the joy of the Weary Willies, failed miserably. Sharples shattered him with his second ball, and then and there danced a cake-walk by the side of the pitch.
The rest of the team were our old friends the unskilled labourers. They did their best, and once or twice effected prodigious hits, but Geake got amongst them with slow yorkers, and the thing became a procession. The tenth Marvis Bay wicket fell five minutes before the luncheon interval. The scoring had been unusually rapid, even for that ground, which is small. The full total was two hundred and eleven.
"THEY DID THEIR BEST, AND ONCE OR TWICE EFFECTED PRODIGIOUS HITS."
Not a big score for a good wicket; but with Jack Coggin and T. C. Smith against us we were not riotously optimistic.
We had finished lunch, and I was trying to bring Sanderson to a frame of mind which would render him fit to come in first with me with any chance of surviving a couple of overs, when a motor-car puffed up to the entrance to the ground. It contained one man, who wore goggles and a cap with a peak that covered his nose.
There was a general move on the part of the two teams in his direction. A contemplative inspection of a motor-car is the very thing to round off a cricket lunch. I took Sanderson along with me to look at it, arguing as we went. Sanderson is a beautiful bat, but he has an impossible set of nerves. His flesh creeps when he goes to the wickets, but if he survives a few overs he is worth watching. I had almost succeeded in convincing him that Coggin and Smith were rather poor third-class bowlers when we joined the group round the car. Its owner had removed his goggles, but his face was strange to me.
Smith and Coggin, however, coming up arm-in-arm a moment later, recognised him and greeted him as a brother. He received their greetings calmly and replied to them precisely. He seemed a man who rarely permitted himself to become excited.
"Halloa, Charlie!" said Smith.
"How's things?" inquired Coggin.
"Middling," said the new-comer.
"Is that the motor?"
"That is the motor," replied he, with the precision of an Ollendorff.
Smith climbed into the vacated seat. Coggin was inspecting the rear of the machine. Its owner eyed them without emotion. The motor continued, as Sharples pathetically put it, to throb as though its little heart would break.
Coggin now proceeded to clamber carefully over the body of the car.
"Don't cut the leather with your spikes," said Charlie.
"Right ho," replied Coggin. "What's this thing for?" He touched a lever with his hand.
"That sets the thing going," said Charlie.
Instant attention on the part of T. C. Smith.
"What—this?" he said.
The owner nodded, and the next moment, without warning, the car bounded forward down the road. That same instinct which prompts a man to touch wet paint to see if it really is wet had induced T. C. Smith to pull the lever.
Our first impulse, on recovering from our surprise, was to laugh. The sight of Jack Coggin hanging on to the back of his seat was humorous.
Then the serious side of the thing struck
