# A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX
THE DARK HORSE
Full many a mare with coat of milkiest sheen, Is dyed in dark unfathomed coal mines drab;
Full many a flyer's born to blush unseen,
And waste her swiftness on a hansom cab.
Lines to order by a young English friend, who swears they are original. But I regard them as an unconscious plagiarism from Poet Young's "Eulogy of a Country Cemetery:" H. B. J.
It is a gain, a precious, let me gain! let me gain! Oh, Potentate! Oh, Potentate! The shower of thine secret shoe-dust Oh, Potentate! Oh, Potentate!
Dr. Ram Kinoo Dutt (of Chittagong).
WE left Mr Bhosh in full pursuit of the runaway horse and milk-chariot which he had so spiritedly purchased while still en route. After running a mile or two, he was unspeakably rejoiced to find that the equipage had automatically come to a ​standstill and was still in prime condition—with the exception of the lacteal fluid, which had made its escape from the pails.
Bindabun, however, was not disposed to weep for long over spilt milk, and had the excessive magnanimity to restore the chariot and pails to the dairy merchant, who was beside himself with gratitude.
Then, Mr Bhosh, with a joyful heart, having detached his purchase from the shafts, conducted it in triumph to his domicile. It turned out to be a mare, white as snow and of marvellous amiability; and, partly because of her origin, and partly from her complexion, he christened her by the appellation of Milky Way.
Although perforce a complete ignoramus in the art of educating a horse to win any equine contest, Mr Bhosh's nude commonsense told him that the first step was to fatten his rather too filamentous pupil with corn and similar seeds, and after a prolonged course of beanfeasts he had the gratification ​to behold his mare filling out as plump as a dumpling.
As he desired her to remain the dark horse as long as possible, he concealed her in a small toolshed at the end of the garden, ministering to her wants with his own hands, and conducting her for daily nocturnal constitutionals several times round the central grass-patch.
For some time he refrained from mounting—"fain would he climb but that he feared to fall," as Poet Bunyan once scratched with a diamond on Queen Anne's window; but at length, reflecting that if nothing ventures nothing is certain to win, he purchased a padded saddle with appendages, and surmounted Milky Way, who, far from regarding him as an interloper, appeared gratified by his arrival, and did her utmost to make him feel thoroughly at home.
The next step was, of course, to obtain permission from the pundits who rule the roast of the Jockey Club, that Milky Way ​might be allowed to compete in the approaching Derby.
Now this was a more delicately ticklish matter than might be supposed, owing to the circumstance that the said pundits are such warm men, and so well endowed with this world's riches that they are practically non-corruptible.
Fortunately, Mr Bhosh, as a dabster in English composition, was a pastmaster in drawing a petition, and, sitting down, he constructed the following:—
To Those Most Worshipful Bigheads in control of Jockeys Club.
Benign Personages!
This Petition humbly sheweth:
       And your Petitioner will ever pray on bended knees that so truly magnificent an institution as the Epsom Derby Course may never be suppressed on grounds of encouraging national vice of gambling and so forth. Signed, &c.
The wording of the above proved Mr Bhosh's profound acquaintance with the human heart, for it instantaneously attained the desired end.
The Honble Stewards returned a very kind ​answer, readily consenting to receive Milky Way as a candidate for Derby honours, but regretting that it was ultra vires to concede her a few minutes' start, and intimating that she must start with a scratch in company with all the other horses.
Bindabun was not in the least degree cast down or depressed by this refusal of a start, since he had not entertained any sanguine hope that it would be granted, and had only inserted it to make insurance doubly sure, for he was every day more confident that Milky Way was to win, even though obliged to step off with the rank and file.