g 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. At about a hundred paces from the nyssa
she saw, above the sandy curtain, the red cap of Hippias flash past, and
then--close behind it--the blue cap worn by Marcus. Then a deafening,
thundering roar from thousands of throats went up to heaven, while,
round the obelisk--so close to it that not a horse, not a wheel could
have found room between the plinth and the driver-the blue cap came
forward out of the cloud, and, behind it now--no longer in front, though
not more than a length behind--came the red cap of Hippias. When within
a few feet of the nyssa, Marcus had overtaken his antagonist, had passed
the point with a bold and perilously close turn, and had left the bays
behind him.

Demetrius saw it all, as though his eye had power to pierce the
dust-cloud, and now he, too, lost his phlegmatic calm. He threw up his
arms as if in prayer and shouted, as though his brother could hear him:

"Well done, splendid boy! Now for the kentron--the goad--drive it in,
send it home if they die for it! Give it them well!"

Dada, who could only guess what was happening, looked round at him,
asking in tremulous tones: "Has he passed him? Is he gaining on him?
Will he win?" But Demetrius did not answer; he only pointed to the
foremost of the flying clouds on which the second was fast advancing,
and cried in a frenzy of excitement:

"Death and Hades! The other is catching him up. The dog, the sneak! If
only the boy would use his goad. Give it them, Marcus! Give it them,
lad! Never give in now! Great Father Poseidon!--there--there!--no! I can
hardly stand--Yes, he is still in front, and now--now--this must settle