“Now then,” said Langrish, “give us your blazer. Bend well over your toes for the start, and do it all in a breath.”
“Run straight on your track, and don’t try to take the other chaps’ water,” said Trimble.
“Don’t look round at me when I yell, but bucket all you can,” said Coxhead.
“Don’t pull up till after the pistol has gone,” said I. Then we left him to his work.
And well enough he did it. He and Dicky went off at the start as if they’d been shot out of a double-barrelled gun, Dicky with his head down, our man with his head up. That was what saved him; half-way over Dicky had to get his chin up, and it lost him a sixteenth of a second, and that meant six inches. Selkirk’s man made an ugly rush thirty yards from home, but he began it too soon. Warminster wisely waited till he heard Coxhead’s shrill “Gee-up” in his ear. Then he laid on and made his six inches eight, and his eight ten, and landed so much in front of Dicky amid cheers which, if the clouds had been a little lower, would have assuredly brought on a shower.
One score to us! I was sorry for Dicky, but it couldn’t be helped. “It’s your fault,” said he, “the brandy-balls did it. I took one, you know; never mind. I say, look at your kids!”
The “kids” in question had finished the brandy-balls, and, resenting my desertion, had decided to follow me into the open. As I had reached it by swarming over the front of the stand and dropping a foot or so on to the earth, they naturally selected that route as most suitable for them. They had half accomplished it, to the extent of getting over the edge of the low parapet and beginning to lower themselves on the outside, when Mamie’s frock caught in a nail, which suspended her between heaven and earth, while Gladys, in her uncertainty whether to scream or assist, had toppled to the ground all of a heap, and solved the difficulty that way. Their screeches almost put our loyal cheers to the blush, and when I rushed up to extricate the one and pick up the other, I was in the centre of a hullaballoo which almost threatened to wreck the Sports. How they quieted down I know not. I believe it was my announced determination to walk them straight home which did it. At any rate, it was clear to me there was no more rubbing down of Sharpe’s calves for me that day. I must remain, like Casabianca, on deck, even though it cost us all the events of the day.
It was a thankless task. First of all there was the usual ceremony of “cosseting” and drying tears. Then with a pin I had to mend the rent in Mamie’s frock. Then I had to kiss both of Gladys’s elbows to make them well, and finally I had to stand a fusillade of chaff and jeers from the Philosophers, which made life a heavier burden that it was already.
At last, to my joy, the bell rang up for the High Jump under fifteen, and public attention was diverted from my lamentable case.
As everybody who knew anything had anticipated, Langrish won this, metaphorically speaking, “on his head.” He knocked out the second man (a Selkirker) at 4 feet and half an inch, and went on gamely 2 inches higher, clearing the bar as prettily and daintily as Wales himself might have done in the open event. It was not at all certain he could not have gone higher against an opponent; but having no such spur, he grew careless, and after barely shaking down the bar twice at 4 feet 3 inches, kicked it off awkwardly the third time, and so retired an easy victor, and quite overcome by the applause of the now crowded field.