"If they prefer to play undraped, I don't see that it much matters to
us."
"Not personally, but a mixed audience cannot be expected to stand it,"
replied the Treasure. "We play cricket in St. Thomas upon a very public
and central piece of ground, and, at one time, everybody used to turn
out and watch the matches; but now, owing to the barbarous reasons I
have given you, cricket has fallen into disrepute. Of course, to see an
eleven taking the field in a state of nature makes dead against
civilisation and human progress."
Finally, the Model Man wrote to say that it would give him great
pleasure to bring a team to the ground upon the following morning if the
local talent promised to wear clothes. "My eleven will absolutely refuse
to play against anybody in the nude," he wound up.
An hour later a negro in a boat paddled out to us with an answer. He
hailed us, and we asked him if his people would accept our terms.
"Yes, massa, we all put fings on, but we much sooner play cricket
widdout."
[Illustration: "AS IF THEY WERE GOING IN SWIMMING."]
"Nonsense," shouted back the Model Man. "Cricket is a civilised game,
and must be followed in a civilised way, or not at all. We will be on
the ground at ten o'clock."
The messenger rowed off, and a great discussion began as to the
constitution of our team. Everybody wanted to go to the match, and sit
in the shade and look on and criticise, but no one much cared about
playing. The Captain of the "Rhine" absolutely refused, to begin with.
He said:
"I would do anything for my officers--anything in reason; but cricket is
out of the question. I shall, however, be on the ground with some
ladies. A good appreciative audience is everything in these cases.
Moreover, I will umpire if the tide turns against us."
The Treasure only consented to play after much pressure. He said:
"You know what the wicket is like; it's simply mountainous, and black
men have no control over their bowling. For you medium-sized chaps it
may be comparatively safe, but bowling at me is like bowling at a
haystack--you cannot miss. When I go in, the blacks never bother about
the stumps, but just let fly at random on the chance of winging me. Last
match here, I hit their crack fast bowler all over the island, and he
got mad at last, and gave up attempting to bowl me, but just tried to
kill me."
"You scored off him, though," said our Fourth Officer, who remembered
the incident.
[Illustration: "NEARLY KNOCKED A LIMB OFF HIM."]
"I did," admitted the Treasure. "I slapped one straight back, as hard as
ever I could lay in to it, and he funked it, and tried to get out of the
way and failed. I nearly knocked a limb off him, and then he abandoned
the ball, and went and sulked and chattered to himself in the deep
field."
The Doctor said it would give him great pleasure to play, but he added
that he should feel very averse to bowling against anybody with nothing
on. Then the Model Man answered:
"You need not fear. The negroes are very particular about pads and such
things. They don't wear shoes, for nothing could hurt their feet, but
they never dream of batting without leg-guards, because a nigger's shins
are his weak spot. These fellows are not much good at cricket after you
have once hit them hard. Either they get cross and throw up the whole
thing, and leave the ground and go home to their families, or else they
become frightened and servile. I have known them almost beg for mercy
before each ball."
"You'll play, of course," said the Fourth Officer to me.
"Certainly, if you will," I answered. Then he replied:
"I shall undoubtedly play. I'm not a man who does much with the bat, but
my bowling is rather out of the common. I have a natural leg-break which
baffles fellows frightfully. Why, there was a question raised once about
playing me for my county."
I did not ask him which county, because one should never goad a willing
horse. The Fourth Officer had been in a thoroughly mendacious vein ever
since we left St. Kitts; the fault grew upon him, and now he began to
utter transparent inaccuracies at all hours, from sheer love of them.
After much argument and conversation, our team was finally selected, the
last man chosen being a black stoker of great size and strength.
"I regard him as a speculation," explained the Captain of our side;
"either he will get out first ball or make a hundred. There are no
half-measures with him."
As we approached the ground on the following morning, our Model Man
confided to me a great source of anxiety. This was the fielding. He
said:
"You see, men don't mind batting, but they get very unsportsmanlike when
it comes to going out into the field. Some actually hide, or pretend
they have engagements; others feign illness and retire; others, again,
salve their miserable consciences by paying a negro a shilling to go and
field for them. I only mention this. I know you're not the man to do
such things; but, between ourselves, I fear the Doctor is just a sort of
chap to escape fielding. There are others also I must keep an eye upon.
Being captain of a scratch cricket team in the Tropics is no light task,
I can tell you."
A considerable crowd had gathered to see the conflict. The negroes sat
and lolled round the ground, while, behind them, buggies and horsemen
were drawn up. Conspicuous in that gay throng appeared the Captain of
the "Rhine," seated on a brown horse, amid female equestrians. Beyond
the audience rose a belt of tamarind and flamboyant trees, the latter
with gigantic green and brown seed-pods hanging from their branches; and
above these woods, sloping upwards to the blue sky, extended the hills,
with winding roads, visible here and there through the foliage that
covered them, and with many a flagstaff and white cottage scattered upon
their sides.
The ground itself suggested golf rather than cricket. Here and there a
little dried-up grass occurred, but it collected in lonely tufts,
between which extended great ravines and hillocks and boulders and
patches of desolation. Upon a barren spot in the middle, the wickets had
been pitched. When we arrived, they appeared to be an object of no
little interest to sundry goats. These beasts evidently regarding the
stumps as some strange new form of vegetation, sprang up in a single
night from the arid soil, sauntered round them enquiringly, and a shabby
he-goat, braver than his companions, nibbled the bails.
[Illustration: "NIBBLED THE BAILS."]
Our opponents, adequately attired, had arrived. They constituted a
motley, good-humoured gathering in all shades. One, John Smith, a genial
hybrid, commanded them, and presently a great shout arose, when it
transpired that he had secured choice of innings. The Doctor said, in a
tone of reproof:
"Hang it, John, you've only won the toss. You couldn't make a bigger row
if you'd won the match."
[Illustration: JOHN SMITH.]
"Great fing to go in fus, sar," explained John; "we go in fus now, when
we's fresh."
Then the Model Man led out his warriors.
I sauntered across the pitch with the Treasure, and examined its
peculiarities. We were discussing a curious geological formation, midway
between the wickets, when our Fourth Officer approached in some glee at
a great discovery. He had found a little hill, rather wide of the
stumps, on one side, and he explained that whenever he dropped a ball
on this elevation, he must bowl an Ethiop.
"You see, my natural leg-break will take the ball dead into the wicket
every time," he said.
We hoped it might be so; and he begged us to keep the thing a profound
secret, because, as he said, if it got about that we were going to
utilise this hill to such an extent, the enemy would probably send out
and have it removed, or alter the pitch.
[Illustration: "DRIVEN BACK A TRIFLE."]
After the goats cleared away, and the juvenile spectators driven back a
trifle, our Model Man arranged his field. More correctly speaking, the
field arranged itself. Indeed, our team hardly proved as amenable as
might have been wished. The Doctor insisted on taking long-leg and
long-oft.
"Why?" asked his Captain, looking rather distrustfully at a buggy with
some red parasols in it, which would be extremely close to the Doctor at
long-leg.
"It isn't that, old chap," replied our physician, cheerfully, following
the Model Man's eye. "In fact, I'm not sure if I even know those girls.
I only suggested a place in the long field because I'm a safe catch.
That's important."
So he had his way.
Meantime, the Treasure found some other parasols--white ones--and placed
himself within easy chatting distance. Investigation proved that the
white parasols were protecting the Enchantress and her mother. The Model
Man said that he might just as well be on the ship as there. So he
ordered his man up to take the wicket. The Treasure came reluctantly,
and absolutely declined to keep wicket. He declared that it was simple
murder to make a person of his size attempt such a thing on such a
ground.
He led me aside privately, and said:
"Look here, you know that walking-stick of mine, manufactured from a
shark's backbone--the one you are always worrying me to give you? Well,
I will, when we go back to the ship, if you'll take the wicket. If you
fall at your post, then your heirs shall have it."
I closed on this bargain promptly, and while I dressed up in all sorts
of life-saving inventions used at cricket, the Treasure took an
unobtrusive, circuitous route back to the white parasols.
John Smith himself and another negro, who was said to be related to him
by marriage, came in first. They were padded up to the eyes, and
evidently felt the importance of their position. Then a black umpire
said: "Play, gem'men," and our Fourth Officer started with his
world-famed, natural leg-break. He bowled three wides in succession as a
preliminary. It is not easy to bowl wides underhand, but that Fourth
Officer managed it; and I began to understand why, after all, his county
had determined to struggle along without him.
"What's the matter, old man?" asked our Captain, who was fielding at
short-slip.
"It's all right, old chap; you wait," answered the Fourth Officer, full
of confidence.
"Yes, quite so, but they count one against us every time. I didn't know
whether you knew it," explained the Model Man.
Meantime the bowler made further futile attempts to drop the ball upon
the mound he had discovered. At last he actually did do so, but instead
of breaking in and taking a wicket, as we, who were in the secret,
hoped, the batsman got hold of it, and hit it high and hard to long-leg.
All eyes turned to see if the Doctor's estimate of his own powers at a
catch was justified. But he had disappeared entirely. He had not even
left a substitute. Everybody shouted with dismay, and then the Doctor
suddenly bounded on to the field. He distinctly came out of the buggy,
from between the red parasols. If he had not actually known those girls,
he must have introduced himself, or prevailed upon somebody else to do
so. He tore into the scene of action, looking for the ball.
"It's in the air, you fool," yelled a dozen voices. Then it fell within
a yard of the Doctor. A child could have caught it. We were all quite
unsettled. The Model Man said:
"I'm not a bit surprised--it's just what I expected."
And the Fourth Officer said:
"I don't really see what good it is my bowling for catches at long-leg
if there's no long-leg."
And the Doctor said:
"Wouldn't have done it for money. Hadn't the faintest idea you'd
started. I saw you bowling balls all over the place, miles away from the
wicket, and I thought you were merely practising." Which was rather an
unpleasant thing for the Fourth Officer to hear.
[Illustration: "A BLACK UMPIRE."]
Then the game steadied down and proceeded. Our Captain took the ball,
after the underhand expert had got a few within sight of the wicket, and
so finished his over. The Model Man was much more successful, for he
clean-bowled a negro with his third delivery. It pitched in a sort of
mountain-pass, about ten feet from the wicket; then it branched off to
the right and hit a stone, and came back again, and finally took the off
stump. I don't see how anybody alive could have played it. The batsman
retired utterly bewildered, and the Model Man assured me he had never
sent down a better ball.
A slogger came in next, and made runs rather rapidly, but nothing much
happened until the Fourth Officer's third over. Then he fell foul of me,
and took exception to my method of keeping the wicket. He was being hit
about pretty generally, and had become very hot, so, at another time, I
should not have retorted upon him; but, when he spoke, I was hot too,
and being hit about also, so I answered without deliberation. He said:
"Can't you even try to stump them?"
And I replied:
"I might, if my arms were ten feet long."
Then he said:
"You've had dozens of chances. I always want a wicket-keeper for my
bowling."
Whereupon I answered:
"You want twenty--in a row. One's no good."
He said:
"You don't like standing up to my fast ones, that's the truth."
And I responded:
"Oh, bless you, I'd stand up to them all right, if I knew _where_ to
stand. A wicket-keeper's supposed to keep the wicket, not run all over
the ground after wides."
[Illustration: "REFRESHMENTS WERE BEING SOLD."]
During this unseemly argument, the Model Man, the Treasure, and the
Doctor were all having an unpleasantness on their own account. The
Doctor was imploring our Captain to take himself off and let somebody
else bowl. He said: "Can't you see they've collared you? They've scored
twenty runs. Don't think that _I_ want to go on. Far from it. I'm only
speaking for the good of the side."
But the Model Man refused to leave off bowling for anybody. He
emphatically denied that they had collared him. Then he changed the
subject, and turned upon the Treasure, and asked him where he supposed
he was fielding.
The Treasure answered:
"This is mid-on. I'm all right."
"You may think it's mid-on, but it isn't," shouted back the worried
Model Man. "I've no doubt you're all right," he continued, bitterly,
"but you're no sportsman."
After twenty more runs had been scored, the Fourth Officer unexpectedly
and frankly admitted that he was not in form. He relinquished the ball,
and said he had the makings of a sunstroke about his head, and went off
to field among a few friends in a patch of shade under a tree, where all
kinds of refreshments were being sold. Then our Captain held a
consultation, and determined to try a complete change in the attack. He
called upon the Doctor and the Treasure, and told them just to bowl
quietly and carefully, and as straight as possible.
The Treasure started with yorkers; which was about the most effective
thing he could have done, for, whenever he got one on the wicket, it
bowled a black man. Two negroes, including the slogger, fell to him in
his first over. Then the Doctor tried his hand, and began by being
absurdly particular about the field. He put five men in the slips, and
then started with terrifically fast full pitches to leg. A good player
would have hit one and all of these right out of the island into the
sea, but the people who were now at the wickets merely got out of the
way, and let the Doctor's deliveries proceed to the boundary for three
byes each.
Upon this he insulted me, as the Fourth Officer had done before him. He
said:
"Do stand up to them, old man."