English fiction -- 19th century; Marriage -- Fiction
She is for the scene of ‘Chillon John’s’ attempt to restore the
respiration of his bank-book by wager; to wit, that he would walk a
mile, run a mile, ride a mile, and jump ten hurdles, then score five
rifle-shots at a three hundred yards’ distant target within a count of
minutes; twenty-five, she says; and vows it to have been one of the most
exciting of scenes ever witnessed on green turf in the land of wagers;
and that he was accomplishing it quite certainly when, at the first of
the hurdles, a treacherous unfolding and waving of a white flag caused
his horse to swerve and the loss of one minute, seven and twenty
seconds, before he cleared the hurdles; after which, he had to fire
his shots hurriedly, and the last counted blank, for being outside the
circle of the stated time.
So he was beaten. But a terrific uproar over the field proclaimed the
popular dissatisfaction. Presently there was a cleavage of the mob,
and behold a chase at the heels of the fellow to rival the very captain
himself for fleetness. He escaped, leaving his pole with the sheet
nailed to it, by way of flag, in proof of foul play; or a proof, as
the other side declared, of an innocently premature signalizing of the
captain’s victory.
However that might be, he ran. Seeing him spin his legs at a hound’s
pace, half a mile away, four countrymen attempted to stop him. All four
were laid on their backs in turn with stupefying celerity; and on rising
to their feet, and for the remainder of their natural lives, they swore
that no man but a Champion could have floored them so. This again may
have been due to the sturdy island pride of four good men knocked over
by one. We are unable to decide. Wickedness there was, the Dame says;
and she counsels the world to ‘put and put together,’ for, at any
rate, ‘a partial elucidation of a most mysterious incident.’ As to the
wager-money, the umpires dissented; a famous quarrel, that does not
concern us here, sprang out of the dispute; which was eventually, after
great disturbance ‘of the country, referred to three leading sportsmen
in the metropolitan sphere, who pronounced the wager ‘off,’ being two to
one. Hence arose the dissatisfied third party, and the letters of this
minority to the newspapers, exciting, if not actually dividing, all
England for several months.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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