I turned the pony, and Biddy and I jumped out.  I went up to the table, snatched up a glass of brandy and filled my mouth with it, then went back to the pony, took him by the head, and sent a squirt of brandy up each nostril; I squirted the rest down his throat, went back to the table, swallowed half a tumbler of curacoa or something, and was into the trap and off again, the whole thing not taking more than twenty seconds.

The business began to be pretty exciting after that.  You can see four miles straight ahead of you on that road; and that day the police had special orders to keep it clear, so that it was a perfectly blank, white stretch as far as I could see.  You know how one never seems to get any nearer to things on a road like that, and there was the clock hanging opposite to me on the splash board; I couldn’t look at it, but I could hear its beastly click-click through the trotting of the pony, and that was nearly as bad as seeing the minute hand going from pip to pip.  But, by George, I pretty soon heard a worse kind of noise than that.  It was a case of preserve me from my friends.  The people who had gone out to Sufter Jung’s tomb on horseback to meet me, thought it would be a capital plan to come along after me and see the fun, and encourage me a bit—­so they told me afterwards.  The way they encouraged me was by galloping till they picked me up, and then hammering along behind me like a troop of cavalry till it was all I could do to keep the pony from breaking.

“You’ve got to win, Paddy,” calls out Mrs. Harry Le Bretton, galloping up alongside, “you promised you would!”

Mrs. Harry and I were great friends in those days—­very sporting little woman, nearly as keen about the match as I was—­but at that moment I couldn’t pick my words.

“Keep back!” I shouted to her; “keep back, for pity’s sake!”

It was too late—­the next instant the pony was galloping.  The penalty is that you have to pull up, and make the wheels turn in the opposite direction, and I just threw the pony on his haunches.  He nearly came back into the cart, but the tremendous jerk gave the backward turn to the wheels and I was off again.  Not even that kept the people back.  Mrs. Le Bretton came alongside again to say something else to me, and I suddenly felt half mad from the clatter and the frightful strain of the pony on my arms.

“D——­n it all!  Le Bretton!” I yelled, as the pony broke for the second time, “can’t you keep your wife away!”

They did let me alone after that—­turned off the road and took a scoop across the plain, so as to come up with me at the finish—­and I pulled myself together to do the last couple of miles.  I could see that Cashmere gate and the Delhi walls ahead of me; ’pon my soul I felt as if they were defying me and despising me, just standing waiting there under the blazing sky, and they never seemed to get any nearer.  It was like the first night of a fever, the whizzing of the wheels, the ding-dong of the pony’s hoofs, the silence all round, the feeling of stress and insane hurrying on, the throbbing of my head, and the scorching heat.  I’ll swear no fever I’ve ever had was worse than that last two miles.