He galloped gallantly (not to mention alliteratively) across the plain, until he got to the edge of the plain, at which point he stopped.
The rather abrupt replacement of plain with a tremendous amount of water had just as much to do with him stopping as did his attempt to come to a halt and appear to calmly survey the lay of the land, which had almost as much to do with his complete inability to control his horse. The horse's reasons for stopping were sensibly based on it's vague understanding that it had a problem swimming, or at least it did the last time out, which was as good a reason as any, and also the reason why the horse hadn't eaten chicken pot pie for years now, though that doesn't have a lot to do with the story.
He was slightly disappointed with the rather unheroic silence in the wake of his gallop across the plain, or the unheroic absence of any lasting clip-clop noise, which he'd been largely unable to enjoy whilst clinging to the neck of his horse. Forunately, he could still enjoy the feel of his cloak whipping back behind him, as a brisk wind was coming off the water, but only the corners flapped, as his cloak had been tangled around his body when he'd almost fallen off the horse halfway across the plain and now had leveraged his arm in an extremely awkward (and painful) position behind his back.
The horse would have laughed, really, had it not been thinking about chicken pot pie, and how it spent the night in the loo being sick, the last time it had eaten it.
The horse stopped thinking about much of anything when the little old man they'd almost stopped on bit it's left front knee.
At which point the horse galloped gallantly back across the plain, the man fell with a gravitational-awareness that most people don't possess (and non-alliteratively, coincidentally), and the little old man was sat upon by the formerly falling (and alliterative once again) man.
All of which suited everyone just about right, karmically.
disclaimer:
All right, so, if you were taking us literally last week, you might be tempted to call us liars this week.
"Why," you ask?
Well, if you were paying attention, you'd see that we said something about interviewing the chief tart of Supertart this week.
And we, for all intents and purposes, probably haven't.
So it goes, dear, so it goes.