And as we marvelled at these jewels of the night, that shamed the
absentee stars, the brake stood still with a jolt and a shock that threw
our gay company into momentary alarm. But it was nothing. Only a horse
fallen down dead! One of our overworked wheelers had suddenly sunk upon
the earth, a carcase. Dust to dust! Who shall tell of the daylong agony
of the dumb beast as he plodded pertinaciously through the heat,
ministering to the pleasures of his masters? Had he been a man, how we
should have praised him, belauded the beauty of his end, telling one
another sanctimoniously that he had died in harness. As it was we merely
stripped him of his harness and deposited it in the brake! We unhitched
the leader and put him between the shafts, side by side with the other
horse, both incurious and indifferent, wasting nor glance nor nasal rub
upon their defunct comrade. We men feign better. And then we drew him to
the edge of the track, a rigid, lumbering mass; and the garrulous
inhabitant discussed the value of the carcase, and the driver cracked his
whip, and the living horses stirred their haunches, and in a moment we
were spanking along, leaving our fellow-creature to darkness and
solitude. Only the flash-light from France glimmered upon the poor dead
beast, coming all the way to cheer him; only the green eye from beyond
the Goodwins blinked upon his unheaving flanks.
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