Kittiwynk looked at the gathering and sighed. The hard, dusty polo-ground was lined with thousands of soldiers, black and white, not counting hundreds and hundreds of carriages and drags and dogcarts, and ladies with brilliant-coloured parasols, and officers in uniform and out of it, and crowds of natives behind them; and orderlies on camels, who had halted to watch the game, instead of carrying letters up and down the station; and native horse-dealers running about on thin-eared Biluchi mares, looking for a chance to sell a few first-class polo-ponies. Then there were the ponies of thirty teams that had entered for the Upper India Free-for-All Cup—nearly every pony of worth and dignity, from Mhow to Peshawar, from Allahabad to Multan; prize ponies, Arabs, Syrian, Barb, country-bred, Deccanee, Waziri, and Kabul ponies of every colour and shape and temper that you could imagine. Some of them were in mat-roofed stables, close to the polo-ground, but most were under saddle, while their masters, who had been defeated in the earlier games, trotted in and out and told the world exactly how the game should be played. It was a glorious sight, and the come and go of the little, quick hooves, and the incessant salutations of ponies that had met before on other polo-grounds or race-courses were enough to drive a four-footed thing wild. But the Skidars’ team were careful not to know their neighbours, though half the ponies on the ground were anxious to scrape acquaintance with the little fellows that had come from the North, and, so far, had swept the board. “Let’s see,” said a soft gold-coloured Arab, who had been playing very badly the day before, to The Maltese Cat; “didn’t we meet in Abdul Rahman’s stable in Bombay, four seasons ago? I won the Paikpattan Cup next season, you may remember?” “Not me,” said The Maltese Cat, politely. “I was at Malta then, pulling a vegetable-cart. I don’t race. I play the game.” “Oh!” said the Arab, cocking his tail and swaggering off. “Keep yourselves to yourselves,” said The Maltese Cat to his companions. “We don’t want to rub noses with all those goose-rumped half-breeds of Upper India. When we’ve won this Cup they’ll give their shoes to know us.” “_We_ sha’n’t win the cup,” said Shiraz. “How do you feel?” “Stale as last night’s feed when a muskrat has run over it,” said Polaris, a rather heavy-shouldered grey; and the rest of the team agreed with him. “The sooner you forget that the better,” said The Maltese Cat, cheerfully. “They’ve finished tiffin in the big tent. We shall be wanted now. If your saddles are not comfy, kick. If your bits aren’t easy, rear, and let the _saises_ know whether your boots are tight.”