It was a scene truly remarkable that met the eyes of Ginger and the Sailor. Tier upon tier, wall upon wall of solid humanity rose to the sky. The Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band fought nobly but in vain against fifty thousand larynxes, and mounted police did their best to prevent their owners bursting through the barriers to the field of play.
The majority were strong partisans of the Rovers and wore favors of chocolate and blue. But there had been an invasion of the Huns. Barbarians from the neighboring town of Duckingfield could be picked out at a glance. One and all wore aggressively checked cloth caps, on which a red-and-white card was pinned bearing the legend, "Play up, Britannia."
The supporters of that upstart club were massed in solid phalanxes about the scene of action. They waved red-and-white banners, they shook rattles, they discoursed the strains of "Rule, Britannia" on trumpets and mouth-organs, they let off fireworks, and far worse than all this, they indulged in ribald criticism of their distinguished opponents' style of play. "They were goin' to mop the floor with 'em as usual." The consequence was hand-to-hand conflicts became general all over the ground between the dignified supporters of True Football, and these Visigoths who were ignorant of that godlike science. These encounters pleasantly assisted the efforts of the mounted police and the Blackhampton Excelsior Prize Brass Band to beguile the fleeting minutes until the combatants appeared on the field of honor.
"Yer talk about yer Sailor," said a red-and-white-rosetted warrior with a rattle in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. "We'll give him Sailor. Rovers can swank, but they can't play footba'."
"Villa didn't think so, anyway," said another sportsman, who flaunted a chocolate-and-blue rose in his buttonhole without intending any affront to horticulture.
"Villa," said the Duckingfield barbarian. "Who's Villa! Play oop, Britann-yah!" He then proceeded to render the slogan of Britannia on the mouth-organ, until some seething superpatriot hit him on the head from behind with a rattle.
In the midst of the "scrap" that followed this graceful rebuke, which two unmounted members of the Blackhampton Constabulary regarded from a strategic distance with the utmost detachment, a cry of "'Ere they come!" was loosed from at least thirty-five thousand throats, and such a roar rent the heavens as must have disturbed Zeus considerably just as he was settling down for the afternoon.
"Play up, Rovers!"
Blackhampton might well be proud of the eleven wearers of the chocolate and blue. A finer-looking set of warriors would have been hard to find. And it did not lessen the pride of their friends that among the eleven only the goalkeeper could claim to be representing the place of his birth.
"Play up, Sailor!"