Here was excitement!  Delirious boys prophesied that eight years’ defeats would be wiped off the slate by the school’s dismissing the Masters for a handful of runs, scoring a great score, and then dismissing them again, so as to win an innings victory.  But stay!  Who is this coming in first-wicket-down?  Not Radley?  Yes, by heaven, it is!  He has come to see that no rot sets in.  Now, Honion, you may well spit on your hands.  A laugh trembles its way round the spectators, as Lancaster places his men in the deep field.  He is ready to be knocked about.

The first over closes for ten, all off Radley’s bat, two fours and a two.  The new bowler, White, deals in slows, and the scoring partakes of the nature of the bowling.  But the outstanding fact of that over is this:  that Radley hit the last ball with terrific force along the ground, and it was so brilliantly fielded and thrown in that it scattered the stumps before Radley, who had started to run, could reach the crease.  Suddenly, crisply, half a thousand mouths snapped out the query:  “How’s that!”

“Out.”

With great good-humour Radley continued his run a little way, but in the direction of the pavilion.  Boys stood up and clapped frantically, not a few seizing their neighbours and pummelling them with clenched fists on the back.  Pennybet, sitting beside Doe, shook hands with him and with a couple of undemonstrative old gentlemen, whom he had never seen before.  They seemed a little overawed, as he wrung their hands.

By one o’clock the Masters were out, having compiled the diminutive score of 99.  Not once had they been asked to face my bowling.  Honion and White shared the wickets between them.

Now the only question was:  would the school be able to beat them by an innings, and so crown their glorious season?  They had better, for the onlookers would be content with nothing less.

Everyone adjourned for lunch.  The noise in the dining halls, which the masters made no attempt to check, was tremendous, since all were offering their forecasts of the result.  But this fact was universally accepted:  the School Eleven would play carefully till they had scored a hundred runs and so passed the Masters’ total, after which they would adopt forcing tactics and lift the score over 300.  Then they would declare, and bowl the Masters out for a price under the spare 200 runs.  Thus the innings victory would be achieved.

Sec.4

The most effective, the most spectacular, and probably the worst innings of the School Eleven was that played by Moles White.  He dragged his elephantine form to the wicket, and, looking round with his genial smile, prepared to enjoy the Masters’ bowling.  Again and again he lifted the ball high into the air and grinned as master after master dropped the catches.  It was a method that could only have been successful in such a match as this, where the field had been taken by a team like the Masters, whose “tail” was quite out of practice and rather stiff in the joints.