He was up in the air in an instant, and came down across the road.  Again I dug in to the rowels, and clung the tighter, and this time he landed with his head to London.  A little knot of people had collected to watch me, and out stepped a strapping fellow in the King’s scarlet, from the Guard’s Horse near by.

“Hold him, sir!” he said, tipping.  “Better dismount, sir.  He means murder, y’r honour.”

“Keep clear, curse you!” I cried, waving him off.  “What time is it?”

He stepped back, no doubt thinking me mad.  Some one spoke up and said it was five minutes past noon.  I had the grace to thank him, I believe.  To my astonishment I had been gone but four minutes; they had seemed twenty.  Looking about me, I found I was in the open space before old Kensington Church, over against the archway there.  Once more I dug in the spurs, this time with success.  Almost at a jump the beast took me into the angle of posts to the east of the churchyard gate and tore up the footpath of Church Lane, terrified men and women ahead of me taking to the kennel.  He ran irregularly, now on the side of the posts, now against the bricks, and then I gave myself up.

Heaven put a last expedient into my head, that I had once heard Mr. Dulany speak of.  I braced myself for a pull that should have broken the stallion’s jaw and released his mouth altogether.  Incredible as it may seem, he jarred into a trot, and presently came down to a walk, tossing his head like fury, and sweating at every pore.  I leaned over and patted him, speaking him fair, and (marvel of marvels!) when we had got to the dogs that guard the entrance of Camden House I had coaxed him around and into the street, and cantered back at easy speed to the church.  Without pausing to speak to the bunch that stood at the throat of the lane, I started toward London, thankfulness and relief swelling within me.  I understood the beast, and spoke to him when he danced aside at a wagon with bells or a rattling load of coals, and checked him with a word and a light hand.

Before I gained the Life Guard’s House I met a dozen horsemen, amongst them Banks on a mount of Mr. Fox’s.  They shouted when they saw me, Colonel St. John calling out that he had won another hundred that I was not dead.  Sir John Brooke puffed and swore he did not begrudge his losses to see me safe, despite Captain Lewis’s sourness.  Storey vowed he would give a dinner in my honour, and, riding up beside me, whispered that he was damned sorry the horse was now broken, and his Grace’s chance of being killed taken away.  And thus escorted, I came in by the King’s New Road to avoid the people running in the Row, and so down to Hyde Park Corner, and in among the chaises and the phaetons, where there was enough cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs to please the most exacting of successful generals.  I rode up to my Lord March, and finding there was a minute yet to run I went up the Row a distance and back again amidst more huzzaing, Pollux prancing and quivering, and frothing his bit, but never once attempting to break.