The first ball struck a lump of coral, broke sharply to leg, and Mauga ducked just in time to save his ribs, while the spheroid, spinning off the wicket-keeper's fingers, struck a coconut trunk and ricocheted into a bunch of bananas, Motu and Roboki completing four swift dashes up and down their coral path before it was returned. The second ball came straight for the wicket, and though it fell dead from Mauga's bat almost at his feet, the nimble runners, like two dark spectres, again changed ends. Eight more times they passed each other for the next three balls, only one of which was touched by the batsman, and when, on the last ball of the "over," Mauga stepped forward and laced out a screaming drive high above the council house and into the bay, the Pago Pago sympathizers fairly went wild with excitement. While a lithe-limbed Fauga-sa fielder went darting like a seal through the water after the ball, Motu and Roboki, their every nerve and muscle strained to its utmost, were piling up the runs for Pago Pago.
"Chief Mauga squared away to face the bowling of Chief
Malatoba"
To-a, who made the best score for Pago Pago, facing the bowler
(Note his runner waiting, stick in hand, with foot raised)
Seven times they had passed each other and turned and passed again, and the swimmer had only reached the ball and thrown it awkwardly to a team-mate close behind him. Twice more the runners flashed by each other, and the ball was only at the shore. Motu signalled for still another effort, and with canes outstretched the game fellows went racing, each toward his goal. Half way up from the shore a Fauga-sa fielder fumbled the ball, and all looked safe for the runners, when a fragment of coco husk caused Roboki to turn his ankle just at the instant he was about to pass his partner, sending him plunging, head-on, into Motu, both of them collapsing into a jumbled heap. The ball came on an instant later and both batsmen, through the failure of their runners, were declared out. Motu and Roboki recovered consciousness in the course of the next hour, but were of no further use to their team until the following day.
Out of deference to the feelings of their opponents, the Fauga-sas omitted the dance customarily indulged in each time a batsman is put out, but when the next man to face the bowling popped up an easy ball and was caught in the slips, they made up for lost time. Whirling and yelling like dervishes, they rushed into a solid phalanx formation, and then, with rhythmic clappings of hands and stampings of feet, made a circuit of the ground, finally to end up in front of the squatting ranks of the waiting batsmen of Pago Pago. Here they continued their antics for a minute or two more, jocosely pointing out the fate of the man just disposed of as the fate which awaited the rest of his team. Then they broke up and went to playing again.
Not in the least disheartened by so unpropitious a start, the Pago Pago batsmen began slamming the ball about at this juncture, and by dark, though only fifteen wickets had fallen, a total of 240 runs had been put up, the largest half-day's score ever made in Samoa. Most of these runs were the result of long drives, which, though high in the air, were almost impossible to catch on account of the trees. Only one man was clean bowled, most of the outs being due to balls which flew up from the bat and were caught by one of the horde that clustered at point.
A local ground rule which held that a ball was fairly caught when intercepted rolling from a roof or dropping from a tree was responsible for the finish of several good batsmen. Almost in the middle of the field was a large thatch-roofed house, oval in form, temporarily occupied by the scorers, the taupo and her handmaidens, and the distinguished visitors. A solid circle of fielders ringed this house, and several men were retired on balls smartly caught as they cannoned from the springy thatch.