Buck had by this time joined us, and with their assistance I managed to bridle and saddle the horse, a job that gave us some trouble and attracted many idle troopers, so that when I led him into the paddock I had a big gallery. The English cut of my riding breeches and boots had given me away to the onlookers as a new chum, and there were plenty of men offering odds that the tenderfoot would be pipped in less than a minute. Patting and talking to him I led him about for a few moments up and down the paddock, which was a field of some ten acres, surrounded with a five-foot post-and-rail fence. Mr Roach now took his head and placed his hand over his near eye, while Buck held the off-stirrup ready to place on my foot. In a moment I was in the saddle and gave the word to let go when Buck, having placed the stirrup, together with Mr Roach, sprang clear, leaving myself and horse to fight it out. For a few seconds he stood still, then gave himself an angry shake or two, then kicked viciously, rearing between each kick as if he wished to throw himself backwards, when, finding this did not move me, he stood still and snorted as if he remarked to himself: “Well, I am damned.” All at once he seemed to have made up his mind, for he made a determined snatch at his bit, and although I was on the lookout for him he dragged the reins through my fingers, and, like a flash of lightning, down went his head, while his back seemed to bend and give under me, but in a moment he shot up into the air, all four feet leaving the ground at once, bending his back up, arched like that of an angry cat, and returning to the ground with a jar that nearly drove my spine through the roof of my head. The same jar seemed to send him aloft again like an india-rubber ball bouncing, when after it has been thrown up into the air it returns to the ground only to bound up again. This exercise went on for some minutes, and though it was far from pleasant yet I felt I could stick it all right, the worst part being that when in the air it seemed as if I were sitting on the end of an egg, as, bar a tuft of hair in front of the gullet plate of my saddle, devil a bit of the horse could I see at all. Presently he stopped dead, and cheers rose from the onlookers. “Well sat, new chum!” “Gad! the chap can ride a bit!” and other laudatory remarks, so that I began to think that the game was won, when I heard Mr Roach’s voice shout: “Look out, Burke. He is going to side-buck.”