Captain and I were great friends. I never thought he would have to leave his home, but his turn came. I was not there, but I heard all about it.
Captain and Jerry were coming back over London Bridge when a brewer’s empty cart came racing along. The driver was hitting his two strong horses with a heavy whip, and he could not control them. A young girl was knocked down, and the next moment they crashed into our cab. The cab turned over, Captain was dragged down, and a broken piece of wood ran into his side. Jerry was only bruised. The driver was very drunk and had to pay a fine, and the brewer paid for the cab. But nobody could pay for poor Captain.
At the cab stand the Governor asked about him.
“He’ll never get well enough for my work,” said Jerry. “It is always the innocent who suffer. If there is one devil I hate more than any other, it is the drink devil.”
“You are treading on my toes, Jerry,” said the Governor. “I drink more than I should. I tried to stop once for two days, and I thought I would die. How did you do it?”
“It was hard work for several weeks. I found that I was not my own master. I said that one of us had to lose, the drink devil or Jerry Barker, and it should not be Jerry Barker. Polly helped me, and now I have not tasted a drop for ten years.”
“I’ve a good mind to try,” said the Governor. “It is a poor thing not to be your own master.”
Captain was a very old horse, and he did not get well. The horse doctor said he could be sold for a few pounds to pull carts. But Jerry said no: money made by selling a good old servant into hard work and misery would spoil all the rest of his money. The kindest thing was to have him shot, and then he would never suffer again.
The next day Harry took me to the blacksmith for new shoes. When I came back, Captain was gone. We all felt it very much.
Soon Jerry heard of a young horse from a nobleman’s stables. He had run away with a carriage and crashed, so he was no longer good enough for a gentleman. “There is nothing bad in him,” said the man who sold him. “His mouth is very tender, and the coachman used the tightest bearing rein and the sharpest bit. I believe it made the horse mad.”
So Hotspur came to us, a fine brown horse, as tall as Captain and only five years old. The first night he was so restless that I could not sleep. But after a day in the cab he came in quiet, and soon he and Jerry understood each other.
Hotspur thought it a great come-down to be a cab horse. But at the end of the week he said to me, “An easy bit and a free head make up for a great deal.”