Amusement Only Part 57

Time went on. Mr. Sapsworth and I bowled over after over. Mr. Benyon was making a record in tall scoring. No performance of "W. G.'s" ever came within many miles of it. And the b.a.l.l.s he lost! And the b.a.l.l.s which he produced! And the diabolical ingenuity with which he managed, at the close of every over, to change his end! If Mr. Barker did no hitting, he did some running. He never had a chance to make a stroke, but his partner took care to make him run an incredibly large odd number as a wind up to every over. Mr. Benyon did not seem to be distressed by the exertion in the least; Mr. Barker emphatically did.

Mr. Benyon had buoyed us up by his statement that he would soon have to go. His ideas of soon were different from ours. I suppose, at the outside, our innings had lasted half an hour. How long we bowled to Mr. Benyon is more than I can say. I know that I bowled until I felt that I should either have to stop or drop. By degrees one fact began to be impressed upon me. It was this--that the number of spectators was growing smaller by degrees and beautifully less. Originally there had been quite a crowd a.s.sembled. In course of time this had dwindled to half a dozen stragglers. A little later on even these had gone. And not only spectators but cricketers had disappeared. If my eyes did not deceive me, there was not a member of the Latchmere team left on the ground. They had had enough of Mr. Benyon--or his ghost.

What was more, some of our own team took courage, and leg-bail. I caught one of them--the lad Fenning--in the act of scrambling through the hedge. But I had not the heart to stop him. I only wished that I had been so fortunate as to have led the van.

The thing grew serious. So far as I could see, Mr. Hawthorn, Mr.

Hedges, Mr. Sapsworth, and I were the only members of the Storwell team left on the ground. And the reflection involuntarily crossed my mind--what fools we were to stay! The amount of running about we had to do! And the way in which Mr. Benyon urged us on! The perspiration was running off from us in streams--I had never had such a "sweater"

before!

"I do like your kind of bowling, mister," Mr. Benyon would constantly remark.

If I had had an equal admiration for his kind of batting we should have been quits, but I had not; at least not then.

A little later, looking round the field, I found that Mr. Hawthorn had disappeared, and that Mr. Hedges, stuck in a hedge, was struggling gallantly to reach safety on the other side. It was the last ball of Mr. Sapsworth's over. Mr. Benyon ran thirteen for a hit to leg. He made Mr. Barker run them too--it was the proverbial last straw. As Mr.

Barker was running the thirteenth run, instead of going to his wicket he dropped his bat--the bat which he had never had a chance to utilise--and bolted off the field as though Satan was behind him. Mr.

Benyon called out to him, but Mr. Barker neither stopped nor stayed.

It seemed that the match was going to resolve itself into a game of single wicket.

To make things better, when I came up to bowl I perceived that Mr.

Sapsworth's power of endurance had reached its tether. The position he had taken up in the field had not much promise of usefulness. He first stood close up to the hedge, then he stood in the middle of the hedge, then--I doubt if he _stood_ upon the other side. But at least he had vanished from my ken. And I was left alone to bowl to Mr. Benyon. That over!

"I do like your kind of bowling, mister," he observed when, as usual, he sent my first ball out of sight. "Never mind about the ball. I've got one in my pocket you can have."

He had. He produced it--always from the same pocket. It was about the second thousand.

"It does warm me so to swipe." This he said when he had sent my second ball on a journey to find its brother. Then a ball or two later on, "I call that a tidy smack." The "smack" in question had driven the ball, for anything I know to the contrary, a distance of some five miles or so.

The next ball I fielded. It was the first piece of fielding I had done that day, and that was unintentional. It laid me on the ground. It was some moments before I recovered myself sufficiently to enable me to look round. When I did so no one was in sight. I was alone in the field. The opposite wicket was deserted. The bat lay on the ground.

And Mr. Benyon had gone!

THE END.