then watch me.”

Poney was in charge of a dozen heavy flat-cars. Suddenly he shot away from them with a sharp “_Whutt!_” A switch opened in the shadows ahead; he turned up it like a rabbit as it snapped behind him, and the long line of twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road-loco, who acknowledged receipt with a dry howl.

“My man’s reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick,” he said, returning. “Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it, though. That’s where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not you’d have your tender scraped off if _you_ tried it.”

･007 had no ambitions that way, and said so.

“No? Of course this ain’t your regular business, but say, don’t you think it’s interestin’? Have you seen the yard-master? Well, he’s the greatest man on earth, an’ don’t you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, it’s always like this, day _an_’ night—Sundays an’ week-days. See that thirty-car freight slidin’ in four, no, five tracks off? She’s all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That’s why we’re cuttin’ out the cars one by one.” He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound car as he spoke, and started back with a little snort of surprise, for the car was an old friend—an M. T. K. box-car.

“Jack my drivers, but it’s Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain’t there _no_ gettin’ you back to your friends? There’s forty chasers out for you from your road, if there’s one. Who’s holdin’ you now?”

“Wish I knew,” whimpered Homeless Kate. “I belong in Topeka, but I’ve bin to Cedar Rapids; I’ve bin to Winnipeg; I’ve bin to Newport News; I’ve bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point; an’ I’ve bin to Buffalo. Maybe I’ll fetch up at Haverstraw. I’ve only bin out ten months, but I’m homesick—I’m just achin’ homesick.”

“Try Chicago, Katie,” said the switching-loco; and the battered old car lumbered down the track, jolting: “I want to be in Kansas when the sunflowers bloom.”

“Yard’s full o’ Homeless Kates an’ Wanderin’ Willies,” he explained to ･007. “I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an’ one of ours was gone fifteen ’fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I’ve done _my_ duty. She’s on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I’ll lay my next boilerful she’ll be held there to wait consignee’s convenience, and sent back to us with wheat in the fall.”

Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed, at the head of a dozen cars.

“I’m goin’ home,” he said proudly.

“Can’t get all them twelve on to the flat. Break ’em in half, Dutchy!” cried Poney. But it was ･007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide.

After this he was hurried to the freight-house, where he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen, and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses.

“That’s shippers’ carts loadin’ on to the receivin’ trucks,” said the small engine, reverently. “But _he_ don’t care. He lets ’em cuss. He’s the Czar-King-Boss! He says ’Please,’ and then they kneel down an’ pray. There’s three or four strings o’ today’s freight to be pulled before he can attend to _them_. When he waves his hand that way, things happen.”

A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars, carboys, frails, cases, and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings.

“Ki-yah!” shrieked little Poney. “Ain’t it great?”

A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master, and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never looked up from his bundle of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly, and a tall young man in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped, quivering and clucking, on a hay-bale.

“Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S.; fourteen ought ought three; nineteen thirteen; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B.; _and_ the ten westbound. All straight except the two last. Cut ’em off at the junction. An’ _that’s_ all right. Pull that string.” The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed:

“All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
_All_ things wise and wonderful,
The Lawd Gawd He made all!”

･007 moved out the cars and delivered them to the regular road-engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life before.

“Curious, ain’t it?” said Poney, puffing, on the next track. “You an’ me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we’d work him into red waste an’ not know what we’d done; but-up there—with the steam hummin’ in his boiler that awful quiet way...”

“_I_ know,” said ･007. “Makes me feel as if I’d dropped my Fire an’ was getting cold. He _is_ the greatest man on earth.”

They were at the far north end of the yard now, under a switchtower, looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul ･007’s string to some far-away northern junction over an indifferent road-bed, and she mourned aloud for the ninety-six pound rails of the B. & A.

“You’re young; you’re young,” she coughed. “You don’t realise your responsibilities.”

“Yes, he does,” said Poney, sharply; “but he don’t lie down under ’em.” Then, with aside-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting: “There ain’t more than fifteen thousand dollars’ worth o’ freight behind her anyway, and she goes on as if ’t were a hundred thousand—same as the Mogul’s. Excuse me, madam, but you’ve the track.... She’s stuck on a dead-centre again—bein’ specially designed not to.”

The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly at each switch, and moving like a cow in a snow-drift. There was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared; switches locked crisply, and every one seemed to be waiting.

“Now I’ll show you something worth,” said Poney. “When the Purple Emperor ain’t on time, it’s about time to amend the Constitution. The first stroke of twelve is—”

“Boom!” went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away ･007 heard a full, vibrating “_Yah! Yah! Yah!_” A headlight twinkled on the horizon like a star, grew an overpowering blaze, and whooped up the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant’s song:

“With a michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! Ein—zwei—drei—Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah! She climb upon der shteeple, Und she frighten all der people. Singin’ michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah!”

The last defiant “yah! yah!” was delivered a mile and a half beyond the passenger-depot; but ･007 had caught one glimpse of the superb six-wheel-coupled racing-locomotive, who hauled the pride and glory of the road—the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires’ south-bound express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated hand-rail on the rear platform.

“Ooh!” said ･007.

“Seventy-five miles an hour these five miles. Baths, I’ve heard; barber’s shop; ticker; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir; seventy-five an hour! But he’ll talk to you in the round-house just as democratic as I would. And I—cuss my wheel-base!—I’d kick clean off the track at half his gait. He’s the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up at our house. I’ll introdooce you some day. He’s worth knowin’! There ain’t many can sing that song, either.”

･007 was too full of emotions to answer. He did not hear a raging of telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and called to ･007’s engineer: “Got any steam?”

“’Nough to run her a hundred mile out o’ this, if I could,” said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching.

“Then get. The Flying Freight’s ditched forty mile out, with fifty rod o’ track ploughed up. No; no one’s hurt, but both tracks are blocked. Lucky the wreckin’-car an’ derrick are this end of the yard. Crew ’ll be along in a minute. Hurry! You’ve the track.”

“Well, I could jest kick my little sawed-off self,” said Poney, as ･007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools—a flatcar and a derrick behind it. “Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but _you_’re in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-car. Now, don’t get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain’t any curves worth mentionin’. Oh, say! Comanche told me there’s one section o’ sawedged track that’s liable to jounce ye a little. Fifteen an’ a half out, _after_ the grade at Jackson’s crossin’. You’ll know it by a farmhouse an’ a windmill an’ five maples in the dooryard. Windmill’s west o’ the maples. An’ there’s an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o’ that section with no guard-rails. See you later. Luck!”

Before he knew well what had happened, ･007 was flying up the track into the dumb, dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled boulders, blown trees, and strayed cattle, all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsibility, and a great deal more that came out of his own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive), and his nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson’s crossing, saw the windmill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed, and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking-crew were climbing carelessly from the caboose to the tender—even jesting with the engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among the coal, and the snatch of a song, something like this:

Oh, the Empire State must learn to wait, And the Cannon-ball go hang! When the West-bound’s ditched, and the tool-car’s hitched, And it’s ’way for the Breakdown Gang (Tare-ra!) ’Way for the Breakdown Gang!

“Say! Eustis knew what he was doin’ when he designed this rig. She’s a hummer. New, too.”

“Snff! Phew! She is new. That ain’t paint, that’s—”

A burning pain shot through ･007’s right rear driver—a crippling, stinging pain.

“This,” said ･007, as he flew, “is a hot-box. Now I know what it means. I shall go to pieces, I guess. My first road-run, too!”

“Het a bit, ain’t she?” the fireman ventured to suggest to the engineer.

“She’ll hold for all we want of her. We’re ’most there. Guess you chaps back had better climb into your car,” said the engineer, his hand on the brake lever. “I’ve seen men snapped off—”

But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on to the track. The engineer half turned his wrist, and ･007 found his drivers pinned firm.

“Now it’s come!” said ･007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a sleigh. For the moment he fancied that he would jerk bodily from off his underpinning.

“That must be the emergency-stop that Poney guyed me about,” he gasped, as soon as he could think. “Hot-box-emergency-stop. They both hurt; but now I can talk back in the round-house.”

He was halted, all hissing hot, a few feet in the rear of what doctors would call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down among his drivers, but he did not call ･007 his “Arab steed,” nor cry over him, as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad worded ･007, and pulled yards of charred cotton-waste from about the axles, and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody else attended to him, for Evans, the Mogul’s engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry, was exhibiting, by lantern-light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue pig.

“’T were n’t even a decent-sized hog,” he said. “’T were a shote.”

“Dangerousest beasts they are,” said one of the crew. “Get under the pilot an’ sort o’ twiddle ye off the track, don’t they?”

“Don’t they?” roared Evans, who was a red-headed Welshman. “You talk as if I was ditched by a hog every fool-day o’ the week. _I_ ain’t friends with all the cussed half-fed shotes in the State o’ New York. No, indeed! Yes, this is him—an’ look what he’s done!”

It was not a bad night’s work for one stray piglet. The Flying Freight seemed to have flown in every direction, for the Mogul had mounted the rails and run diagonally a few hundred feet from right to left, taking with him such cars as cared to follow. Some did not. They broke their couplers and lay down, while rear cars frolicked over them. In that game, they had ploughed up and removed and twisted a good deal of the left-hand track. The Mogul himself had waddled into a corn-field, and there he knelt—fantastic wreaths of green twisted round his crankpins; his pilot covered with solid clods of field, on which corn nodded drunkenly; his fire put out with dirt (Evans had done that as soon as he recovered his senses); and his broken headlight half full of half-burnt moths. His tender had thrown coal all over him, and he looked like a disreputable buffalo who had tried to wallow in a general store. For there lay scattered over the landscape, from the burst cars, type-writers, sewing-machines, bicycles in crates, a consignment of silver-plated imported harness, French dresses and gloves, a dozen finely moulded hard-wood mantels, a fifteen-foot naphtha-launch, with a solid brass bedstead crumpled around her bows, a case of telescopes and microscopes, two coffins, a case of very best candies, some gilt-edged dairy produce, butter and eggs in an omelette, a broken box of expensive toys, and a few hundred other luxuries. A camp of tramps hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew. So the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side, and the freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other with their hands in their hip-pockets. A long-bearded man came out of a house beyond the corn-field, and told Evans that if the accident had happened a little later in the year, all his corn would have been burned, and accused Evans of carelessness. Then he ran away, for Evans was at his heels shrieking: “’T was his hog done it—his hog done it! Let me kill him! Let me kill him!” Then the wrecking-crew laughed; and the farmer put his head out of a window and said that Evans was no gentleman.

But ･007 was very sober. He had never seen a wreck before, and it frightened him. The crew still laughed, but they worked at the same time; and ･007 forgot horror in amazement at the way they handled the Mogul freight. They dug round him with spades; they put ties in front of his wheels, and jack-screws under him; they embraced him with the derrick-chain and tickled him with crowbars; while ･007 was hitched on to wrecked cars and backed away till the knot broke or the cars rolled clear of the track. By dawn thirty or forty men were at work, replacing and ramming down the ties, gauging the rails and spiking them. By daylight all cars who could move had gone on in charge of another loco; the track was freed for traffic; and 007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was gone.

“’T weren’t even a hog,” he repeated dolefully; “’t were a shote; and you—_you_ of all of ’em—had to help me on.”

“But how in the whole long road did it happen?” asked 007, sizzling with curiosity.

“Happen! It didn’t happen! It just come! I sailed right on top of him around that last curve—thought he was a skunk. Yes; he was all as little as that. He hadn’t more ’n squealed once ’fore I felt my bogies lift (he’d rolled right under the pilot), and I couldn’t catch the track again to save me. Swivelled clean off, I was. Then I felt him sling himself along, all greasy, under my left leadin’ driver, and, oh, Boilers! that mounted the rail. I heard my flanges zippin’ along the ties, an’ the next I knew I was playin’ ’Sally, Sally Waters’ in the corn, my tender shuckin’ coal through my cab, an’ old man Evans lyin’ still an’ bleedin’ in front o’ me. Shook? There ain’t a stay or a bolt or a rivet in me that ain’t sprung to glory somewhere.”

“Umm!” said 007. “What d’ you reckon you weigh?”

“Without these lumps o’ dirt I’m all of a hundred thousand pound.”

“And the shote?”

“Eighty. Call him a hundred pound at the outside. He’s worth about four ’n a half dollars. Ain’t it awful? Ain’t it enough to give you nervous prostration? Ain’t it paralysin’? Why, I come just around that curve—” and the Mogul told the tale again, for he was very badly shaken.

“Well, it’s all in the day’s run, I guess,” said 007, soothingly; “an’—an’ a corn-field’s pretty soft fallin’.”

“If it had bin a sixty-foot bridge, an’ I could ha’ slid off into deep water an’ blown up an’ killed both men, same as others have done, I wouldn’t ha’ cared; but to be ditched by a shote—an’ you to help me out—in a corn-field—an’ an old hayseed in his nightgown cussin’ me like as if I was a sick truck-horse!... Oh, it’s awful! Don’t call me Mogul! I’m a sewin’-machine, they’ll guy my sand-box off in the yard.”

And 007, his hot-box cooled and his experience vastly enlarged, hauled the Mogul freight slowly to the roundhouse.

“Hello, old man! Bin out all night, hain’t ye?” said the irrepressible Poney, who had just come off duty. “Well, I must say you look it. Costly-perishable-fragile-immediate—that’s you! Go to the shops, take them vine-leaves out o’ your hair, an’ git ’em to play the hose on you.”

“Leave him alone, Poney,” said 007 severely, as he was swung on the turn-table, “or I’ll—”

“’Didn’t know the old granger was any special friend o’ yours, kid. He wasn’t over-civil to you last time I saw him.”

“I know it; but I’ve seen a wreck since then, and it has about scared the paint off me. I’m not going to guy anyone as long as I steam—not when they’re new to the business an’ anxious to learn. And I’m not goin’ to guy the old Mogul either, though I did find him wreathed around with roastin’-ears. ’T was a little bit of a shote—not a hog—just a shote, Poney—no bigger’n a lump of anthracite—I saw it—that made all the mess. Anybody can be ditched, I guess.”

“Found that out already, have you? Well, that’s a good beginnin’.” It was the Purple Emperor, with his high, tight, plate-glass cab and green velvet cushion, waiting to be cleaned for his next day’s fly.

“Let me make you two gen’lemen acquainted,” said Poney. “This is our Purple Emperor, kid, whom you were admirin’ and, I may say, envyin’ last night. This is a new brother, worshipful sir, with most of his mileage ahead of him, but, so far as a serving-brother can, I’ll answer for him.”

“’Happy to meet you,” said the Purple Emperor, with a glance round the crowded round-house. “I guess there are enough of us here to form a full meetin’. Ahem! By virtue of the authority vested in me as Head of the Road, I hereby declare and pronounce No. ･007 a full and accepted Brother of the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotives, and as such entitled to all shop, switch, track, tank, and round-house privileges throughout my jurisdiction, in the Degree of Superior Flier, it bein’ well known and credibly reported to me that our Brother has covered forty-one miles in thirty-nine minutes and a half on an errand of mercy to the afflicted. At a convenient time, I myself will communicate to you the Song and Signal of this Degree whereby you may be recognised in the darkest night. Take your stall, newly entered Brother among Locomotives!”

Now, in the darkest night, even as the Purple Emperor said, if you will stand on the bridge across the freightyard, looking down upon the four-track way, at 2:30 A. M., neither before nor after, when the White Moth, that takes the overflow from the Purple Emperor, tears south with her seven vestibuled cream-white cars, you will hear, as the yard-clock makes the half-hour, a far-away sound like the bass of a violoncello, and then, a hundred feet to each word,

“With a michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah! Yah! Ein—zwei—drei—Mutter! Yah! Yah! Yah! She climb upon der shteeple, Und she frighten all der people, Singin’ michnai—ghignai—shtingal! Yah! Yah!”

That is 007 covering his one hundred and fifty-six miles in two hundred and twenty-one minutes.

THE MALTESE CAT

They had good reason to be proud, and better reason to be afraid, all twelve of them; for though they had fought their way, game by game, up the teams entered for the polo tournament, they were meeting the Archangels that afternoon in the final match; and the Archangels men were playing with half a dozen ponies apiece. As the game was divided into six quarters of eight minutes each, that meant a fresh pony after every halt. The Skidars’ team, even supposing there were no accidents, could only supply one pony for every other change; and two to one is heavy odds. Again, as Shiraz, the grey Syrian, pointed out, they were meeting the pink and pick of the polo-ponies of Upper India, ponies that had cost from a thousand rupees each, while they themselves were a cheap lot gathered, often from country-carts, by their masters, who belonged to a poor but honest native infantry regiment.

“Money means pace and weight,” said Shiraz, rubbing his black-silk nose dolefully along his neat-fitting boot, “and by the maxims of the game as I know it—”

“Ah, but we aren’t playing the maxims,” said The Maltese Cat. “We’re playing the game; and we’ve the great advantage of knowing the game. Just think a stride, Shiraz! We’ve pulled up from bottom to second place in two weeks against all those fellows on the ground here. That’s because we play with our heads as well as our feet.”

“It makes me feel undersized and unhappy all the same,” said Kittiwynk, a mouse-coloured mare with a red brow-band and the cleanest pair of legs that ever an aged pony owned. “They’ve twice our style, these others.”

Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty polo-ground was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not counting hundreds and hundreds of carriages and drags and dogcarts, and ladies with brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and out of it, and crowds of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels, who had halted to watch the game, instead of carrying letters up and down the station; and native horse-dealers running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking for a chance to sell a few first-class polo-ponies. Then there were the ponies of thirty teams that had entered for the Upper India Free-for-All Cup—nearly every pony of worth and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar, from Allahabad to Multan; prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country-bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul ponies of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine. Some of them were in mat-roofed stables, close to the polo-ground, but most were under saddle, while their masters, who had been defeated in the earlier games, trotted in and out and told the world exactly how the game should be played.

It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick hooves, and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on other polo-grounds or race-courses were enough to drive a four-footed thing wild.

But the Skidars’ team were careful not to know their neighbours, though half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept the board.

“Let’s see,” said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been playing very badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; “didn’t we meet in Abdul Rahman’s stable in Bombay, four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember?”

“Not me,” said The Maltese Cat, politely. “I was at Malta then, pulling a vegetable-cart. I don’t race. I play the game.”

“Oh!” said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off.

“Keep yourselves to yourselves,” said The Maltese Cat to his companions. “We don’t want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped half-breeds of Upper India. When we’ve won this Cup they’ll give their shoes to know us.”

“_We_ sha’n’t win the cup,” said Shiraz. “How do you feel?”

“Stale as last night’s feed when a muskrat has run over it,” said Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team agreed with him.

“The sooner you forget that the better,” said The Maltese Cat, cheerfully. “They’ve finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be wanted now. If your saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren’t easy, rear, and let the _saises_ know whether your boots are tight.”

Each pony had his _sais_, his groom, who lived and ate and slept with the animal, and had betted a good deal more than he could afford on the result of the game. There was no chance of anything going wrong, but to make sure, each _sais_ was shampooing the legs of his pony to the last minute. Behind the _saises_ sat as many of the Skidars’ regiment as had leave to attend the match—about half the native officers, and a hundred or two dark, black-bearded men with the regimental pipers nervously fingering the big, beribboned bagpipes. The Skidars were what they call a Pioneer regiment, and the bagpipes made the national music of half their men. The native officers held bundles of polo-sticks, long cane-handled mallets, and as the grand stand filled after lunch they arranged themselves by ones and twos at different points round the ground, so that if a stick were broken the player would not have far to ride for a new one. An impatient British Cavalry Band struck up “If you want to know the time, ask a p’leeceman!” and the two umpires in light dust-coats danced out on two little excited ponies. The four players of the Archangels’ team followed, and the sight of their beautiful mounts made Shiraz groan again.

“Wait till we know,” said The Maltese Cat. “Two of ’em are playing in blinkers, and that means they can’t see to get out of the way of their own side, or they _may_ shy at the umpires’ ponies. They’ve _all_ got white web-reins that are sure to stretch or slip!”

“And,” said Kittiwynk, dancing to take the stiffness out of her, “they carry their whips in their hands instead of on their wrists. Hah!”

“True enough. No man can manage his stick and his reins and his whip that way,” said The Maltese Cat. “I’ve fallen over every square yard of the Malta ground, and _I_ ought to know.”

He quivered his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied he felt; but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars’ team on the Skidars’ stony polo-ground. Now a polo-pony is like a poet. If he is born with a love for the game, he can be made. The Maltese Cat knew that bamboos grew solely in order that poloballs might be turned from their roots, that grain was given to ponies to keep them in hard condition, and that ponies were shod to prevent them slipping on a turn. But, besides all these things, he knew every trick and device of the finest game in the world, and for two seasons had been teaching the others all he knew or guessed.

“Remember,” he said for the hundredth time, as the riders came up, “we _must_ play together, and you _must_ play with your heads. Whatever happens, follow the ball. Who goes out first?”

Kittiwynk, Shiraz, Polaris, and a short high little bay fellow with tremendous hocks and no withers worth speaking of (he was called Corks) were being girthed up, and the soldiers in the background stared with all their eyes.

“I want you men to keep quiet,” said Lutyens, the captain of the team, “and especially _not_ to blow your pipes.”

“Not if we win, Captain Sahib?” asked the piper.

“If we win you can do what you please,” said Lutyens, with a smile, as he slipped the loop of his stick over his wrist, and wheeled to canter to his place. The Archangels’ ponies were a little bit above themselves on account of the many-coloured crowd so close to the ground. Their riders were excellent players, but they were a team of crack players instead of a crack team; and that made all the difference in the world. They honestly meant to play together, but it is very hard for four men, each the best of the team he is picked from, to remember that in polo no brilliancy in hitting or riding makes up for playing alone. Their captain shouted his orders to them by name, and it is a curious thing that if you call his name aloud in public after an Englishman you make him hot and fretty. Lutyens said nothing to his men, because it had all been said before. He pulled up Shiraz, for he was playing “back,” to guard the goal. Powell on Polaris was half-back, and Macnamara and Hughes on Corks and Kittiwynk were forwards. The tough, bamboo ball was set in the middle of the ground, one hundred and fifty yards from the ends, and Hughes crossed sticks, heads up, with the Captain of the Archangels, who saw fit to play forward; that is a place from which you cannot easily control your team. The little click as the cane-shafts met was heard all over the ground, and then Hughes made some sort of quick wrist-stroke that just dribbled the ball a few yards. Kittiwynk knew that stroke of old, and followed as a cat follows a mouse. While the Captain of the Archangels was wrenching his pony round, Hughes struck with all his strength, and next instant Kittiwynk was away, Corks following close behind her, their little feet pattering like raindrops on glass.

“Pull out to the left,” said Kittiwynk between her teeth; “it’s coming your way, Corks!”

The back and half-back of the Archangels were tearing down on her just as she was within reach of the ball. Hughes leaned forward with a loose rein, and cut it away to the left almost under Kittiwynk’s foot, and it hopped and skipped off to Corks, who saw that, if he was not quick it would run beyond the boundaries. That long bouncing drive gave the Archangels time to wheel and send three men across the ground to head off Corks. Kittiwynk stayed where she was; for she knew the game. Corks was on the ball half a fraction of a second before the others came up, and Macnamara, with a backhanded stroke, sent it back across the ground to Hughes, who saw the way clear to the Archangels’ goal, and smacked the ball in before any one quite knew what had happened.

“That’s luck,” said Corks, as they changed ends. “A goal in three minutes for three hits, and no riding to speak of.”

“Don’t know,” said Polaris. “We’ve made ’em angry too soon. Shouldn’t wonder if they tried to rush us off our feet next time.”

“Keep the ball hanging, then,” said Shiraz. “That wears out every pony that is not used to it.”

Next time there was no easy galloping across the ground. All the Archangels closed up as one man, but there they stayed, for Corks, Kittiwynk, and Polaris were somewhere on the top of the ball, marking time among the rattling sticks, while Shiraz circled about outside, waiting for a chance.

“_We_ can do this all day,” said Polaris, ramming his quarters into the side of another pony. “Where do you think you’re shoving to?”

“I’ll—I’ll be driven in an _ekka_ if I know,” was the gasping reply, “and I’d give a week’s feed to get my blinkers off. I can’t see anything.”

“The dust is rather bad. Whew! That was one for my off-hock. Where’s the ball, Corks?”

“Under my tail. At least, the man’s looking for it there! This is beautiful. They can’t use their sticks, and it’s driving ’em wild. Give old Blinkers a push and then he’ll go over.”

“Here, don’t touch me! I can’t see. I’ll—I’ll back out, I think,” said the pony in blinkers, who knew that if you can’t see all round your head, you cannot prop yourself against the shock.

Corks was watching the ball where it lay in the dust, close to his near fore-leg, with Macnamara’s shortened stick tap-tapping it from time to time. Kittiwynk was edging her way out of the scrimmage, whisking her stump of a tail with nervous excitement.

“Ho! They’ve got it,” she snorted. “Let me out!” and she galloped like a rifle-bullet just behind a tall lanky pony of the Archangels, whose rider was swinging up his stick for a stroke.

“Not to-day, thank you,” said Hughes, as the blow slid off his raised stick, and Kittiwynk laid her shoulder to the tall pony’s quarters, and shoved him aside just as Lutyens on Shiraz sent the ball where it had come from, and the tall pony went skating and slipping away to the left. Kittiwynk, seeing that Polaris had joined Corks in the chase for the ball up the ground, dropped into Polaris’ place, and then “time” was called.

The Skidars’ ponies wasted no time in kicking or fuming. They knew that each minute’s rest meant so much gain, and trotted off to the rails and their _saises_, who began to scrape and blanket and rub them at once.

“Whew!” said Corks, stiffening up to get all the tickle of the big vulcanite scraper. “If we were playing pony for pony, we would bend those Archangels double in half an hour. But they’ll bring up fresh ones and fresh ones and fresh ones after that—you see.”

“Who cares?” said Polaris. “We’ve drawn first blood. Is my hock swelling?”

“Looks puffy,” said Corks. “You must have had rather a wipe. Don’t let it stiffen. You ’ll be wanted again in half an hour.”

“What’s the game like?” said The Maltese Cat.

“Ground’s like your shoe, except where they put too much water on it,” said Kittiwynk. “Then it’s slippery. Don’t play in the centre. There’s a bog there. I don’t know how their next four are going to behave, but we kept the ball hanging, and made ’em lather for nothing. Who goes out? Two Arabs and a couple of country-breds! That’s bad. What a comfort it is to wash your mouth out!”

Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle between her teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same time. This gave her a very coquettish air.

“What’s bad?” said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his well-set shoulders.

“You Arabs can’t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm—that’s what Kitty means,” said Polaris, limping to show that his hock needed attention. “Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?”

“Looks like it,” said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up. Powell mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks, but with mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy, short-backed little red Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen brown beast, who stood over in front more than a polo-pony should.

“Benami looks like business,” said Shiraz. “How’s your temper, Ben?” The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The Maltese Cat looked at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground. They were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong enough to eat the Skidars’ team and gallop away with the meal inside them.

“Blinkers again,” said The Maltese Cat. “Good enough!”

“They’re chargers—cavalry chargers!” said Kittiwynk, indignantly. “_They’ll_ never see thirteen-three again.”

“They’ve all been fairly measured, and they’ve all got their certificates,” said The Maltese Cat, “or they wouldn’t be here. We must take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the ball.”

The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end of the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.

“Faiz-Ullah is shirking—as usual,” said Polaris, with a scornful grunt.

“Faiz-Ullah is eating whip,” said Corks. They could hear the leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow’s well-rounded barrel. Then The Rabbit’s shrill neigh came across the ground.

“I can’t do all the work,” he cried, desperately.

“Play the game—don’t talk,” The Maltese Cat whickered; and all the ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms gripped the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had singled out old Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible way. They could see Benami shaking his head up and down, and flapping his under lip.

“There’ll be a fall in a minute,” said Polaris. “Benami is getting stuffy.”

The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs of the others. The ball was hit out of a little scrimmage, and Benami and The Rabbit followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an instant.

The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side behind him, and Benami’s eye glittered as he raced. The question was which pony should make way for the other, for each rider was perfectly willing to risk a fall in a good cause. The black, who had been driven nearly crazy by his blinkers, trusted to his weight and his temper; but Benami knew how to apply his weight and how to keep his temper. They met, and there was a cloud of dust. The black was lying on his side, all the breath knocked out of his body. The Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with the ball, and Benami was sitting down. He had slid nearly ten yards on his tail, but he had had his revenge, and sat cracking his nostrils till the black pony rose.

“That’s what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?” said Benami, and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done that quarter, because Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever he could spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his companions tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by Faiz-Ullah’s bad behaviour.

But as The Maltese Cat said when “time” was called, and the four came back blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked all round Umballa. If he did not behave better next time The Maltese Cat promised to pull out his Arab tail by the roots and—eat it.

There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.

The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side thinks that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in a game is made about that time.

Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens valued him more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast, a little grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara mounted Bamboo, the largest of the team; and Hughes Who’s Who, _alias_ The Animal. He was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but he looked like a clothes-horse, and you could whack his legs with an iron crow-bar without hurting him.

They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels’ team; and when Who’s Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satin skins, he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.

“My word!” said Who’s Who. “We must give ’em a little football. These gentlemen need a rubbing down.”

“No biting,” said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in his career Who’s Who had been known to forget himself in that way.

“Who said anything about biting? I’m not playing tiddly-winks. I’m playing the game.”

The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired of football, and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just after the game began, Lutyens hit a ball that was coming towards him rapidly, and it rolled in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the whirl of a frightened partridge. Shikast heard, but could not see it for the minute, though he looked everywhere and up into the air as The Maltese Cat had taught him. When he saw it ahead and overhead he went forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to ground. It was then that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man, as a rule, became inspired, and played a stroke that sometimes comes off successfully after long practice. He took his stick in both hands, and, standing up in his stirrups, swiped at the ball in the air, Munipore fashion. There was one second of paralysed astonishment, and then all four sides of the ground went up in a yell of applause and delight as the ball flew true (you could see the amazed Archangels ducking in their saddles to dodge the line of flight, and looking at it with open mouths), and the regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the railings as long as the pipers had breath. Shikast heard the stroke; but he heard the head of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball with a useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him, and he knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell’s right leg shift a trifle on the saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a native officer was frantically waving a new stick. Before the shouts had ended, Powell was armed again.

Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it wrought. This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal in case of accidents, came through the others like a flash, head and tail low—Lutyens standing up to ease him—swept on and on before the other side knew what was the matter, and nearly pitched on his head between the Archangels’ goal-post as Lutyens kicked the ball in after a straight scurry of a hundred and fifty yards. If there was one thing more than another upon which The Maltese Cat prided himself, it was on this quick, streaking kind of run half across the ground. He did not believe in taking balls round the field unless you were clearly overmatched. After this they gave the Archangels five-minuted football; and an expensive fast pony hates football because it rumples his temper. Who’s Who showed himself even better than Polaris in this game. He did not permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as if he had his nose in a feed-box and was looking for something nice. Little Shikast jumped on the ball the minute it got clear, and every time an Archangel pony followed it, he found Shikast standing over it, asking what was the matter.

“If we can live through this quarter,” said The Maltese Cat, “I sha’n’t care. Don’t take it out of yourselves. Let them do the lathering.”

So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, “shut-up.” The Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the Archangels’ ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the legs of Who’s Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and the dust stood up like a tree over the scrimmage until that hot quarter ended.

They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to their saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of the game was coming.

“Now _we_ are all going in for the second time,” said he, “and _they_ are trotting out fresh ponies. You think you can gallop, but you’ll find you can’t; and then you’ll be sorry.”

“But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead,” said Kittiwynk, prancing.

“How long does it take to get a goal?” The Maltese Cat answered. “For pity’s sake, don’t run away with a notion that the game is half-won just because we happen to be in luck now! They’ll ride you into the grand stand, if they can; you must _not_ give ’em a chance. Follow the ball.”

“Football, as usual?” said Polaris. “My hock’s half as big as a nose-bag.”

“Don’t let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it. Now leave me alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter.”

He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast, Bamboo, and Who’s Who copying his example.

“Better not watch the game,” he said. “We aren’t playing, and we shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at the ground and pretend it’s fly-time.”

They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!

“One to the Archangels,” said Shikast, without raising his head. “Time’s nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!”

“Faiz-Ullah,” said The Maltese Cat, “if you don’t play to the last nail in your shoes this time, I’ll kick you on the ground before all the other ponies.”

“I’ll do my best when my time comes,” said the little Arab, sturdily.

The _saises_ looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies’ legs. This was the time when long purses began to tell, and everybody knew it. Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat dripping over their hooves and their tails telling sad stories.

“They’re better than we are,” said Shiraz. “I knew how it would be.”

“Shut your big head,” said The Maltese Cat; “we’ve one goal to the good yet.”

“Yes; but it’s two Arabs and two country-breds to play now,” said Corks. “Faiz-Ullah, remember!” He spoke in a biting voice.

As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not look pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their yellow boots were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads; but the expression in the eyes was satisfactory.

“Did you take anything at tiffin?” said Lutyens; and the team shook their heads. They were too dry to talk.

“All right. The Archangels did. They are worse pumped than we are.”

“They’ve got the better ponies,” said Powell. “I sha’n’t be sorry when this business is over.”

That fifth quarter was a painful one in every way. Faiz-Ullah played like a little red demon, and The Rabbit seemed to be everywhere at once, and Benami rode straight at anything and everything that came in his way; while the umpires on their ponies wheeled like gulls outside the shifting game. But the Archangels had the better mounts,—they had kept their racers till late in the game,—and never allowed the Skidars to play football. They hit the ball up and down the width of the ground till Benami and the rest were outpaced. Then they went forward, and time and again Lutyens and Grey Dawn were just, and only just, able to send the ball away with a long, spitting backhander. Grey Dawn forgot that he was an Arab; and turned from grey to blue as he galloped. Indeed, he forgot too well, for he did not keep his eyes on the ground as an Arab should, but stuck out his nose and scuttled for the dear honour of the game. They had watered the ground once or twice between the quarters, and a careless waterman had emptied the last of his skinful all in one place near the Skidars’ goal. It was close to the end of the play, and for the tenth time Grey Dawn was bolting after the ball, when his near hind-foot slipped on the greasy mud, and he rolled over and over, pitching Lutyens just clear of the goal-post; and the triumphant Archangels made their goal. Then “time” was called—two goals all; but Lutyens had to be helped up, and Grey Dawn rose with his near hind-leg strained somewhere.

“What’s the damage?” said Powell, his arm around Lutyens.

“Collar-bone, of course,” said Lutyens, between his teeth. It was the third time he had broken it in two years, and it hurt him.

Powell and the others whistled.

“Game’s up,” said Hughes.

“Hold on. We’ve five good minutes yet, and it isn’t my right hand. We ’ll stick it out.”

“I say,” said the Captain of the Archangels, trotting up, “are you hurt, Lutyens? We’ll wait if you care to put in a substitute. I wish—I mean—the fact is, you fellows deserve this game if any team does. Wish we could give you a man, or some of our ponies—or something.”

“You ’re awfully good, but we’ll play it to a finish, I think.”

The Captain of the Archangels stared for a little. “That’s not half bad,” he said, and went back to his own side, while Lutyens borrowed a scarf from one of his native officers and made a sling of it. Then an Archangel galloped up with a big bath-sponge, and advised Lutyens to put it under his armpit to ease his shoulder, and between them they tied up his left arm scientifically; and one of the native officers leaped forward with four long glasses that fizzed and bubbled.