"Who is he?" I asked.
"I don't know, and yet I seem somehow to have seen his face before. But let them have him. He doesn't look as though he were up to much."
He did not. Anyone looking less like a cricketer I have seldom seen. His costume was ridiculous. He had on a pair of large check trousers--a check of the kind which the Oxford tailor explained to the undergraduate was a leetle too large to be seen to advantage on a single pair of understandings. He had on a huge top hat, of a size and shape which would have made the fortune of a "lion comique." A red woollen muffler was wound several times round his neck, and his capacious person was enveloped in an enormous overcoat, the like of which I had never seen before. The day promised to remind us of the torrid zone, yet Mr. Barker had cried out that the stranger's hand felt cold.
In the toss for innings victory fell to us. So we went in. I led the van. My associate was a youth named Fenning. He was a mere lad, and looked too much of a lout to be much of a cricketer. Mr. Barker led the bowling. I soon saw that if he had any strength it was not as a bowler. If I kept my head, I told myself, and he carried away my bails, it would be owing to the ground; for a rougher piece of turf, I suppose, few wickets have been pitched upon. But I was far too nervous to take liberties even with Mr. Barker. And, indeed, when the first over was finished, and I found myself still in, I drew a long breath of self-congratulation.
The other bowler was, in his own line, as meritorious a specimen as his captain. So, on the whole, things were going better than I had expected. I had scored eleven, six off Mr. Barker, and the rest off his friend. Even Fenning had hit up two--literally hit up. I was really beginning to think that I was getting set, which, in my palmiest days had only happened once--thrice happy day!--when something took place which showed me, not for the first time, the advisability of never counting your chickens till the eggs are hatched.
Mr. Barker was just about to commence an over. He actually had the ball in his hand, when the substitute--the stranger who had volunteered to fill the place of the eleventh man--came marching right across the field. Mr. Barker saw him coming, and called out to him to stay where he was. But, wholly unheeding, the substitute strode on. He reached Mr. Barker, and, without saying a word, so far as I could perceive, he coolly held out his hand for the ball. I fully expected that the Latchmere captain would remonstrate, and not only remonstrate, but remonstrate strongly; but, to my surprise, he instantly surrendered the ball, and slunk rather than walked to the place which the stranger had just quitted. So the substitute was left to bowl.
Without doubt he was an eccentric character. Up to that moment he had been fielding in his woollen muffler, his overcoat, and, last but not least, his wonderful top hat. These, however, he now doffed, and laid in a heap upon the ground. Their disappearance revealed the fact that he wore a tight-fitting jacket which was the same wonderful pattern in checks as his trousers. From the look of him, I certainly never supposed that he could bowl. My surprise was, therefore, all the greater when I discovered that he could. His action was peculiar. He went right up to the wicket, and stood quite still, delivering the ball with a curious flourish of the wrist. Its pace was amazing. It pitched a good two feet to the off, and broke right in--perhaps aided by the ground, though he certainly had found a spot. I was so astounded by the pace--which reminded me of the old stories told of Lillywhite; you could hear it "humming" in the air--that I never even moved my bat. It was that which saved me. As it was the bat was all but driven out of my hand. I told myself that on the arrival of a second edition I should have to go. Yet I did manage to stop the next four balls--how, I have not the faintest notion; but the sixth--for it seemed that, in those parts, they bowled six to the over--took my middle stump, breaking it clean off at the top.
As I entered the tent the scorer cried out--
"What name?"
"Tom Benyon," replied the bowler.