His
rider was called Death, and power was given him to destroy with the
sword and with hunger and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
The four horsemen were beginning their mad, desolating course over the
heads of terrified humanity.
Tchernoff was describing the four scourges of the earth exactly as
though he were seeing them. The horseman on the white horse was clad in
a showy and barbarous attire. His Oriental countenance was contracted
with hatred as if smelling out his victims. While his horse continued
galloping, he was bending his bow in order to spread pestilence
abroad. At his back swung the brass quiver filled with poisoned arrows,
containing the germs of all diseases--those of private life as well as
those which envenom the wounded soldier on the battlefield.
The second horseman on the red steed was waving the enormous, two-edged
sword over his hair bristling with the swiftness of his course. He was
young, but the fierce scowl and the scornful mouth gave him a look of
implacable ferocity. His garments, blown open by the motion of his wild
race, disclosed the form of a muscular athlete.
Bald, old and horribly skinny was the third horseman bouncing up and
down on the rawboned back of his black steed. His shrunken legs clanked
against the thin flanks of the lean beast. In one withered hand he was
holding the scales, symbol of the scarcity of food that was going to
become as valuable as gold.
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