Kitty was talking with a neck of a lather-covered soda-water bottle between her teeth, and trying to look over her withers at the same time.
This gave her a very coquettish air.
"What"s bad?" said Grey Dawn, giving to the girth and admiring his well-set shoulders.
"You Arabs can"t gallop fast enough to keep yourselves warm--that"s what Kitty means," said Polaris, limping to show that his hock needed attention. "Are you playing back, Grey Dawn?"
""Looks like it," said Grey Dawn, as Lutyens swung himself up. Powell mounted The Rabbit, a plain bay country-bred much like Corks, but with mulish ears. Macnamara took Faiz-Ullah, a handy, short-backed little red Arab with a long tail, and Hughes mounted Benami, an old and sullen brown beast, who stood over in front more than a polo-pony should.
"Benami looks like business," said Shiraz. "How"s your temper, Ben?" The old campaigner hobbled off without answering, and The Maltese Cat looked at the new Archangel ponies prancing about on the ground. They were four beautiful blacks, and they saddled big enough and strong enough to eat the Skidars" team and gallop away with the meal inside them.
"Blinkers again," said The Maltese Cat. "Good enough!"
"They"re chargers-cavalry chargers!" said Kittiwynk, indignantly.
"They"ll never see thirteen-three again."
"They"ve all been fairly measured, and they"ve all got their certificates," said The Maltese Cat, "or they wouldn"t be here. We must take things as they come along, and keep your eyes on the ball."
The game began, but this time the Skidars were penned to their own end of the ground, and the watching ponies did not approve of that.
"Faiz-Ullah is shirking--as usual," said Polaris, with a scornful grunt.
"Faiz-Ullah is eating whip," said Corks. They could hear the leather-thonged polo-quirt lacing the little fellow"s well-rounded barrel. Then The Rabbit"s shrill neigh came across the ground.
"I can"t do all the work," he cried, desperately.
"Play the game--don"t talk," The Maltese Cat whickered; and all the ponies wriggled with excitement, and the soldiers and the grooms gripped the railings and shouted. A black pony with blinkers had singled out old Benami, and was interfering with him in every possible way. They could see Benami shaking his head up and down, and flapping his under lip.
"There"ll be a fall in a minute," said Polaris. "Benami is getting stuffy."
The game flickered up and down between goal-post and goal-post, and the black ponies were getting more confident as they felt they had the legs of the others. The ball was. .h.i.t out of a little scrimmage, and Benami and The Rabbit followed it, Faiz-Ullah only too glad to be quiet for an instant.
The blinkered black pony came up like a hawk, with two of his own side behind him, and Benami"s eye glittered as he raced. The question was which pony should make way for the other, for each rider was perfectly willing to risk a fall in a good cause. The black, who had been driven nearly crazy by his blinkers, trusted to his weight and his temper; but Benami knew how to apply his weight and how to keep his temper. They met, and there was a cloud of dust. The black was lying on his side, all the breath knocked out of his body. The Rabbit was a hundred yards up the ground with the ball, and Benami was sitting down. He had slid nearly ten yards on his tail, but he had had his revenge, and sat cracking his nostrils till the black pony rose.
"That"s what you get for interfering. Do you want any more?" said Benami, and he plunged into the game. Nothing was done that quarter, because Faiz-Ullah would not gallop, though Macnamara beat him whenever he could spare a second. The fall of the black pony had impressed his companions tremendously, and so the Archangels could not profit by Faiz-Ullah"s bad behaviour.
But as The Maltese Cat said when "time" was called, and the four came back blowing and dripping, Faiz-Ullah ought to have been kicked all round Umballa. If he did not behave better next time The Maltese Cat promised to pull out his Arab tail by the roots and--eat it.
There was no time to talk, for the third four were ordered out.
The third quarter of a game is generally the hottest, for each side thinks that the others must be pumped; and most of the winning play in a game is made about that time.
Lutyens took over The Maltese Cat with a pat and a hug, for Lutyens valued him more than anything else in the world; Powell had Shikast, a little grey rat with no pedigree and no manners outside polo; Macnamara mounted Bamboo, the largest of the team; and Hughes Who"s Who, alias The Animal. He was supposed to have Australian blood in his veins, but he looked like a clothes-horse, and you could whack his legs with an iron crow-bar without hurting him.
They went out to meet the very flower of the Archangels" team; and when Who"s Who saw their elegantly booted legs and their beautiful satin skins, he grinned a grin through his light, well-worn bridle.
"My word!" said Who"s Who. "We must give "em a little football. These gentlemen need a rubbing down."
"No biting," said The Maltese Cat, warningly; for once or twice in his career Who"s Who had been known to forget himself in that way.
"Who said anything about biting? I"m not playing tiddly-winks. I"m playing the game."
The Archangels came down like a wolf on the fold, for they were tired of football, and they wanted polo. They got it more and more. Just after the game began, Lutyens. .h.i.t a ball that was coming towards him rapidly, and it rolled in the air, as a ball sometimes will, with the whirl of a frightened partridge. Shikast heard, but could not see it for the minute, though he looked everywhere and up into the air as The Maltese Cat had taught him. When he saw it ahead and overhead he went forward with Powell as fast as he could put foot to ground. It was then that Powell, a quiet and level-headed man, as a rule, became inspired, and played a stroke that sometimes comes off successfully after long practice. He took his stick in both hands, and, standing up in his stirrups, swiped at the ball in the air, Munipore fashion. There was one second of paralysed astonishment, and then all four sides of the ground went up in a yell of applause and delight as the ball flew true (you could see the amazed Archangels ducking in their saddles to dodge the line of flight, and looking at it with open mouths), and the regimental pipes of the Skidars squealed from the railings as long as the pipers had breath. Shikast heard the stroke; but he heard the head of the stick fly off at the same time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine ponies out of a thousand would have gone tearing on after the ball with a useless player pulling at their heads; but Powell knew him, and he knew Powell; and the instant he felt Powell"s right leg shift a trifle on the saddle-flap, he headed to the boundary, where a native officer was frantically waving a new stick. Before the shouts had ended, Powell was armed again.
Once before in his life The Maltese Cat had heard that very same stroke played off his own back, and had profited by the confusion it wrought.
This time he acted on experience, and leaving Bamboo to guard the goal in case of accidents, came through the others like a flash, head and tail low--Lutyens standing up to ease him--swept on and on before the other side knew what was the matter, and nearly pitched on his head between the Archangels" goal-post as Lutyens kicked the ball in after a straight scurry of a hundred and fifty yards. If there was one thing more than another upon which The Maltese Cat prided himself, it was on this quick, streaking kind of run half across the ground. He did not believe in taking b.a.l.l.s round the field unless you were clearly overmatched. After this they gave the Archangels five-minuted football; and an expensive fast pony hates football because it rumples his temper.
Who"s Who showed himself even better than Polaris in this game. He did not permit any wriggling away, but bored joyfully into the scrimmage as if he had his nose in a feed-box and was looking for something nice.
Little Shikast jumped on the ball the minute it got clear, and every time an Archangel pony followed it, he found Shikast standing over it, asking what was the matter.
"If we can live through this quarter," said The Maltese Cat, "I sha"n"t care. Don"t take it out of yourselves. Let them do the lathering."
So the ponies, as their riders explained afterwards, "shut-up." The Archangels kept them tied fast in front of their goal, but it cost the Archangels" ponies all that was left of their tempers; and ponies began to kick, and men began to repeat compliments, and they chopped at the legs of Who"s Who, and he set his teeth and stayed where he was, and the dust stood up like a tree over the scrimmage until that hot quarter ended.
They found the ponies very excited and confident when they went to their saises; and The Maltese Cat had to warn them that the worst of the game was coming.
"Now we are all going in for the second time," said he, "and they are trotting out fresh ponies. You think you can gallop, but you"ll find you can"t; and then you"ll be sorry."
"But two goals to nothing is a halter-long lead," said Kittiwynk, prancing.
"How long does it take to get a goal?" The Maltese Cat answered. "For pity"s sake, don"t run away with a notion that the game is half-won just because we happen to be in luck now! They"ll ride you into the grand stand, if they can; you must not give "em a chance. Follow the ball."
"Football, as usual?" said Polaris. "My hock"s half as big as a nose-bag."
"Don"t let them have a look at the ball, if you can help it. Now leave me alone. I must get all the rest I can before the last quarter."
He hung down his head and let all his muscles go slack, Shikast, Bamboo, and Who"s Who copying his example.
"Better not watch the game," he said. "We aren"t playing, and we shall only take it out of ourselves if we grow anxious. Look at the ground and pretend it"s fly-time."
They did their best, but it was hard advice to follow. The hooves were drumming and the sticks were rattling all up and down the ground, and yells of applause from the English troops told that the Archangels were pressing the Skidars hard. The native soldiers behind the ponies groaned and grunted, and said things in undertones, and presently they heard a long-drawn shout and a clatter of hurrahs!
"One to the Archangels," said Shikast, without raising his head. "Time"s nearly up. Oh, my sire and dam!"
"Faiz-Ullah," said The Maltese Cat, "if you don"t play to the last nail in your shoes this time, I"ll kick you on the ground before all the other ponies."
"I"ll do my best when my time comes," said the little Arab, st.u.r.dily.
The saises looked at each other gravely as they rubbed their ponies"
legs. This was the time when long purses began to tell, and everybody knew it. Kittiwynk and the others came back, the sweat dripping over their hooves and their tails telling sad stories.
"They"re better than we are," said Shiraz. "I knew how it would be."
"Shut your big head," said The Maltese Cat; "we"ve one goal to the good yet."
"Yes; but it"s two Arabs and two country-breds to play now," said Corks.
"Faiz-Ullah, remember!" He spoke in a biting voice.
As Lutyens mounted Grey Dawn he looked at his men, and they did not look pretty. They were covered with dust and sweat in streaks. Their yellow boots were almost black, their wrists were red and lumpy, and their eyes seemed two inches deep in their heads; but the expression in the eyes was satisfactory.