“Dick!” Tess exclaimed.  “You ought to be ashamed of me!  I’m rooting for the Rajputs against my own color!”

“So’m I!” he answered.  “I wish to glory there was some one here to bet with!”

Samson overheard.

“Which way do you want to bet?” he asked.

“A thousand on the Rajputs.”

“Thousand what?”

“Dollars.  Three thousand rupees.”

“Confound it, you Americans are all too rich!  Never mind, I’ll take you.”

“A bet!” Dick answered, and both men wrote it down.

About nine words were said by the captain of the English team as they rode back to the center of the field, and when the ball was in play again there was no more of the scattering open play that suited the other side, but a close, short-hitting, chop-and-follow method that tried ponies’ tempers, and a scrimmage every ten yards that made all unavailing the Rajputs’ speed and dash.  Whenever a stroke of lightning wrist-work sent the ball clipping down-field Topham returned it to the center and the scrimmage began all over again.  The first chukker ended in mid-field, with the score 1—­0.

Both sides brought out fresh ponies for the second, and the Rajputs tried again to score with their favorite tactics of long-hitting and tremendous speed.  But the English were playing dogged-does-it, and Topham on the pie-bald at full back was invincible.  Nothing passed him.  Nor were the English slow.  Three times they seized opportunity in mid-field and rode with a burst of fiery hitting toward the Rajput goal.  Three times the gunners down the line began to yell.  The English team were getting together, and the Rajputs a little wild.  But the chukker ended with the same score, 1—­0.

“How d’you feel about it now?” asked Samson, looking as calm as the English habitually do whenever their pulse beats furiously.

“I’d like to bet too!” Tess laughed, leaning across.

“What—­the same sized bet?”

“No, a hundred.”

“Dollars ?”

“Rupees!” she laughed.  “I’m not so rich as my husband.”

“Can’t refuse a lady!” Samson answered, noting the bet down.  “I shall be a rich man tonight.  They play a brilliant game, those fellows, but we always beat them in the end.”

“How do you account for that?” Dick asked, suspecting what was coming.

“Oh, in a number of ways, but chiefly because they lack team-loyalty among themselves.  They’re all jealous of one another, whereas our fellows play as a unit.”

As if in confirmation of Samson’s words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker.  There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there.  In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it.  He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the third minute the English scored.