Except for admiring her seat and seeming calm acceptance of her inevitable and horrible end, he had not bothered about the girl as a human being; but he frowned suddenly in a vague effort of recollection when she stretched out her hand in a beckoning gesture for help to the man she heard racing to her rescue.

“By Jove!” he cried, and “By Jove!” repeated the others behind, and “By Jove!” echoed the distant on-lookers as, without hesitation or click of hoof on wood, the Devil rose to the first, the second, the third and the fourth rail, skimming them like a bird, while the bay, just two rails behind, crashed over them with nothing to spare.

Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie’s perilous career towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, gharries and trams no time in which to make an opening for her tempestuous passage.

“Wah!  Wah!” shouted a group of natives, draped in gaily coloured shawls, who watched admiringly the woman’s perfect seat, caring not an anna that she might be thrown and break her neck or be crushed to death.  In fact, the halo of death encircling the woman’s head lent enchantment to the sport, causing some of the more wealthy to bet upon her end.

A woman, white or brown, more or less in India of what account? though it were a different matter in the case of the sahib who rode in pursuit, with a mouth like a steel trap and eyes of fire.

Two women, with babes astraddle on the hip, turned to watch Leonie, then stuffing more betel nut into their already crimson mouths, moved lightly through the dust towards the bazaar.  Crouched at the foot of a tree, inhaling the smoke from the bowl of his rude native pipe, an old man under the benign influence of the drug, lost in dreams, took no notice whatever of the disturbance around him.

But the drivers, with raucous cries, twisted the tails of their kine to port or starboard, or beat them forcibly, and the tram driver, roused from the lethargy engendered by the cool of the early morning, by the shouts and cries, put on his brake, bringing his tram to a stand-still just as, with a terrific clatter of hoofs, Leonie dashed past the front of it with Cuxson at her heels.

There was a moment’s uproar when, wishing for a better view, the driver of a tawdry ekka urged his half-starved pony forward.

The bay caught the side of the pony’s bleeding mouth, causing the wretched animal to rear from pain and twist sideways into a bullock cart.

In its usual leisurely way the bullock swung itself also sideways, and almost under the bay’s feet, causing him to lose a precious second, for which Cuxson made up by a ruthless use of his spurs, whilst before Leonie’s eyes, quite close, through the trees, appeared the funnels and masts of the river craft.

“Oh!” she said involuntarily, having retained no impression during her motor drives of the road to Kidderpore; as the Devil tore with her across the old polo ground and the old Ellenborough course, straight to the crowded Strand Road.