midnight
Before the presence of a threatening death life grows real , love grows precious , to the coldest and most careless . No aid could come ; not a living soul was nigh ; the solitude was as complete as though a western prairie stretched round them ; there were only the still and shadowy night , the chilly silence , on which the beat of the plunging hoofs shattered like thunder , and the glisten of the flowing water growing nearer and nearer every yard . The tranquillity around only jarred more horribly on ear and brain ; the vanishing forms of the antlered deer only gave a weirder grace to the moonlight chase whose goal was the grave . It was like the midnight hunt after Herne the Hunter ; but here , behind them , hunted Death . The animals neither saw nor knew what waited them , as they rushed down on to the broad , gray stream , veiled from them by the slope and the screen of flickering leaves ; to save them there was but one chance , and that so desperate that it looked like madness . It was but a second 's thought ; he gave it but a second 's resolve . The next instant he stood on his feet , as the carriage swayed to and fro over the turf , balanced himself marvelously as it staggered in that furious gallop from side to side , clinched the reins hard in the grip of his teeth , measured the distance with an unerring eye , and crouching his body for the spring with all the science of the old playing-fields of his Eton days , cleared the dashboard and lighted astride on the back of the hunting five-year old -- how , he could never have remembered or have told .