Mike

A comfortable, rather somnolent feeling settled upon the school.  A long stand at cricket is a soothing sight to watch.  There was an absence of hurry about the batsmen which harmonised well with the drowsy summer afternoon.  And yet runs were coming at a fair pace.  The hundred went up at five o’clock, the hundred and fifty at half-past.  Both batsmen were completely at home, and the M.C.C. third-change bowlers had been put on.

Then the great wicket-keeper took off the pads and gloves, and the fieldsmen retired to posts at the extreme edge of the ground.

“Lobs,” said Burgess.  “By Jove, I wish I was in.”

It seemed to be the general opinion among the members of the Wrykyn eleven on the pavilion balcony that Morris and Marsh were in luck.  The team did not grudge them their good fortune, because they had earned it; but they were distinctly envious.

Lobs are the most dangerous, insinuating things in the world.  Everybody knows in theory the right way to treat them.  Everybody knows that the man who is content not to try to score more than a single cannot get out to them.  Yet nearly everybody does get out to them.

It was the same story to-day.  The first over yielded six runs, all through gentle taps along the ground.  In the second, Marsh hit an over-pitched one along the ground to the terrace bank.  The next ball he swept round to the leg boundary.  And that was the end of Marsh.  He saw himself scoring at the rate of twenty-four an over.  Off the last ball he was stumped by several feet, having done himself credit by scoring seventy.

The long stand was followed, as usual, by a series of disasters.  Marsh’s wicket had fallen at a hundred and eighty.  Ellerby left at a hundred and eighty-six.  By the time the scoring-board registered two hundred, five wickets were down, three of them victims to the lobs.  Morris was still in at one end.  He had refused to be tempted.  He was jogging on steadily to his century.

Bob Jackson went in next, with instructions to keep his eye on the lob-man.

For a time things went well.  Saunders, who had gone on to bowl again after a rest, seemed to give Morris no trouble, and Bob put him through the slips with apparent ease.  Twenty runs were added, when the lob-bowler once more got in his deadly work.  Bob, letting alone a ball wide of the off-stump under the impression that it was going to break away, was disagreeably surprised to find it break in instead, and hit the wicket.  The bowler smiled sadly, as if he hated to have to do these things.

Mike’s heart jumped as he saw the bails go.  It was his turn next.

“Two hundred and twenty-nine,” said Burgess, “and it’s ten past six.  No good trying for the runs now.  Stick in,” he added to Mike.  “That’s all you’ve got to do.”

All!...  Mike felt as if he was being strangled.  His heart was racing like the engines of a motor.  He knew his teeth were chattering.  He wished he could stop them.  What a time Bob was taking to get back to the pavilion!  He wanted to rush out, and get the thing over.

At last he arrived, and Mike, fumbling at a glove, tottered out into the sunshine.  He heard miles and miles away a sound of clapping, and a thin, shrill noise as if somebody were screaming in the distance.  As a matter of fact, several members of his form and of the junior day-room at Wain’s nearly burst themselves at that moment.

At the wickets, he felt better.  Bob had fallen to the last ball of the over, and Morris, standing ready for Saunders’s delivery, looked so calm and certain of himself that it was impossible to feel entirely without hope and self-confidence.  Mike knew that Morris had made ninety-eight, and he supposed that Morris knew that he was very near his century; yet he seemed to be absolutely undisturbed.  Mike drew courage from his attitude.

Morris pushed the first ball away to leg.  Mike would have liked to have run two, but short leg had retrieved the ball as he reached the crease.

The moment had come, the moment which he had experienced only in dreams.  And in the dreams he was always full of confidence, and invariably hit a boundary.  Sometimes a drive, sometimes a cut, but always a boundary.

“To leg, sir,” said the umpire.

“Don’t be in a funk,” said a voice.  “Play straight, and you can’t get out.”

It was Joe, who had taken the gloves when the wicket-keeper went on to bowl.

Mike grinned, wryly but gratefully.

Saunders was beginning his run.  It was all so home-like that for a moment Mike felt himself again.  How often he had seen those two little skips and the jump.  It was like being in the paddock again, with Marjory and the dogs waiting by the railings to fetch the ball if he made a drive.

Saunders ran to the crease, and bowled.