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Updated: May 18, 2025
But the chukker ended with the same score, 1 0. "How d'you feel about it now?" asked Samson, looking as calm as the English habitually do whenever their pulse beats furiously. "I'd like to bet too!" Tess laughed, leaning across. "What the same sized bet?" "No, a hundred." "Dollars ?" "Rupees!" she laughed. "I'm not so rich as my husband." "Can't refuse a lady!"
He was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the first chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life brooding over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of those chaps you read about in novels, who live in the great white house you can just see over there through the trees and shut themselves off from the world and have pained faces.
When a little bell rang and the teams turned out for the first chukker in deathly-silence, it was evident at once what the Rajput strategy would be. They had brought out their fastest ponies to begin with, determined to take the lead at the start and hold it. One could hear the crowd breathe when the whistle blew; for in India polo is a game to watch, not an opportunity for small talk.
All the rest of that game until the eighth, chukker after chukker, the Rajputs managed to reverse the usual procedure, obliging the English team to wear itself out in terrific efforts to break away, tiring men and ponies in a tight scramble in which neither side could score. "It looks like a draw after all," said Samson. "Bets off in that case, I suppose? Disappointing game in my opinion."
"'Tisn't over yet," said Dick. The Rajputs were coming out for the last chukker with their first and fastest ponies that had rested through the game; and they were smiling. Utirupa had said something that was either a good joke or else vastly reassuring.
"I wonder what she said to him at the end of the third chukker," Tess whispered to Dick. Samson found Utirupa giving orders to the saises, and shook hands with him. "Good game, Utirupa! Congratulate you. By the way: there's going to be a meeting on important business in my office half an hour from now. When you've had a tub and a change, I wish you'd come and join us. We want a word with you."
As if in confirmation of Samson's words the Rajput team seemed rather to go to pieces in the third chukker. There was the same brilliant individual hitting, and as much speed as ever, but the genius was not there. In vain Utirupa took the ball out of a scrimmage twice and rode away with it. He was not backed up in the nick of time, and before the end of the third minute the English scored.
"Let us go. Two hours from now we shall cross the border into another state. Two hours after night-fall our journey is ended. Then the last game begins the last chukker and I win!" Tess wished then that they had never halted! The rest had given her muscles time to stiffen, and her nerves the opportunity to learn how tired they were.
Meanwhile, up at the house on the hill Tess and Dick found Yasmini already there ahead of them, lying at her ease, dressed as a woman of women, and smoking a cigarette in the window-seat of the bedroom Tess had surrendered to her. "What was it you said to him after the third chukker?" was the first question Tess asked. "You recognized me?" "Sure. So did my husband. What did you say to him?"
Whenever a stroke of lightning wrist-work sent the ball clipping down-field Topham returned it to the center and the scrimmage began all over again. The first chukker ended in mid-field, with the score 1 0. Both sides brought out fresh ponies for the second, and the Rajputs tried again to score with their favorite tactics of long-hitting and tremendous speed.
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