They were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the starting point.  Several of the riders were in front and several behind, when suddenly Vronsky heard the sound of a horse galloping in the mud behind him, and he was overtaken by Mahotin on his white-legged, lop-eared Gladiator.  Mahotin smiled, showing his long teeth, but Vronsky looked angrily at him.  He did not like him, and regarded him now as his most formidable rival.  He was angry with him for galloping past and exciting his mare.  Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left foot forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed into a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down.  Cord, too, scowled, and followed Vronsky almost at a trot.

Chapter 25

There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race.  The race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of the pavilion.  On this course nine obstacles had been arranged:  the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race was just facing the pavilion.  But the race began not in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred.

Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again.  The umpire who was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted “Away!” and the racers started.

Every eye, every opera glass, was turned on the brightly colored group of riders at the moment they were in line to start.

“They’re off!  They’re starting!” was heard on all sides after the hush of expectation.

And little groups and solitary figures among the public began running from place to place to get a better view.  In the very first minute the close group of horsemen drew out, and it could be seen that they were approaching the stream in twos and threes and one behind another.  To the spectators it seemed as though they had all started simultaneously, but to the racers there were seconds of difference that had great value to them.

Frou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment, and several horses had started before her, but before reaching the stream, Vronsky, who was holding in the mare with all his force as she tugged at the bridle, easily overtook three, and there were left in front of him Mahotin’s chestnut Gladiator, whose hind-quarters were moving lightly and rhythmically up and down exactly in front of Vronsky, and in front of all, the dainty mare Diana bearing Kuzovlev more dead than alive.