As there was only one more ball to be bowled, and only two runs to be made to secure a win for Loamshire, I'm afraid Anson hardly meant what he said. Unless it shot underground or was absolutely out of reach, that young giant, who 'could hit like anything, though not much of a bat,' meant at any rate to hit that one ball for four. By George, how he opened his shoulders! how splendidly he lunged out! you could see the great muscles swell as he made the bat sing through the air, you could almost see the ball going seaward; and yet—and yet——
The school had risen like one man; they had heard that rattle among the timber; they knew that Snap's last 'yorker' had done the trick; cool head and quick hand had pulled the match out of the fire, and even his rival Poynter was one of the crowd who caught young Hales, tossed him on to their shoulders, and bore him in triumph to the pavilion, whilst the chapel clock struck the half-hour.
CHAPTER II
'MOP FAUCIBUS HÆSIT'
Boys in the fifth form at Fernhall shared a study with one companion. Monitors of course lived in solitary splendour, with a bed which would stand on its head, and allowed itself to be shut up in a cupboard in the corner. Small boys who had not attained even to the fringe of the school aristocracy lived in herds in bare and exceedingly untidy rooms round the inner quads. Even in those days there were monitors who were worshippers of art. Some of them had curtains in their rooms of rich and varied colouring; one of them had a plate hung up which he declared was a piece of undoubted old Worcester. Tomlinson was a great authority on objects of virtù, and a rare connoisseur, but we changed his plate for one which we bought for sixpence at Newby's, and he never knew the difference. Then there was one fellow who had several original oil paintings. These represented farmyard scenes and were attributed indifferently to Landseer, Herring, and a number of other celebrated artists. Whoever painted them, these pictures were the objects of more desperate forays than any other property within the school limits. I remember them well as adorning the room of a certain man of muscle, to whom, of course, they belonged merely as the spoils of war. The rightful owner lived three doors off, but I don't think that he ever had the pluck to attempt to regain his own.
However, in the small boys' rooms there were none of these luxuries of an effete civilisation. There was a book-shelf full of ragged books, none of which by any chance ever bore the name of anyone in that study; there was a table, a gas-burner, a frying-pan, and a kettle. These last-named articles might have been seen in every study at Fernhall, from the study of the monitor to that of the pauper, as we called that unfortunate being who had not yet emerged from the lower school. In the long nights of winter, when the wild sea roared just beyond the limits of their quad, and the spray came flying over the sea-wall to be dashed against their study windows, all Fernhall boys had a common consolation. They called it brewing: not the brewing of beer or of any intoxicating liquor, but of that cheering cup of tea which consoles so many thousands, from the London charwoman to the pig-tailed Chinaman, from the enervated Indian to the half-frozen Russian exile in Siberia. At first the headmasters of Fernhall tried hard to put down this practice. Sergeants lurked about our passages, confiscated our kettles, carried away the frying-pans full of curly rashers from under our longing eyes, and 'lines' and flagellations were all we got in exchange. At last a new era began. A great reformer arrived, a 'Head' of liberal leanings and wide sympathy. This man frowned on coercion, and, instead of taking away our kettles, gave us a huge range of stoves on which to boil them. From a cook's point of view, no doubt, the range of stoves was a great improvement on the old gas-burner, but, in spite of the liberality of the 'Head,' small clusters of boys still stood night after night on those old study tables and patiently fried their bacon over the gas.
Unfortunately this was not the worst of their misdoings. Besides the appetising smell of the bacon and the delicious aroma of chicory or tea, there was too often a strong flavour of 'bird's-eye' or 'latakia' about the passages. Almost to a man, the school smoked. How it had crept in I don't pretend to know, but the habit had been growing in the school for years until it was almost universal. This was the one thing which our new head-master would not tolerate at any price, and it was pretty well understood throughout the school that his dealings with the first offender detected in the act would be short and severe. About the time of the Loamshire match he had taken to beating up our quarters in person, not, I think, from any desire to detect the smokers in the act, but from a hope that the fear of his coming might act as a deterrent. About a week after Snap Hales's great bowling feat, Fernhall was brewing as usual. The dusk had fairly set in; a crowd of boys were jostling one another with the cans and frying-pans at the great public stoves, and Snap and many others were breaking school-rules as usual in their own studies. Mind, I am pledged to serve up my boys au naturel and not smothered in white sauce, so that if you don't like my menu you had better take warning in time. The bacon had been finished, the hot rolls from the tuckshop had been submitted to digestions which were capable of dealing even with hot rolls and butter, and now Snap Hales, Billy Winthrop, and one Simpson were desperately endeavouring to enjoy, or appear to enjoy, the forbidden pleasures of tobacco. Billy had an elaborately carved meerschaum between his teeth, while Snap lay full length on an extemporised divan, making strange noises and strange faces in his endeavours to get on terms with a 'hubble-bubble.' Billy's jaws ached with the weight of the meerschaum, and Snap was as blown with trying to make his instrument of torture draw as if he had been running the school mile. Simpson was in a corner cutting up some 'sun-dried honeydew,' which he had procured in a cake—'such,' he said, 'as the trappers of the North-West always use.' To tell the truth, he liked 'whittling' at that cake of tobacco with his knife a great deal better than smoking it, for the first two or three whiffs invariably sent a cold chill through his frame and a conviction that, like Mark Twain, he had inadvertently swallowed an earthquake.
Suddenly the boys stopped talking; there was a heavy rap at the door, preceded by a vain attempt to open it, and followed by the command, in deep tones, to 'open this door.'
'Nix! by Jove!' whispered Simpson, whiter now than ever with fright.
'Rot!' replied Snap unceremoniously. 'It's only that fool Lane, up to some of his jokes. Go to Bath, Legs,' he added at the top of his voice.