A little later, looking round the field, I found that Mr. Hawthorn had disappeared, and that Mr. Hedges, stuck in a hedge, was struggling gallantly to reach safety on the other side. It was the last ball of Mr. Sapsworth's over. Mr. Benyon ran thirteen for a hit to leg. He made Mr. Barker run them too--it was the proverbial last straw. As Mr. Barker was running the thirteenth run, instead of going to his wicket he dropped his bat--the bat which he had never had a chance to utilise--and bolted off the field as though Satan was behind him. Mr. Benyon called out to him, but Mr. Barker neither stopped nor stayed. It seemed that the match was going to resolve itself into a game of single wicket.
To make things better, when I came up to bowl I perceived that Mr. Sapsworth's power of endurance had reached its tether. The position he had taken up in the field had not much promise of usefulness. He first stood close up to the hedge, then he stood in the middle of the hedge, then--I doubt if he stood upon the other side. But at least he had vanished from my ken. And I was left alone to bowl to Mr. Benyon. That over!
"I do like your kind of bowling, mister," he observed when, as usual, he sent my first ball out of sight. "Never mind about the ball. I've got one in my pocket you can have."
He had. He produced it--always from the same pocket. It was about the second thousand.
"It does warm me so to swipe." This he said when he had sent my second ball on a journey to find its brother. Then a ball or two later on, "I call that a tidy smack." The "smack" in question had driven the ball, for anything I know to the contrary, a distance of some five miles or so.
The next ball I fielded. It was the first piece of fielding I had done that day, and that was unintentional. It laid me on the ground. It was some moments before I recovered myself sufficiently to enable me to look round. When I did so no one was in sight. I was alone in the field. The opposite wicket was deserted. The bat lay on the ground. And Mr. Benyon had gone!