Gradually the outlook became darker for the Foxes. Broome appeared to have lost heart and could do nothing right. Atack, the inside-right, quite openly shrank from close contact with the Octopus. He had once chanced his arm in a flying charge at Bessingham, and had been feeling it ever since in the fear that it was dislocated. Lake, bothered by the sun, kept missing his luck entirely and blundering into touch. All he could do, it seemed, was to tread down the flags and inconvenience the linesmen. Meynard, the swift-footed outside-left, certainly kept cool, but that was because he had little to do. He waited in vain to be fed by Broome, who seemed always under Bessingham's feet.
It didn't mend matters when the Foxenby halves lost patience with the men in front of them and commenced to play hard on top of them. Not being marksmen, they drew upon themselves the ironical contempt of the crowd by shooting high over goal—"aiming at the new moon", to quote the gleeful opinion of "Cuthy", who had once more become offensively cocksure of his team's abilities.
Precious time oozed away while spectators retrieved the ballooned ball, and all the while Dick's big toe hurt like toothache. A pretty kettle of fish all round.
Dick had a temper, and came near to losing it publicly. Again the maddening voice of the village idiot began to boom at him. "Owd can't scoöar!" it bellowed monotonously. It had the melancholy effect of a ship's steam-siren in a fog. It worried the sensitive captain more than his damaged toe did.
"This is aching misery," he mentally decided. "Hang it all, I'll waste no more passes on Lake and Atack. Fifteen minutes to go, and not a ghost of a goal in sight. 'Owd can't scoöar' or not, I'll butt right into the Octopus and chance it."
From the moment of this resolve a mighty change was wrought in the game. Of combination there was none, but of vigorous individual action there was a great deal. Giving his damaged foot no quarter, using it as though it were sound, Dick dribbled for goal by the straightest route, clashing against Bessingham each time he did so. It became a battle of giants, almost too thrilling to those onlookers who favoured one team more than the other. Players on both sides, brought to a standstill by the gruelling pace, seemed to have slipped out of the picture, leaving the centre of the field to Dick and the Octopus, two gladiators at ever-closer grips.
"Stick to him, Forge!" yelled Robin. "He's cracking up! You'll be his 'daddy' yet!"
"Old Bess lets nobody be his daddy," indignantly retorted Cuthy. "Your captain's only a kid beside him."
"Kid yourself!" snorted Robin. "Just you watch Forge, Cuthy—there'll be a hole in the back of this net shortly."
Lyon alone on the Foxenby side gave useful aid to his captain, and it was from two of the plodding fullback's returns that Dick twice dodged Bessingham and struck the cross-bar.