“You’d better go and hedge those bets,” laughed Samson when the chukker ended.  “There are plenty of the native gentry over yonder who’d be delighted to gamble a fortune with you yet!”

Dick scarcely heard.  He was watching Utirupa, who stood by the pony-line where a sais was doing something to a saddle girth.  A rangar came up to the prince and spoke to him—­a slim, young-looking man, a head the shorter of the two, with a turban rather low over his eyes, and the loose end of it, for some reason, across the lower half of his face.  Dick nudged Tess, and she nodded.  After that Utirupa appeared to speak in low tones to each member of his own team.

“I beg your pardon.  What was that you said?” asked Dick.

“I say you’d better hedge those bets.”

“I’ll double with you, if you like!”

“Good heavens, man!  I’ve wagered a month’s pay already!  Go and bet with Willoughby de Wing or one of the gunner officers.”

The rangar disappeared into the crowd before the teams rode out for the fourth encounter, and Tess, who had made up her mind to watch the shuttered carriages that stood in line together in a roped enclosure of their own, became too busy with the game.  Something had happened to the Rajputs.  They no longer played with the gallery-appealing smash-and-gallop fury that won them the first goal, although their speed held good and the stick-work was marvelous.  But they seemed more willing now to mix it in the middle of the field, and to ride off an opponent instead of racing for the chance to shine individually.  It became the English turn to drive to the wings and try to clear the ball for a hurricane race down-field; and they were not quite so good at those tactics as the other side were.

All the rest of that game until the eighth, chukker after chukker, the Rajputs managed to reverse the usual procedure, obliging the English team to wear itself out in terrific efforts to break away, tiring men and ponies in a tight scramble in which neither side could score.

“It looks like a draw after all,” said Samson.  “Bets off in that case, I suppose?  Disappointing game in my opinion.”

“’Tisn’t over yet,” said Dick.

The Rajputs were coming out for the last chukker with their first and fastest ponies that had rested through the game; and they were smiling.  Utirupa had said something that was either a good joke or else vastly reassuring.  As a matter of fact he had turned them loose at last to play their old familiar game again, and from the second that the ball went into play the crowd was on tiptoe, swaying this and that way with excitement.