Christian. Never before had so passionate and reckless a contest been
fought out on this venerable race-course, and the throng of spectators
were carried away by the almost frenzied rivalry of the two drivers. Not
a creature in the upper tiers had been able to keep his seat; men and
women alike had risen to their feet and were shouting and roaring to the
competitors. The music in the towers might have ceased, so completely was
it drowned by the tumult in the amphitheatre.

Only the ladies, in the best places above the starting-sheds, preserved
their aristocratic calm; Still, when the seventh and decisive round was
begun, even the widow Mary leaned forward a little and clasped her hands
more tightly over the cross in her lap. Each time that Marcus had driven
round the obelisk or past the Taraxippos, Dada had clutched her head with
her hands and set her teeth in her lip; each time, as he happily steered
clear of the fatal stone and whirled past the dreadful bronze statue, she
had relaxed her grip and leaned back in her seat with a sigh of relief.
Her sympathy made her one with Marcus; she felt as if his loss must be
her death and his victory her personal triumph.

During the sixth circuit Hippias was still a long way ahead of the young
Christian; the distance which lay between Marcus and the team of bays
seemed to have become a fixed quantity, for, do what he could, he could
not diminish it by a hand-breadth. The two agitatores had now completely
altered their tactics; instead of holding their horses in they urged them
onward, leaning over the front of their chariots, speaking to the horses,
Shouting at them with hoarse, breathless cries, and flogging them
unsparingly. Steamy sweat and lathering foam streaked the flanks of the
desperate, laboring brutes, while clouds of dust were flung up from the
dry, furrowed and trampled soil. The other chariots were left further and
further behind those of Hippias and Marcus, and when, for the seventh and
last time, these two were nearing the nyssa, the crowd for a moment held
its breath, only to break out into louder and wilder cries, and then
again to be hushed. It seemed as though their exhausted lungs found
renewed strength to shout with double energy when their excitement had
kept them silent for a while.

Dada spoke no more; pale and gasping, she sat with her eyes fixed on the
tall obelisk and on the cloud of dust which, as the chariots neared the
nyssa, seemed to grow denser.