This is dreadful! worse than ever! Never in their worst days had such a thing happened. For once in a way Stansfield’s hopefulness deserts him, and he feels the School is in for an out-and-out hiding.
The captain would like extremely to blow some one up, if he only knew whom. It is so aggravating sometimes to have no one to blow-up. Nothing relieves the feelings so, does it?
However, Stansfield has to bottle up his feelings, and, behold! once more he and his men are in battle array.
This time it’s steady all again, and the ball is kept well out of sight. It can’t even slip out behind now, as before; for the School quarter-backs are up to that dodge, and ready to pounce upon it before it can be lifted or sent flying. Indeed, the only chance the wretched ball has of seeing daylight is—
Hullo! half-time!
The announcement falls on joyful ears among the Dominicans. They have worked hard and patiently against heavy odds; and they feel they really deserve this respite.
Now, at last, if the wind wouldn’t change for them, they have changed over to the wind, which blows no longer in their faces, but gratefully on to their backs.
The kick-off is a positive luxury under such circumstances; Stansfield needn’t be afraid of skying the ball now, and he isn’t. It shoots up with a prodigious swoop and soars right away to touch-line, so that the County’s “back” is the first of their men to go into action. He brings the ball back deftly and prettily, slipping in and out among his own men, who get beside him as a sort of bodyguard, ready at any moment to carry on the ball. It is ludicrous to see Ricketts and Winter and Callonby flounder about after him. The fellow is like an eel. One moment you have him, the next he’s away; now you’re sure of him, now he’s out of all reach. Ah! Stansfield’s got him at last! No he hasn’t; but Winter has—No, Winter has lost him; and—just look—he’s past all the School forwards, no one can say how.
Young Forrester tackles him gamely—but young Forrester is no hand at eel-catching; in fact, the eel catches Forrester, and leaves him gracefully on his back. Past the quarter-backs! The man has a charmed life!
Ah! Greenfield has got him at last. Yes, Mr Eel, you may wriggle as hard as you like, but you’d hardly find your way out of that grip without leave!