The turn for home once made, and Valentine’s Brook with its fatal drop left behind, the mare and her stable-mate came away like arrows from the bow.

She lay on the rails, her guardian angel hard on her right.

Jackaroo might be old, but he was still as good a two-miler as any in England.

The pair caught their horses one after one and left them standing; and the roar of the multitude was like that of the sea as the defeated host melted away behind.

At last only the Irish horse refused to give place to the importunate pair.  Twice they challenged, and twice the gray shook them off.  They came again; and for a while the star-spangled jacket, the purple and gold, the cerise and white, rose at their fences like one.

The Irish division were in screaming ecstasies.

Then the roar of New England, overwhelming all else, told that the mare was making good.

Moonlighter’s jockey saw he was beaten for the moment at least and took a pull.

As Mocassin’s swift bobbing head swung round the corner on to the straight, she was alone save for her stable-companion, and his work was done.

“He’s seen her through,” muttered Old Mat.  “Now he can go home to bed.”

Indeed, as Jackaroo sprawled down the straight, still hanging to the quarters of the mare, he looked like a towel-rail on which wet clothes had been hung, and Rushton had ceased to ride.

The mare, fresh as the old horse was failing, came along in front of the Grand Stand, clipping the grass with that swift, rhythmical stroke of hers and little fretful snatch at the reins, neat and swift and strong as a startled deer.

Chukkers sat still and absorbed as a cat waiting over a mouse’s hole.

All eyes were on him.  Nothing else was seen.  His race was won.  Last year’s defeat had been avenged.  America had made good.  A roar as of an avalanche boomed and billowed about him.  The thousands on the stands yelled, stamped and cooeyed.

“Hail, Columbia!” bellowed the triumphant Boys.

“Stand down, England!”

“What price the Yankee-doodlers?”

“Who gives the Mustang best?”

In that tumult of sound, individual voices were lost.  The yells of the bookies were indistinguishable.  Men saw things through a mist, and more than one woman fainted.

Then through the terrific boom came the discordant blare of a megaphone, faint at first but swiftly overbearing the noise of the tempest.

“Watch it, ye ——!” it screamed.  “He’s catchin’ ye!”

It was the voice of Jaggers.

The thousands heard and hushed.  They recognised the voice and the note of terror in it.

Chukkers heard, too, turned, and had a glimpse of a green jacket surging up wide on his right.

There was the sound of a soughing wind as the crowd drew its breath.

What was this great owl-like enemy swooping up out of nowhere?