Twenty-six horses crossed it, one of
them ridden by a lady. A mile or so farther on, before there had been
a chance for much tailing, we came to a five-bar gate, out of a road--a
jump of just four feet five inches from the take-off. Up to this, of
course, we went one at a time, at a trot or hand-gallop, and twenty-five
horses cleared it in succession without a single refusal and with
but one mistake. Owing to the severity of the pace, combined with the
average height of the timber (although no one fence was of phenomenally
noteworthy proportions), a good many falls took place, resulting in an
unusually large percentage of accidents. The master partly dislocated
one knee, another man broke two ribs, and another--the present
writer--broke his arm. However, almost all of us managed to struggle
through to the end in time to see the death.
On this occasion I owed my broken arm to the fact that my horse, a
solemn animal originally taken out of a buggy, though a very clever
fencer, was too coarse to gallop alongside the blooded beasts against
which he was pitted.
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