“By Jove!” exclaimed Carpenter in the scoring tent. “I haven’t seen Jan do that for years. It used to mean that he was on the spot.”
“He did it when he went in just now,” replied the præpostor who was scoring. “It only meant five more runs to him then.”
“But those five saved the follow! I don’t believe he meant to get any more.”
“You don’t suggest that he got out on purpose, Chips?”
“I shouldn’t wonder. I know he told me the wicket would be just right for him when the heavy roller had been over it. By Jove, he’s doing it again!”
What Jan had done, and was doing again, was something which had been chaffed out of him his first year in the Eleven. He was pulling the white cap, with the honourably faded blue ribbon, tight down over his head, so that his ears became unduly prominent, and his back hair gaped transversely to the scalp.
The scorer remarked that he had better sharpen his pencil, and Jan retorted that he had better watch the over first. It was the first over of the Old Boys’ second innings, and the redoubtable Swiller had already taken guard. Jan ran up to the wicket, with all his old clumsy precision, but more buoyancy and verve than he put into his run now as a rule. And the Swiller’s shaven face broke into a good-humoured grin as the ball went thud into the wicket-keeper’s gloves; it had beaten him completely; the next one he played; off the third he scored a brisk single; and this brought Charles Cave to the striker’s crease, with the air of the player who need never have got out in the first innings, and had half a mind not to do it again.
Curious to find that even in those comparatively recent days there were only four balls to the over in an ordinary two-day match; but such was the case, according to the bound volume consulted on the point; and the fourth and last ball of Jan’s first over in a memorable innings has a long line to itself in the report. It appears to have been his own old patent, irreproachable in length, but pitching well outside the off-stump, and whipping in like lightning. It sent Charles Cave’s leg-bail flying over thirty yards, if we are to believe contemporary measurements. But the reporter refrains from stating that Jan had given the peak of his cap a special tweak, though the fact was not lost upon him at the time.
“Bowled, sir, bowled indeed!” roared Chips from the tent. “I knew it’d be a trimmer; didn’t you fellows see how he pulled down his cap?”
And the now really great Charles Cave stalked back to the pavilion with the nonchalant dignity of a Greek statue put into flannels and animated with the best old English blood. But at the pavilion chains he had a word to say to the next batsman, already emerging with indecent haste.