Page 431 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 25

There were seventeen officers in all riding in this race.
The race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of
an ellipse in front of the pavilion. On this course nine
obstacles had been arranged: the stream, a big and solid
barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch,
a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade
(one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound
fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of
sight for the horses, so that the horse had to clear both
obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled
with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race was
just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the ring,
but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of
the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream,
seven feet in breadth, which the racers could leap or wade
through as they preferred.
Three times they were ranged ready to start, but each
time some horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to
begin again. The umpire who was starting them, Colonel
Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for
the fourth time he shouted ‘Away!’ and the racers started.

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