Mike, P. G. Wodehouse [best books to read for teens .TXT] 📗

bat.  It was a standing mystery with the sporting Press how Joe Jackson managed to collect fifties and sixties on wickets that completely upset men who were, apparently, finer players.  On days when the Olympians of the cricket world were bringing their averages down with ducks and singles, Joe would be in his element, watching the ball and pushing it through the slips as if there were no such thing as a tricky wicket.  And Mike took after Joe.

A single off the fifth ball of the over opened his score and brought him to the opposite end.  Bob played ball number six back to the bowler, and Mike took guard preparatory to facing de Freece.

The Ripton slow bowler took a long run, considering his pace.  In the early part of an innings he often trapped the batsmen in this way, by leading them to expect a faster ball than he actually sent down.  A queer little jump in the middle of the run increased the difficulty of watching him.

The smiting he had received from Burgess in the previous over had not had the effect of knocking de Freece off his length.  The ball was too short to reach with comfort, and not short enough to take liberties with.  It pitched slightly to leg, and whipped in quickly.  Mike had faced half-left, and stepped back.  The increased speed of the ball after it had touched the ground beat him.  The ball hit his right pad.

“’S that?” shouted mid-on.  Mid-on has a habit of appealing for l.-b.-w. in school matches.

De Freece said nothing.  The Ripton bowler was as conscientious in the matter of appeals as a good bowler should be.  He had seen that the ball had pitched off the leg-stump.

The umpire shook his head.  Mid-on tried to look as if he had not spoken.

Mike prepared himself for the next ball with a glow of confidence.  He felt that he knew where he was now.  Till then he had not thought the wicket was so fast.  The two balls he had played at the other end had told him nothing.  They had been well pitched up, and he had smothered them.  He knew what to do now.  He had played on wickets of this pace at home against Saunders’s bowling, and Saunders had shown him the right way to cope with them.

The next ball was of the same length, but this time off the off-stump.  Mike jumped out, and hit it before it had time to break.  It flew along the ground through the gap between cover and extra-cover, a comfortable three.

Bob played out the over with elaborate care.

Off the second ball of the other man’s over Mike scored his first boundary.  It was a long-hop on the off.  He banged it behind point to the terrace-bank.  The last ball of the over, a half-volley to leg, he lifted over the other boundary.

“Sixty up,” said Ellerby, in the pavilion, as the umpire signalled another no-ball.  “By George!  I believe these chaps are going to knock off the runs.  Young Jackson looks as if he was in for a century.”

“You ass,” said Berridge.  “Don’t say that, or he’s certain to get out.”

Berridge was one of those who are skilled in cricket superstitions.

But Mike did not get out.  He took seven off de Freece’s next over by means of two cuts and a drive.  And, with Bob still exhibiting a stolid and rock-like defence, the score mounted to eighty, thence to ninety, and so, mainly by singles, to a hundred.

At a hundred and four, when the wicket had put on exactly fifty, Bob fell to a combination of de Freece and extra-cover.  He had stuck like a limpet for an hour and a quarter, and made twenty-one.

Mike watched him go with much the same feelings as those of a man who turns away from the platform after seeing a friend off on a long railway journey.  His departure upset the scheme of things.  For himself he had no fear now.  He might possibly get out off his next ball, but he felt set enough to stay at the wickets till nightfall.  He had had narrow escapes from de Freece, but he was full of that conviction, which comes to all batsmen on occasion, that this was his day.  He had made twenty-six, and the wicket was getting easier.  He could feel the sting going out of the bowling every over.

Henfrey, the next man in, was a promising rather than an effective bat.  He had an excellent style, but he was uncertain. (Two years later, when he captained the Wrykyn teams, he made a lot of runs.) But this season his batting had been spasmodic.

To-day he never looked like settling down.  He survived an over from de Freece, and hit a fast change bowler who had been put on at the other end for a couple of fluky fours.  Then Mike got the bowling for three consecutive overs, and raised the score to a hundred and twenty-six.  A bye brought Henfrey to the batting end again, and de Freece’s pet googly, which had not been much in evidence hitherto, led to his snicking an easy catch into short-slip’s hands.

A hundred and twenty-seven for seven against a total of a hundred and sixty-six gives the impression that the batting side has the advantage.  In the present case, however, it was Ripton who were really in the better position.  Apparently, Wrykyn had three more wickets to fall.  Practically they had only one, for neither Ashe, nor Grant, nor Devenish had any pretensions to be considered batsmen.  Ashe was the school wicket-keeper.  Grant and Devenish were bowlers.  Between them the three could not be relied on for a dozen in a decent match.

Mike watched Ashe shape with a sinking heart.  The wicket-keeper looked like a man who feels that his hour has come.  Mike could see him licking his lips.  There was nervousness written all over him.

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 half-way 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 anti-climax 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.

CHAPTER 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 time-keeper, 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 Ayres 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 Phyllis.

“There aren’t any bushrangers in Buenos Ayres,” said Ella.

“How do you know?” said Phyllis clinchingly.

“Bush-ray, bush-ray, bush-ray,” began Gladys Maud, conversationally, through the bread-and-milk; but was headed off.

“He gives no details.  Perhaps that letter on Mike’s plate supplies them.  I see it comes from Buenos Ayres.”

“I wish Mike would come and open it,” said Marjory.  “Shall I go and hurry him up?”

The missing member of the family entered as she spoke.

“Buck up, Mike,” she shouted.  “There’s a letter from Wyatt.  He’s been wounded in a duel.”

“With a bushranger,” added Phyllis.

“Bush-ray,” explained Gladys Maud.

“Is there?” said Mike.  “Sorry I’m late.”

He opened the letter and began to read.

“What does he say?” inquired Marjory.  “Who was the duel with?”

“How many bushrangers were there?” asked Phyllis.

Mike read on.

“Good old Wyatt!  He’s shot a man.”

“Killed him?” asked Marjory excitedly.

“No.  Only potted him in the leg.  This is what he says.  First page is mostly about the Ripton match and so on.  Here you are.  ’I’m dictating this to a sportsman of the name of Danvers, a good chap who can’t help being ugly, so excuse bad writing.  The fact is we’ve been having a bust-up here, and I’ve come out of it with a bullet in the shoulder, which has crocked me for the time being.  It happened like this.  An ass of a Gaucho had gone into the town and got jolly tight, and coming back, he wanted to ride through our place.  The old woman who keeps the lodge wouldn’t have it at any price.  Gave him the absolute miss-in-baulk.  So this rotter, instead of shifting off,