"Did he not swear he could drive them--swear it by all his brood of bastard Latin gods?
Nay, hands off me--off, I say! They should run swift as eagles, and with the temper of hand-bred lambs, he swore.
Cursed be he--cursed the mother of liars who calls him son! See them, the priceless! Let him touch one of them with a lash, and"-- the rest of the sentence was lost in a furious grinding of his teeth.

"To their heads, some of you, and speak them--a word, one is enough, from the tent-song your mothers sang you.

Oh, fool, fool that I was to put trust in a Roman!" Some of the shrewder of the old man's friends planted themselves between him and the horses.

An opportune failure of breath on his part helped the stratagem.
Ben-Hur, thinking he comprehended the sheik, sympathized with him.
Far more than mere pride of property--more than anxiety for the result of the race--in his view it was within the possible for the patriarch, according to his habits of thought and his ideas of the inestimable, to love such animals with a tenderness akin to the most sensitive passion.
They were all bright bays, unspotted, perfectly matched, and so proportioned as to seem less than they really were.

Delicate ears pointed small heads; the faces were broad and full between the eyes; the nostrils in expansion disclosed membrane so deeply red as to suggest the flashing of flame; the necks were arches, overlaid with fine mane so abundant as to drape the shoulders and breast, while in happy consonance the forelocks were like ravellings of silken veils; between the knees and the fetlocks the legs were flat as an open hand, but above the knees they were rounded with mighty muscles, needful to upbear the shapely close-knit bodies; the hoofs were like cups of polished agate; and in rearing and plunging they whipped the air, and sometimes the earth, with tails glossy-black and thick and long.