“You little devil!” said the other.
A silence more intense than ever settled down over the ground, as the last shouts consequent on David’s immortal feat died away, for Tomlin proceeded to send down perhaps the best over he had ever bowled in his life. Once he completely beat Maddox, and must have shaved the varnish off his bails, and from the rest the batsman made no attempt to score, being quite satisfied with stopping them. At the end Anstruther looked round the field.
“Wace, take an over at Crawley’s end, will you?” he said.
Then that period, deadly for a newly arrived batsman, had to be gone through, when the fresh bowler has a few practice-balls, and rearranges the field, and it made David fret. Long-on had to be moved two yards nearer, and one yard to the right: cover-point had to go much deeper, point had to come in a little, and the slips went through a mystic dance. This being concluded, Wace proceeded.
David opened with an appalling stroke, that would have been easily caught by cover, if only Wace had not moved him, and thereupon Wace brought him in again. So David, with an even worse stroke, spooned the ball over his head, so that if he had not been moved the second time, he must have caught it. For this he scored one amid derisive and exultant yells, and Maddox hit at him with his bat as they crossed each other. And there were four more runs to get.
Then the end came. Maddox played two balls with great care, and the unfortunate Wace then sent him a full pitch to leg. There came the sound of the striking bat; next moment the ball bounded against the palings by the pavilion. And Maddox had played his last house-match.
Frank waited to see the ball hit the palings, and then ran across the pitch to David.
“Didn’t I tell you so?” he said. “And wasn’t it ripping that you and I should do that? Hullo, they’re coming for us. Let’s run.”
All round the ground the crowd had broken up wildly shouting, some going towards the pavilion, but others, headed by a detachment from Adams’s, streaming out on to the pitch. The two boys ran towards the pavilion, dodging the first few of these, but both were caught and carried in starfishwise. Then again and again, first Maddox alone, then both together, they had to come out on to the balcony, while the house and school generally shouted itself hoarse for this entrancing finish. Indeed, the honours were fairly divided, for if Maddox’s batting had saved the situation to-day, the situation would have been impossible to save if it had not been for David’s bowling yesterday. Then by degrees the crowd dispersed, and the shouting died, and the two sat for a while there, the happiest pair perhaps in all England, blunt and telegraphic with each other.
“David, you little devil,” said Frank. “Frightful cheek, your hitting that four. Second ball you received, too.”