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but Vronsky looked angrily at him. He did not like him, and regarded
him now as his most formidable rival. He was angry with him for
galloping past and exciting his mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop,
her left foot forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened
reins, passed into a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord,
too, scowled, and followed Vronsky almost at a trot.
Chapter 25.
There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race
course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of
the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been arranged: the
stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a
dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade
(one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with
brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so
that the horse had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two
more ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race
was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the ring, but two
hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the course was the first
obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth, which the racers
could leap or wade through as they preferred.
Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some
horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire
who was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his
temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted “Away!” and the
racers started.
Every eye, every opera glass, was turned on the brightly colored
group of riders at the moment they were in line to start.
“They’re off! They’re starting!” was heard on all sides after the