Mike by P. G. Wodehouse (good fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

the boundary, skied the third to Bob Jackson in the deep, and Bob, for whom constant practice had robbed this sort of catch of its terrors, held it.

A yorker from Burgess disposed of the next man before he could settle down; but the score, seventy-four for three wickets, was large enough in view of the fact that the pitch was already becoming more difficult, and was certain to get worse, to make Ripton feel that the advantage was with them.  Another hour of play remained before lunch.  The deterioration of the wicket would be slow during that period.  The sun, which was now shining brightly, would put in its deadliest work from two o’clock onwards.  Maclaine’s instructions to his men were to go on hitting.

A too liberal interpretation of the meaning of the verb “to hit” led to the departure of two more Riptonians in the course of the next two overs.  There is a certain type of school batsman who considers that to force the game means to swipe blindly at every ball on the chance of taking it half-volley.  This policy sometimes leads to a boundary or two, as it did on this occasion, but it means that wickets will fall, as also happened now.  Seventy-four for three became eighty-six for five.  Burgess began to look happier.

His contentment increased when he got the next man leg-before-wicket with the total unaltered.  At this rate Ripton would be out before lunch for under a hundred.

But the rot stopped with the fall of that wicket.  Dashing tactics were laid aside.  The pitch had begun to play tricks, and the pair now in settled down to watch the ball.  They plodded on, scoring slowly and jerkily till the hands of the clock stood at half-past one.  Then Ellerby, who had gone on again instead of Grant, beat the less steady of the pair with a ball that pitched on the middle stump and shot into the base of the off.  A hundred and twenty had gone up on the board at the beginning of the over.

That period which is always so dangerous, when the wicket is bad, the ten minutes before lunch, proved fatal to two more of the enemy.  The last man had just gone to the wickets, with the score at a hundred and thirty-one, when a quarter to two arrived, and with it the luncheon interval.

So far it was anybody’s game.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MIKE WINS HOME

The Ripton last-wicket man was de Freece, the slow bowler.  He was apparently a young gentleman wholly free from the curse of nervousness.  He wore a cheerful smile as he took guard before receiving the first ball after lunch, and Wrykyn had plenty of opportunity of seeing that that was his normal expression when at the wickets.  There is often a certain looseness about the attack after lunch, and the bowler of googlies took advantage of it now.  He seemed to be a batsman with only one hit; but he had also a very accurate eye, and his one hit, a semicircular stroke, which suggested the golf links rather than the cricket field, came off with distressing frequency.  He mowed Burgess’s first ball to the square-leg boundary, missed his second, and snicked the third for three over long-slip’s head.  The other batsman played out the over, and de Freece proceeded to treat Ellerby’s bowling with equal familiarity.  The scoring-board showed an increase of twenty as the result of three overs.  Every run was invaluable now, and the Ripton contingent made the pavilion re-echo as a fluky shot over mid-on’s head sent up the hundred and fifty.

There are few things more exasperating to the fielding side than a last-wicket stand.  It resembles in its effect the dragging-out of a book or play after the dénouement has been reached.  At the fall of the ninth wicket the fieldsmen nearly always look on their outing as finished.  Just a ball or two to the last man, and it will be their turn to bat.  If the last man insists on keeping them out in the field, they resent it.

What made it especially irritating now was the knowledge that a straight yorker would solve the whole thing.  But when Burgess bowled a yorker, it was not straight.  And when he bowled a straight ball, it was not a yorker.  A four and a three to de Freece, and a four bye sent up a hundred and sixty.

It was beginning to look as if this might go on for ever, when Ellerby, who had been missing the stumps by fractions of an inch, for the last ten minutes, did what Burgess had failed to do.  He bowled a straight, medium-paced yorker, and de Freece, swiping at it with a bright smile, found his leg-stump knocked back.  He had made twenty-eight.  His record score, he explained to Mike, as they walked to the pavilion, for this or any ground.

The Ripton total was a hundred and sixty-six.

With the ground in its usual true, hard condition, Wrykyn would have gone in against a score of a hundred and sixty-six with the cheery intention of knocking off the runs for the loss of two or three wickets.  It would have been a gentle canter for them.

But ordinary standards would not apply here.  On a good wicket Wrykyn that season were a two hundred and fifty to three hundred side.  On a bad wicket—­well, they had met the Incogniti on a bad wicket, and their total—­with Wyatt playing and making top score—­had worked out at a hundred and seven.

A grim determination to do their best, rather than confidence that their best, when done, would be anything record-breaking, was the spirit which animated the team when they opened their innings.

And in five minutes this had changed to a dull gloom.

The tragedy started with the very first ball.  It hardly seemed that the innings had begun, when Morris was seen to leave the crease, and make for the pavilion.

“It’s that googly man,” said Burgess blankly.

“What’s happened?” shouted a voice from the interior of the first eleven room.

“Morris is out.”

“Good gracious!  How?” asked Ellerby, emerging from the room with one pad on his leg and the other in his hand.

“L.-b.-w.  First ball.”

“My aunt!  Who’s in next?  Not me?”

“No.  Berridge.  For goodness sake, Berry, stick a bat in the way, and not your legs.  Watch that de Freece man like a hawk.  He breaks like sin all over the shop.  Hullo, Morris!  Bad luck!  Were you out, do you think?” A batsman who has been given l.-b.-w. is always asked this question on his return to the pavilion, and he answers it in nine cases out of ten in the negative.  Morris was the tenth case.  He thought it was all right, he said.

“Thought the thing was going to break, but it didn’t.”

“Hear that, Berry?  He doesn’t always break.  You must look out for that,” said Burgess helpfully.  Morris sat down and began to take off his pads.

“That chap’ll have Berry, if he doesn’t look out,” he said.

But Berridge survived the ordeal.  He turned his first ball to leg for a single.

This brought Marsh to the batting end; and the second tragedy occurred.

It was evident from the way he shaped that Marsh was short of practice.  His visit to the Infirmary had taken the edge off his batting.  He scratched awkwardly at three balls without hitting them.  The last of the over had him in two minds.  He started to play forward, changed his stroke suddenly and tried to step back, and the next moment the bails had shot up like the débris of a small explosion, and the wicket-keeper was clapping his gloved hands gently and slowly in the introspective, dreamy way wicket-keepers have on these occasions.

A silence that could be felt brooded over the pavilion.

The voice of the scorer, addressing from his little wooden hut the melancholy youth who was working the telegraph-board, broke it.

“One for two.  Last man duck.”

Ellerby echoed the remark.  He got up, and took off his blazer.

“This is all right,” he said, “isn’t it!  I wonder if the man at the other end is a sort of young Rhodes too!”

Fortunately he was not.  The star of the Ripton attack was evidently de Freece.  The bowler at the other end looked fairly plain.  He sent them down medium-pace, and on a good wicket would probably have been simple.  But to-day there was danger in the most guileless-looking deliveries.

Berridge relieved the tension a little by playing safely through the over, and scoring a couple of twos off it.  And when Ellerby not only survived the destructive de Freece’s second over, but actually lifted a loose ball on to the roof of the scoring-hut, the cloud began perceptibly to lift.  A no-ball in the same over sent up the first ten.  Ten for two was not good; but it was considerably better than one for two.

With the score at thirty, Ellerby was missed in the slips off de Freece.  He had been playing with slowly increasing confidence till then, but this seemed to throw him out of his stride.  He played inside the next ball, and was all but bowled:  and then, jumping out to drive, he was smartly stumped.  The cloud began to settle again.

Bob was the next man in.

Ellerby took off his pads, and dropped into the chair next to Mike’s.  Mike was silent and thoughtful.  He was in after Bob, and to be on the eve of batting does not make one conversational.

“You in next?” asked Ellerby.

Mike nodded.

“It’s getting trickier every minute,” said Ellerby.  “The only thing is, if we can only stay in, we might have a chance.  The wicket’ll get better, and I don’t believe they’ve any bowling at all bar de Freece.  By George, Bob’s out!...  No, he isn’t.”

Bob had jumped out at one of de Freece’s slows, as Ellerby had done, and had nearly met the same fate.  The wicket-keeper, however, had fumbled the ball.

“That’s the way I was had,” said Ellerby.  “That man’s keeping such a jolly good length that you don’t know whether to stay in your ground or go out at them.  If only somebody would knock him off his length, I believe we might win yet.”

The same idea apparently occurred to Burgess.  He came to where Mike was sitting.

“I’m going to shove you down one, Jackson,” he said.  “I shall go in next myself and swipe, and try and knock that man de Freece off.”

“All right,” said Mike.  He was not quite sure whether he was glad or sorry at the respite.

“It’s a pity old Wyatt isn’t here,” said Ellerby.  “This is just the sort of time when he might have come off.”

“Bob’s broken his egg,” said Mike.

“Good man.  Every little helps....  Oh, you silly ass, get back!”

Berridge had called Bob for a short run that was obviously no run.  Third man was returning the ball as the batsmen crossed.  The next moment the wicket-keeper had the bails off.  Berridge was out by a yard.

“Forty-one for four,” said Ellerby.  “Help!”

Burgess began his campaign against de Freece by skying his first ball over cover’s head to the boundary.  A howl of delight went up from the school, which was repeated, fortissimo, when, more by accident than by accurate timing, the captain put on two more fours past extra-cover.  The bowler’s cheerful smile never varied.

Whether Burgess would have knocked de Freece off his length or not was a question that was destined to remain unsolved, for in the middle of the other bowler’s over Bob hit a single; the batsmen crossed; and Burgess had his leg-stump uprooted while trying a gigantic pull-stroke.

The melancholy youth put up the figures, 54, 5, 12, on the board.

Mike, as he walked out of the pavilion to join Bob, was not conscious of any particular nervousness.  It had been an ordeal having to wait and look on while wickets fell, but now that the time of inaction was at an end he felt curiously composed.  When he had gone out to bat against the M.C.C. on the occasion of his first appearance for the school, he experienced a quaint sensation of unreality.  He seemed to be watching his body walking to the wickets, as if it were some one else’s.  There was no sense of individuality.

But now his feelings were different.  He was cool.  He noticed small things—­mid-off chewing bits of grass, the bowler re-tying the scarf round his waist, little patches of brown where the turf had been worn away.  He took guard with a clear picture of the positions of the fieldsmen photographed on his brain.

Fitness, which in a batsman exhibits itself mainly in an increased power of seeing the ball, is one of the most inexplicable things connected with cricket.  It has nothing, or very little, to do with actual health.  A man may come out of a sick-room with just that extra quickness in sighting the ball that makes all the difference; or he may be in perfect training and play inside straight half-volleys.  Mike would not have said that he felt more than ordinarily well that day.  Indeed, he was rather painfully conscious of having bolted his food at lunch.  But something seemed to whisper to him, as he settled himself to face the bowler, that he was at the top of his batting form.  A difficult wicket always brought out his latent powers as a