“Tails!” cried our Captain.
The coin dropped on the wooden boards of the pavilion, and proceeded to run round on its edges, as though enjoying the proceedings thoroughly, whilst several enterprising men ran round after it.
“Tails it is!” said Lawson, who always arrived just a short head before everybody else.
“Then I think,” said our Captain, with a most statesmanlike deliberation, “all things considered, we shall be justified in going in.”
A minute later Hickory streamed into the field, and were greeted with great cheering. And as they issued forth the breathless William appeared with Thornhill’s cap, just in the nick of time.
CHAPTER V
The Cussedness of Cricket
HAD I been in less of a tottering funk, I might have taken the admirably timed arrival of the Authentics as an omen of good luck. But I was in that suicidal frame of mind when a man wishes that he is anything but what he is, anywhere but where he is, and that he has to do aught but what he has to do. It is a frame of mind that can give for deep-seated torture a long start to nightmares, weddings, sea-sickness, and public speaking. If I were only going in first wicket, I shouldn’t care! If I’d only an inkling of what the bowling was like! If only it wasn’t Little Clumpton v. Hickory! If only the crowd wasn’t so beastly big and demonstrative! If only it wasn’t such a glaring hot day! If only this abject cap was not two sizes too small! If it was only my own, and it didn’t look and feel so supremely ridiculous! If I could only cut away to a prompt and very private death! Cricket is quite a gentle, harmless game, but he is a lucky man who has not to sweat some blood before he’s done with it.
“Ready, Dimsdale?” said the Captain.
I followed him sickly, fumbling at my batting-glove with nervous fingers.
“Wish you luck, old man,” said some person of benevolent disposition, as I issued forth. It is never exactly kind, however, to wish luck to the keenly sensitive, as it leads them to think that they’ll certainly need luck, and plenty of it, if they’re going to stay long. From the Artistic Standpoint (capital letters, please, Mr. Printer!), it is a thousand pities that I cannot say that when I stepped from the pavilion on this great occasion to open the innings with my Captain, a man whose name had penetrated to the remotest corners of the cricket world, I held my head up with an air of conscious power. Why was I not, as the Hero of this story, prepared to do the thing in style, in the manner of the most accepted writers? Of course I ought to have marched to the wicket, my heart big with courage, calm in the knowledge that the Hero never does get less than fifty. I ought to have been ready to chastise Villainy in the person of the Demon Bowler, by hitting his length balls for six on the slightest provocation. I am sure that no less than this is expected of me by every right-minded reader. Nor am I blind by any means to my obligations; yet somehow it is so much easier to get runs with the pen than with the bat. At least I have always found it so!