As the field swung left-handed and passed parallel to the Grand Stand on the far side of the course, the light-weights were still well together in front and bunched like a covey of partridges.  Then came the favourite and her stable-companion, rising fence for fence; after them a chain of stragglers; and bringing up the rear, rollicking along with his head in his chest, revelling in his work, the twenty-to-one outsider.

“So far so good,” said Mat, “as the man said when he was ’alf-way through cuttin’ his throat.”

The American contingent breathed afresh, and the bookies were looking glum.  Once over Beecher’s Brook the first time round, with half the field down, the chance of a knock-out reduced, and Gee-Woa and Kingfisher grazing peacefully under the Embankment, the favourite’s chances had greatly increased.

True, the gray Moonlighter in the cerise and white was in the lead and going like a snowstorm; but not a man among the tens of thousands on the course who did not know that four miles and a half was a mile too much for the Irishman.

“What price the favourite?” roared the Boys.

“Threes,” said the bookies, and gave them grudgingly.

“They’re settlin’ down to it now,” muttered Old Mat.  “Favourite’s goin’ strong.  Gallops like a engine, don’t she?  I like to see her.”

Those who were watching through their glasses marked that a fence before the Canal Turn the star-spangled jacket and the purple and gold seemed to be taking council together.

“Goin’ to turn on the tap now, you’ll see,” said the old man.

He was right.

Chukkers, indeed, never varied the way he rode his races on the mare.  In truth, part of his greatness as a jockey lay in the fact that he adapted his methods to his horse.  Very early in his connection with Mocassin he had discovered the unfailing way to make the most of her.  It was said of him that he always won his victories on her in the first half-mile.  That was an exaggeration; but it was the fact that he invariably sat down to race at a time when other jockeys were just settling in their saddles.  At Liverpool he always began to ride the mare after Valentine’s Brook first time round, and had beaten his field and won his race long before he began the second lap.

As it chanced, too, the mare’s fiery spirit suited exactly the daring temperament of the great horseman.  The invincible couple waited behind till the ranks began to thin and then came through with the hurricane rush that had become famous.  A consummate judge of pace, sure of himself, sure of his mount, Chukkers never feared to wait in front; and the mare, indeed, was never happy elsewhere.  Once established in the pride of place, the fret and fever left her, she settled down to gallop and jump, and jump and gallop, steady as the Gulf Stream, strong as a spring-tide, till she had pounded her field to pieces.

The thousands waiting for the Mocassin rush were not disappointed.