Duckingfield was the center of a mining district about fifteen miles away, and the rivalry between the Britannia and the Rovers was terrific. In the mind of any true Blackhamptonian there was never any question as to their respective merits. The Rovers had forgotten more about football than the Britannia would ever know. One was quite an upstart club; the other, as all the world knew, went back into the primal dawn of football history. The Rovers practiced the science and culture of the game; the Britannia relied on brute force and adjectival ignorance.
Still, Duckingfield Britannia were doughty foes, and although the Rovers had no need to fear anyone, the feeling at the Crown and Cushion was that they rather wished they had not to play them. The truth was, in their battles with these upstarts, the Rovers never seemed able to live up to their reputation. Whether they met at Duckingfield or at Blackhampton, and in no matter what circumstances, the Rovers invariably got the worst of the deal. This was odd, because the Rovers were much the superior team in every way, always had been, always would be. They didn't know how to play football at Duckingfield, whereas Blackhampton was the home of the game.
Moreover, there was one historic meeting between these neighbors which was always a causa foederis at any gathering of their partisans. It was a certain match on neutral ground in which they met in the semi-final for the Cup, when to the utter confusion and bewilderment of all the best judges, the Rovers, who in their own opinion had really won the Cup already, were beaten four goals to nothing. It is true that a snowstorm raged throughout the match, and to this fact the defeat of the Rovers was always ascribed by the lovers of pure football. It could never be accounted for on any other hypothesis. No comparison of the real merits of the teams was possible, any more than it was possible to compare the towns whence they sprang. You could not mention a town like Duckingfield in the same breath as a town like Blackhampton; to speak of the Britannia being the equal of the Rovers merely betrayed a fundamental ignorance of what you were talking about.
All the same the feeling in the private bar of the Crown and Cushion on the night of the announcement that the Rovers and the Britannia must meet once more in a cup tie was one of anxiety. It had long been felt in Blackhampton that the fates never played quite fairly in the matter of Duckingfield Britannia. No reasonable person outside the latter miserable place ever questioned the Rovers' immense superiority, but there was no glossing over the fact that a clash of arms with these rude and unpolished foemen ended invariably in darkness and eclipse. "It's what I always say," Mr. August Higginbottom would affirm on these tragic occasions, "they don't know how to play footba' at Duckingfill. Bull-fighting's their game. Brute force and—hignorance, that's all there is to it."
For ten days nothing was talked of in Blackhampton but the coming battle. But there could be only one result. Britannia was bound to be wiped off the face of the earth. Still, the whole town would breathe more freely on Saturday evening, when this operation had been performed and the Rovers were safely in the semi-final round.
On the eve of the match, it was whispered all over Blackhampton that big money was on. The confidence of the enemy was overweening, ridiculous, pathetic; partisans of the Britannia were said to be backing their favorites for unheard-of sums. "Rovers would be all right if they had a front parlor to play in," was a favorite axiom of these unpolished foemen. "Britannia plays footba'. They don't play hunt-the-slipper nor kiss-in-the-ring."
The great day dawned. A chill February dawn it was. Queerly excited by the coming match, Henry Harper had hardly closed his eyes throughout the previous night. He knew that wonders were expected of him; there seemed no reason, under Providence, why he should not perform them; in match after match, he had gone from strength to strength; yet on the eve he hardly slept.
He had not been sleeping for some little time now. He had paid no heed to the warnings of Ginger, who was quite sure "he was over-reading hisself," but he didn't believe this was the case. No doubt he had studied hard; his thirst for knowledge grew in spite of the copious draughts with which he tried to quench it. Only too often before a match, he felt nervous, overstrung, but it did not occur to him that he was on the verge of disaster.
On the morning of a never-to-be-forgotten day, the Sailor rose before it was light to practice writing and to study arithmetic—he was as far as vulgar fractions now. He sat in an overcoat in a fireless sitting-room for three hours before breakfast, and continued his labors for several hours afterwards. Then, after a light luncheon, he walked with Ginger to the ground.
The famous field of the Rovers was called Gamble's Pleasance. History has not determined the source of its name. Extrinsically it was hard to justify. Only one tree was visible, and not a single blade of grass. It was surrounded on four sides by huge roofed structures of wood and iron, towering tier upon tier; it had capacity for fifty thousand people. When Ginger and the Sailor came on the scene, these had taken up their places already, the gates had been closed, and disappointed enthusiasts were turning away by the hundred. There was not room in Gamble's Pleasance for another human being.