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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Yes, sir, devilish swell affair, with gentlemen to ride, and Royalty to look on a race of races! London's agog with it, all the clubs discuss it, coffee houses ring with it, inns and taverns clamor with it soul and honor, betting everywhere. The odds slightly favor Sir Mortimer Carnaby's 'Clasher'; but Viscount Devenham's 'Moonraker' is well up. Then there's Captain Slingsby's 'Rascal, Mr.
Tressider's 'Pilot, Lord Jerningham's 'Clinker, and five or six others. But, as I tell you, 'Clasher' and 'Moonraker' carry the money, though many knowing ones are sweet on the 'Rascal. But, surely, you must have heard of the great steeplechase? Devilish ugly course, they tell me." "The Viscount spoke of it, I remember," said Barnabas, absently. "Viscount, sir not Viscount Devenham?" "Yes."
It originated in a match between Devenham on his 'Moonraker' and myself on 'Clinker, but Sling here was hot to match his 'Rascal, and Carnaby fancied his 'Clasher, and begad! applications came so fast that we had a field in no time." "Good fellows and sportsmen all!" nodded the Captain. "Gentlemen riders no tag-rag, gamest of the game, sir."
"In the harm, sir, all on 'count of 'is 'oss, 'Moonraker' sir." "His horse?" "Yessir. 'S arternoon it were. Ye see, for a long time I ain't been easy in me mind about them stables where 'im and you keeps your 'osses, sir, 'count of it not being safe enough, worritted I 'ave, sir.
Beverley!" said his Lordship, and, glancing whither he looked, Barnabas saw the Viscount who was already mounted upon his bay horse "Moonraker." "Can you tell me, sir," pursued the Earl, "how serious his hurt really is?" "I know that he was shot, my Lord," Barnabas answered, "and that he received a violent blow upon his wounded arm this morning, but he is very reticent."
But the folk-lore origin of "Moonraker" is said by the Rev. J.E. Field to belong to a very early period, probably before the day of the Saxon and to be contemporaneous with the "Cuckoo Penners" of Somerset, who captured a young cuckoo and built a high hedge round it; there they fed it until its wings had grown, when it quietly flew away, much to the astonished chagrin of the yokels.
Some Raskells have tried to lame 'Moonraker, but thanks to my Imp and your man Martin, quite unsuccessfully. How-beit your man Martin regular game for all his years has a broken nob and one ogle closed up, and I a ball through my arm, but nothing to matter. But I am greatly pirtirbed for the safety of 'Moonraker' and mean to get him into safer quarters and advise you to do likewise.
Then off goes a barker and off go the coves, and there's m'lud 'olding onto 'is harm and swearing 'eavens 'ard. And that's all, sir." "And these men were trying to get at the horses?" "Ah! Meant to nobble 'Moonraker, they did, 'im bein' one o' the favorites, d' ye see, sir, and it looked to me as if they meant to do for your 'oss, 'The Terror', as well." "And is the Viscount much hurt?"
"Of course all my money is on Jerningham, though 'Moonraker' carries the odds, but I must have a hundred or two on Mr. Beverley for friendship's sake." "Friendship!" exclaimed the Marquis, "oh, begad!" Here he took out his snuff-box, tapped it, and put it in his pocket again.
And Barnabas sees that the Viscount's sleeve is all blood from the elbow down. And in that moment Barnabas casts off the numbness, and his brain clears again. "Hold on, Dick!" he cries. "Can't Bev, I I'm done. Tried my best but I " Barnabas reaches out suddenly but is too far off the Viscount lurches forward, loses his stirrups, sways and "Moonraker" gallops riderless.
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