by Ruskin Bond
Mr. Hodge, having won the toss by a system of his own founded upon the differential calculus and the Copernican theory, sent in his opening pair to bat. One was James Livingstone, a very sound club cricketer, and the other one was called, simply, Boone. Boone was a huge, awe-inspiring colossus of a man, weighing at least eighteen stone and wearing all the majestic trapping of a Cambridge Blue. Donald felt that it was hardly fair to loose such cracks upon a humble English village until he fortunately remembered that he, of all people, a foreigner, admitted by courtesy to the National Game, ought not to set himself up to be a judge of what is, and what is not, cricket.
The Fordenden team ranged themselves at the bidding of their captain, the Fordenden baker, in various spots of vantage amid the daisies, buttercups, dandelions, vetches, thistle-down, and clumps of dark-red sorrel; and the blacksmith having taken in, just for luck as it were, yet another reef in his snake-buckle belt, prepared to open the attack. It so happened that, at the end at which he was to bowl, the ground behind the wicket was level for a few yards and then sloped away rather abruptly, so that it was only during the last three or four intensive, galvanic yards of his run that the blacksmith, who took a long run, was visible to the batsman or indeed to anyone on the field of play except the man stationed in the deep field behind him. This man saw nothing of the game except the blacksmith walking back dourly and the blacksmith running up ferociously, and occasionally a ball driven smartly over the brow of the hill in his direction.
The sound club player having taken guard, having twiddled his bat round several times in a nonchalant manner, and having stared arrogantly at each fieldsman in turn, was somewhat surprised to find that, although the field was ready, no bowler was visible. His doubts, however, were resolved a second or two later, when the blacksmith came up, breasting the slope superbly like a mettlesome combination of Vulcan and Venus Anadyomene. The first ball which he delivered was a high full-pitch to leg, of appalling velocity. It must have lighted upon a bare patch among the long grass near long-leg, for it rocketed, first bounce into the hedge, and four byes were reluctantly signalled by the village umpire. The row of gaffers on the rustic bench shook their heads, agreed that it was many years since four byes had been signalled on that ground, and called for more pints of old-and-mild. The other members of Mr. Hodge's team blanched visibly and called for more pints of bitter. The youngish professor of ballistics, who was in next, muttered something about muzzle velocities and started to do a sum on the back of an envelope.
The second ball went full-pitch into the wicket-keeper's stomach and there was a delay while the deputy wicket-keeper was invested with the pads and gloves of office. The third ball, making a noise like a partridge, would have hummed past Mr. Livingstone's left ear had he not dexterously struck it out of the ground for six, and the fourth took his leg bail with a bullet-like full-pitch. Ten runs for one wicket, last man six. The professor got the fifth ball on the left ear and went back to the 'Three Horseshoes', while Mr. Harcourt had the singular misfortune to hit his wicket before the sixth ball was even delivered. Ten runs for two wickets and one man retired hurt. A slow left-hand bowler was on at the other end, the local rate-collector, a man whose whole life was one of infinite patience and guile. Off his first ball the massive Cambridge Blue was easily stumped, having executed a movement that aroused the professional admiration of the Ancient who was leaning upon his scythe. Donald was puzzled that so famous a player should play so execrable a stroke until it transpired, later on, that a wrong impression had been created and that the portentous Boone had gained his Blue at Cambridge for rowing and not for cricket. Ten runs for three wickets and one man hurt.
The next player was a singular young man. He was small and quiet, and he wore perfectly creased white flannels, white silk socks, a pale-pink silk shirt, and a white cap. On the way down in the charabanc he had taken little part in the conversation and even less in the beer-drinking. There was a retiring modesty about him that made him conspicuous in that cricket eleven, and there was a gentleness, an almost finicky gentleness, about his movements which hardly seemed virile and athletic. He looked as if a fast ball would knock the bat out of his hands. Donald asked someone what his name was, and was astonished to learn that he was the famous novelist, Robert Southcott, himself.
Just as this celebrity, holding his bat as delicately as if it was a flute or a fan, was picking his way through the daisies and thistle-down towards the wicket, Mr. Hodge rushed anxiously, tankard in hand, from the 'Three Horseshoes' and bellowed in a most unpoetical voice: 'Play carefully, Bobby. Keep your end up. Runs don't matter.'
'Very well, Bill,' replied Mr. Southcott sedately. Donald was interested by this little exchange. It was the Team Spirit at work—the captain instructing his man to play a type of game that was demanded by the state of the team's fortunes, and the individual loyally suppressing his instincts to play a different type of game.
Mr. Southcott took guard modestly, glanced furtively round the field as if it was an impertinence to suggest that he would survive long enough to make a study of the fieldsmen's positions worth while, and hit the rate-collector's first ball over the 'Three Horseshoes' into a hayfield. The ball was retrieved by a mob of screaming urchins, handed back to the rate-collector, who scratched his head and then bowled his fast yorker, which Mr. Southcott hit into the saloon bar of the 'Shoes', giving Mr. Harcourt such a fright that he required several pints before he fully recovered his nerve. The next ball was very slow and crafty, endowed as it was with every iota of finger-spin and brain-power which a long-service rate-collector could muster. In addition, it was delivered at the extreme end of the crease so as to secure a background of dark laurels instead of a dazzling white screen, and it swung a little in the air; a few moments later the urchins, by this time delirious with ecstasy, were fishing it out of the squire's trout stream with a bamboo pole and an old bucket.
The rate-collector was bewildered. He had never known such a travesty of the game. It was not cricket. It was slogging; it was wild, unscientific bashing; and, furthermore, his reputation was in grave danger. The instalments would be harder than ever to collect, and Heaven knew they were hard enough to collect as it was, what with bad times and all. His three famous deliveries had been treated with contempt—the leg-break, the fast yorker, and the slow, swinging off-break out of the laurel bushes. What on earth was he to try now? Another six and he would be laughed out of the parish. Fortunately the village umpire came out of a trance of consternation to the rescue. Thirty-eight years of umpiring for the Fordenden Cricket Club had taught him a thing or two, and he called 'Over' firmly and marched off to square-leg. The rate-collector was glad to give way to a Free Forester, who had been specially imported for this match. He was only a moderate bowler, but it was felt that it was worth while giving him a trial, if only for the sake of the scarf round his waist and his cap. At the other end the fast bowler pounded away grimly until an unfortunate accident occurred. Mr. Southcott had been treating with apologetic contempt those of his deliveries which came within reach, and the blacksmith's temper had been rising for some time. An urchin shouted, 'Take him orf!' and the other urchins, for whom Mr. Southcott was by now a firmly established deity, had screamed with delight. The captain had held one or two ominous consultations with the wicket-keeper and other advisers, and the blacksmith knew that his dismissal was at hand unless he produced a supreme effort.
It was the last ball of the over. He halted at the wicket before going back for his run, glared at Mr. Harcourt, who had been driven out to umpire by his colleagues—greatly to the regret of Mr. Bason, the landlord of the 'Shoes'—glared at Mr. Southcott, took another reef in his belt, shook out another inch in his braces, spat on his hand, swung his arm three or four times in a meditative sort of way, grasped the ball tightly in his colossal palm, and then turned smartly about and marched off like a Pomeranian grenadier and vanished over the brow of the hill. Mr. Southcott, during these proceedings, leant elegantly upon his bat and ad
mired the view. At last, after a long stillness, the ground shook, the grasses waved violently, small birds arose with shrill clamours, a loud puffing sound alarmed the butterflies, and the blacksmith, looking more like Venus Anadyomene than ever, came thundering over the crest. The world held its breath. Among the spectators conversation was suddenly hushed. Even the urchins, understanding somehow that they were assisting at a crisis in affairs, were silent for a moment as the mighty figure swept up to the crease. It was the charge of Von Bredow's Dragoons at Gravelotte over again.
But alas for human ambitions! Mr. Harcourt, swaying slightly from leg to leg, had understood the menacing glare of the bowler, had marked the preparation for a titanic effort, and—for he was not a poet for nothing—knew exactly what was going on. And Mr. Harcourt sober had a very pleasant sense of humour, but Mr. Harcourt rather drunk was a perfect demon of impishness. Sober he occasionally resisted a temptation to try to be funny. Rather drunk, never. As the giant whirlwind of volcanic energy rushed past him to the crease, Mr. Harcourt, quivering with excitement and internal laughter, and wobbling uncertainly upon his pins, took a deep breath and bellowed, 'No ball!'
It was too late for the unfortunate bowler to stop himself. The ball flew out of his hand like a bullet and hit third-slip, who was not looking, full pitch on the knee-cup. With a yell of agony third-slip began hopping about like a stork until he tripped over a tussock of grass and fell on his face in a bed of nettles, from which he sprang up again with another drum-splitting yell. The blacksmith himself was flung forward by his own irresistible momentum, startled out of his wits by Mr. Harcourt's bellow in his ear, and thrown off his balance by his desperate effort to prevent himself from delivering the ball, and the result was that his gigantic feet got mixed up among each other and he fell heavily in the centre of the wicket, knocking up a cloud of dust and dandelion-seed and twisting his ankle. Rooks by hundreds arose in protest from the vicarage cedars. The urchins howled like intoxicated banshees. The gaffers gaped. Mr. Southcott gazed modestly at the ground. Mr. Harcourt gazed at the heavens. Mr. Harcourt did not think the world had ever been, or could ever be again, quite such a capital place, even though he had laughed internally so much that he had got hiccups.
Mr. Hodge, emerging at that moment from the 'Three Horseshoes', surveyed the scene and then the scoreboard with an imperial air. Then he roared in the same rustic voice as before:
'You needn't play safe any more, Bob. Play your own game.'
'Thank you, Bill,' replied Mr. Southcott, as sedately as ever, and, on the resumption of the game, he fell into a kind of cricketing trance, defending his wicket skilfully from straight balls, ignoring crooked ones, and scoring one more run in a quarter of an hour before he inadvertently allowed, for the first time during his innings, a ball to strike his person.
'Out!' shrieked the venerable umpire, before anyone had time to appeal.
The score at this point was sixty-nine for six, last man fifty-two.
Major Canamus
BY A.G. SHIRREFF
I
Have I told you (said the Major)
How I nearly once collided
With a camel? Few, I wager,
Would have come off clean as I did.
I was on my motor cycle,
Doing eighty miles an hour—
It's astounding what that bike'll
Do with only three horse power.
One of those canal hog-backs I'd
Cleared,—their gradients are a scandal,—
When I saw a camel's backside
Rising straight above my handle.
Well, you know how camels straddle.
I was quite prepared. The fact is
Standing on a moving saddle
Is a trick I often practise.
Up I sprang, exactly clearing
Rump and hump and neck and crest of him.
And the bike went on careering
Through his legs beneath the rest of him.
My descent was timed precisely
With the bicycle's emerging,
And I hit the saddle nicely,
Not a finger's breadth diverging.
Not so dusty (said the Major)
For a first attempt at flying.
Some of you young bloods, I wager,
Would have found it rather trying.
II
I was never known to miss a
Tiger (said the Major), never.
Once I lost one in Orissa.
That was sheer bad luck, however.
I, you see, was dry fly fishing
On the lower Mahanadi,
Having decent sport, but wishing
That the banks were not so muddy.
I was whisking all my slack round—
Fifty yards—(I'm fairly apt at it)—
When a tiger in the back-ground
Must have seen my fly and snapped at it.
Rising with the fly and soaring
Over me into the river
Shot a monstrous brute, whose roaring
Made the very mud-banks quiver.
'Twas a bigger fish than ever
Fisherman has filled his creel with.
One that needed fairly clever
Handling, you'll admit, to deal with.
I had nearly got him landed
After twenty minutes' tussle.
'Twas an effort that demanded
All my powers of mind and muscle.
Under us the mud was quaking.
When the tug was nearly over, he
Slipped and fell, my tackle breaking;
Sank this time beyond recovery.
With a gaff my sole protection
It was just as well, it may be.
So I think on cool reflection,
But I cried then like a baby.
III
Danger? Said the Major. What of it?
I have had my share of dangers.
In the hottest of the hot of it
Fear and I have still been strangers.
When by my shikari's bungle
I was left alone benighted
In a truly howling jungle,
Was I in the least excited?
No, Sir. Though there might have been a
Tiger through the forest ranging
Or a supperless hyena,
My composure was unchanging.
Left without a light or weapon,
I was situated so as
Stirring to be sure to step on
Sleeping porcupines or boas.
On the level any paltry
Panther could surprise and floor me:
So I climbed the nearest sal tree
To the highest branch that bore me.
And, though every limb was aching,
Resolutely I sat there, Sir,
Sat until the dawn was breaking,
Making noises like a bear, Sir.
You may smile, but while I did it I
Didn't find it so divertin'.
Savoir faire and intrepidity
Saved my life that night for certain.
IV
That's a splendid head of ibex,
My collection's finest feature,
Said the Major. I'll describe exactly
How I bagged the creature.
I was on a mountain brow, Sir,
In Ladakh, with my shikari,
And the double-barrelled Mauser
I invariably carry.
On an ibex when my eye fell
Fifteen thousand feet beneath us, and
Just within range of my rifle,
Though it's sighted but to three thousand.
'Twas an awkward situation,
For I had to take, in order
To get in a shot, my station
On a precipice's border.
Head and trunk in space to dangle
Is a ticklish thing to do, Sir,
All the more so when the angle
Of your legs is one in two, Sir.
&
nbsp; There I hung, and my shikari
Lay behind, my ankles gripping.
Just as I had fixed my quarry,
Zounds! I felt we both were slipping.
The position was appalling.
There was nothing that could hinder us,
Short of miracles, from falling
To the bottom, smashed to flinders.
But with instant resolution
And the sang-froid of a Briton,
I arrived at a solution
Everyone would not have hit on.
As I felt my ankles getting
Loose from my shikari's tether,
Bang! I pulled the triggers, letting
Both the barrels off together.
The concussion was tremendous,
For I had a double charge in,
And it just sufficed to send us
Back to safety on the margin.
And the ibex? Well, the trophy's
There to prove that I did kill it.
For my rifle did its office.
Both the bullets found their billet.
V
Now I'm getting an old stager,
Doctors recommend me walking;
For which reason (said the Major)
My chief exercise is stalking.
('Stalking,' Sir, I said,—not 'talking').
And, in stalking, past disputing,
My most curious experience
Was the one I had when shooting
Barasingh up North of Terhi once.
I had seen a fourteen-tiner
Standing clear on the horizon.