The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands, Robert Michael Ballantyne [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

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.

It was a stirring scene of meeting, and chatting, and laughing, and rearing, and curvetting, and fresh air, and sunshine.

Presently the master of the hounds came up with the pack at his heels. A footman of the mansion supplied all who desired it with a tumbler of beer.

"Have some beer?" said young Stoutheart, pointing to the footman referred to.

"No, thank you," said Queeker. "Will you?"

"No. I have quite enough of spirit within me. Don't require artificial stimulant," said the youth with a laugh. "Come now--we're off."

Queeker's heart gave a bound as he observed the master of the hounds ride off at a brisk pace followed by the whole field.

"I won't die yet. It's too soon," he thought, as he shook the reins and chirped to his steed.

Slapover did not require chirping. He shook his head, executed a mild pirouette on his left hind leg, and made a plunge which threatened first to leave his rider behind, and then to shoot him over his head. Queeker had