"Didn't I tell you?" shrieked the delighted Cuthy. "The chap isn't born that can run round old Bess."
But this time it was not to be altogether a one-man show. Broome did not fail his captain. The funk, which had weakened his knees before, passed suddenly away from him. Brain-concussion was the risk he lightly took as he jumped up to Bessingham's mighty kick and headed the ball down again. Jove, how it hurt him! For a moment it knocked him silly, but he recovered himself sufficiently to dribble a few yards and pass the ball to Dick.
Oh, glorious moment, sweet to have come to see! At last, at last, the Octopus was beaten—stranded in utter helplessness. His long legs, stride they never so widely, could not overtake the flying Foxonian now. His colleagues had trusted implicitly to him to clear; only one of them could get near enough to Forge to thrust out a hacking foot, over which Dick nimbly jumped. It was then a clear man-to-man encounter between centre-forward and goalkeeper, with all the rest of the players as idle spectators.
For the first time, in eighty-eight minutes of strenuous football, the Octopus betrayed emotion and spoke.
"Come out to meet him, goalie!" he cried, in desperation.
Out came "goalie" at the word of command, and round him, with the ease of a dancing-master, waltzed Dick. Tears of real joy stung Dick's eyelids, for there in front of him yawned the empty goal that nobody could miss. To make assurance doubly sure, he would not even risk a gentle kick, but would, he told himself, walk the ball into the net. Oh, surely the Cup was Foxenby's now!
And then, right across his path, almost beneath the cross-bar, there came blundering an absurdly clumsy figure in blue-and-white paper trappings—the grotesque form of Fluffy Jim, the village idiot, who lunged at the ball with a hobnailed boot and kicked it into the net under the very eyes of the horrified captain.
"Theer!" cried Fluffy Jim, with a shriek of imbecile laughter. "Tha couldn't scoöar thesen, so Ah've scoöared for thee!"
Poor Forge! Unlucky captain of the luckless Foxes! What miserable turn of events was this? Why had so farcical a thing come to mock him on the very verge of his triumph? A wild absurdity, yet an unspeakable misfortune! It made him feel dazed and stupid. There was a queer vagueness in the impression he got of an excited crowd of spectators and players falling upon Fluffy Jim and tearing to tatters his blue-and-white costume. He felt himself pulled hither and thither by roughly-sympathizing hands, and with difficulty wrenched himself free. Then up strode the Octopus, genuinely distressed and grimly resolute.
"Forge," said the Octopus, "the goal was yours and the game is yours. You will take the Cup."