He was not kept long in suspense. De Freece’s first ball made a hideous wreck of his wicket.
“Over,” said the umpire.
Mike felt that the school’s one chance now lay in his keeping the bowling. But how was he to do this? It suddenly occurred to him that it was a delicate position that he was in. It was not often that he was troubled by an inconvenient modesty, but this happened now. Grant was a fellow he hardly knew, and a school prefect to boot. Could he go up to him and explain that he, Jackson, did not consider him competent to bat in this crisis? Would not this get about and be accounted to him for side? He had made forty, but even so. …
Fortunately Grant solved the problem on his own account. He came up to Mike and spoke with an earnestness born of nerves. “For goodness sake,” he whispered, “collar the bowling all you know, or we’re done. I shall get outed first ball.”
“All right,” said Mike, and set his teeth. Forty to win! A large order. But it was going to be done. His whole existence seemed to concentrate itself on those forty runs.
The fast bowler, who was the last of several changes that had been tried at the other end, was well-meaning but erratic. The wicket was almost true again now, and it was possible to take liberties.
Mike took them.
A distant clapping from the pavilion, taken up a moment later all round the ground, and echoed by the Ripton fieldsmen, announced that he had reached his fifty.
The last ball of the over he mishit. It rolled in the direction of third man.
“Come on,” shouted Grant.
Mike and the ball arrived at the opposite wicket almost simultaneously. Another fraction of a second, and he would have been run out.
The last balls of the next two overs provided repetitions of this performance. But each time luck was with him, and his bat was across the crease before the bails were off. The telegraph-board showed a hundred and fifty.
The next over was doubly sensational. The original medium-paced bowler had gone on again in place of the fast man, and for the first five balls he could not find his length. During those five balls Mike raised the score to a hundred and sixty.
But the sixth was of a different kind. Faster than the rest and of a perfect length, it all but got through Mike’s defence. As it was, he stopped it. But he did not score. The umpire called “Over!” and there was Grant at the batting end, with de Freece smiling pleasantly as he walked back to begin his run with the comfortable reflection that at last he had got somebody except Mike to bowl at.
That over was an experience Mike never forgot.
Grant pursued the Fabian policy of keeping his bat almost immovable and trusting to luck. Point and the slips crowded round. Mid-off and mid-on moved halfway down the pitch. Grant looked embarrassed, but determined. For four balls he baffled the attack, though once nearly caught by point a yard from the wicket. The fifth curled round his bat, and touched the off-stump. A bail fell silently to the ground.
Devenish came in to take the last ball of the over.
It was an awe-inspiring moment. A great stillness was over all the ground. Mike’s knees trembled. Devenish’s face was a delicate grey.
The only person unmoved seemed to be de Freece. His smile was even more amiable than usual as he began his run.
The next moment the crisis was past. The ball hit the very centre of Devenish’s bat, and rolled back down the pitch.
The school broke into one great howl of joy. There were still seven runs between them and victory, but nobody appeared to recognise this fact as important. Mike had got the bowling, and the bowling was not de Freece’s.
It seemed almost an anticlimax when a four to leg and two two’s through the slips settled the thing.
Devenish was caught and bowled in de Freece’s next over; but the Wrykyn total was one hundred and seventy-two.
“Good game,” said Maclaine, meeting Burgess in the pavilion. “Who was the man who made all the runs? How many, by the way?”
“Eighty-three. It was young Jackson. Brother of the other one.”
“That family! How many more of them are you going to have here?”
“He’s the last. I say, rough luck on de Freece. He bowled rippingly.”
Politeness to a beaten foe caused Burgess to change his usual “not bad.”
“The funny part of it is,” continued he, “that young Jackson was only playing as a sub.”
“You’ve got a rum idea of what’s funny,” said Maclaine.
XXIX
Wyatt Again
It was a morning in the middle of September. The Jacksons were breakfasting. Mr. Jackson was reading letters. The rest, including Gladys Maud, whose finely chiselled features were gradually disappearing behind a mask of bread-and-milk, had settled down to serious work. The usual catch-as-catch-can contest between Marjory and Phyllis for the jam (referee and timekeeper, Mrs. Jackson) had resulted, after both combatants had been cautioned by the referee, in a victory for Marjory, who had duly secured the stakes. The hour being nine-fifteen, and the official time for breakfast nine o’clock, Mike’s place was still empty.
“I’ve had a letter from MacPherson,” said Mr. Jackson.
MacPherson was the vigorous and persevering gentleman, referred to in a previous chapter, who kept a fatherly eye on the Buenos Aires sheep.
“He seems very satisfied with Mike’s friend Wyatt. At the moment of writing Wyatt is apparently incapacitated owing to a bullet in the shoulder, but expects to be fit again shortly. That young man seems to make things fairly lively wherever he is. I don’t wonder he found a public school too restricted a sphere for his energies.”
“Has he been fighting a duel?” asked Marjory, interested.
“Bushrangers,” said
