“Pledge has had it in his all the last hour,” said Heathcote.
“Shut up, you kids, and don’t make such a row. You can talk when we’re in at supper,” said a Fifth-form fellow.
The allusion was a depressing one. More than once it had crossed our heroes’ minds that supper was coming on; but the chances of their “cheeking in” (as they called it) to that part of the day’s entertainment were, to say the least, narrow.
At any rate, the allusion made them sad, and they relapsed into silence as the bowlers changed ends, and Pledge prepared to attack from his new base.
There was a sudden uncomfortable silence all round the meadow. Grandcourt felt that if they could weather the storm a few overs longer they might yet avert the disgrace of a single innings defeat. Templeton felt, with decided qualms, that unless the change told quickly, it had better not have been made at all. The eleven stepped in a bit, and watched the ball with anxious faces. Ponty, alone, with one hand in his pocket, yawned, and looked somewhere else. “What’s the odds to Ponty?” thought the seventy, marvelling how any one could look so unconcerned at such a crisis.
Pledge bowled one of his finest, awkwardest, most disconcerting slows. The cautious batsman was proof against its syren-like allurements, and stepped back to block what any one else would have stepped forward to slog. The ball broke up sharp against his bat, and Grandcourt began to breathe again as they saw its progress arrested.
But at that particular moment it appeared to enter dear old Ponty’s head to take his hand out of his pocket and stroll forward a pace or two from his place at point in the direction of the wicket. And somehow or another it seemed to him that while he was there he might as well pick up the ball, as it dropped off the end of the bat on its way to the ground.
Which he did. And as every one looked on, and wondered what little game he was up to, it occurred to the umpire that it was a catch, and that the match was at an end.
Whereupon, the truth flashed round the field like an electric shock, and the crowds broke into the meadow in wild excitement, while the seventy, crimson with cheers, formed column and went for their men.
Poor Ponty had a hard time of it getting back to the tent, and half repented of his feat. But it did him and Templeton good, when they came upon the headquarters of Grandcourt, to hear the hearty cheers with which the vanquished hailed their victors.