SOME NOTABLE HORSE-BREAKERS 193 



corner, he rushed at the mysterious stranger, actually 

 screaming in the uncontrollable violence of his rage. 

 Rarey sustained these successive charges with the same 

 sang-froid that he had shown at the commencement of the 

 engagement. At length, after more than an hour of this 

 wild scene, with frantic fury on one side and science on the 

 other, the redoubtable Cruiser, exhausted, dripping with 

 sweat, and completely puzzled in his equine mind as to 

 this figure, which he could no longer believe to be human, 

 came quietly close to it, and touched it with his nose; then 

 Rarey threw open the half-door and walked boldly up to 

 him. Perfectly quiet, the animal made no further attempt 

 to molest him, and the conquest was complete. Three 

 hours afterwards Lord Dorchester was on Cruiser's back, 

 where he had not been for three years previously, and 

 Rarey rode him as a hack ; after that he did " walk over 

 the course." 



After the wonderful cure of Cruiser, the five-hundred list 

 not only filled, but overflowed, Messrs Rarey and Good- 

 enough clearing over iS^20,ooo. But not a minute too soon, 

 as an enterprising firm of publishers, having procured a 

 copy of Rarey's book from America, issued a cheap edition 

 of it here. That put a stopper on the ten-guinea payments. 



Rarey's great hit, as I have said, was with Cruiser; 

 but he had some much worse subjects than that to deal 

 with, one of which took hours to snare. His straps were 

 all broken, and he had to extemporise some. Still, it was 

 not taming savages, but finding them, that seemed his 

 greatest difficulty. When he heard of the Cretingham 

 Hero, he rushed at once to Ipswich, and discovered after he 

 had borrowed the horse that the Great Eastern Railway 

 Company, on the pretext that he was a "lion rampant," 

 would only bring him by special train. However, it paid 

 Rarey to agree to their terms, as he made something like 

 ;^500 out of him at the Alhambra. 



King of Oude, a big, lop-eared subject who had won 

 three Queen's Plates, was also a paying " spec," as Rarey 

 gave only ^30 for him and netted about ;^300, after putting 

 him on double corn allowance for four days to mettle him 

 up. It was money well laid out, as he fought like a tiger. 



13 



