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Half-a-dozen balls were got out of one locker, the stumps and bails from another, and from his own particular lock-up, flap-topped receptacle, Slegge proceeded to take out the special bat with which he practised hitting two more, his club-bat and his match-bat, lying there in their cases of green flannel.
This pretty business might have gone on till to-morrow week had the men's upper stories been as `O.K. as their timbers, but they messed about over a pretty snick of Noll's, and, after popping the question three times, Teddy got home just in time to see his two bails tumble out of their groove.
The can was sinking again. Putting both hands under Percy's arms, Jim lifted him. Then he lowered his grip to the boy's waist. That terrific blast rendered speech inaudible, but Percy understood. As the water raised part of his weight, he scrambled up over his friend's body. Thirty seconds later, drenched and gasping, they stood clinging to the bails on the top of the buoy.
The alderman therefore bails out his constituents when they are arrested, or says a good word to the police justice when they appear before him for trial, uses his pull with the magistrate when they are likely to be fined for a civil misdemeanor, or sees what he can do to "fix up matters" with the state's attorney when the charge is really a serious one, and in doing this he follows the ethics held and practised by his constituents.
But poor Sidney lost his head in a very short time, and hitting out wildly at what he thought was a short ball, it rose right over the shoulder of his bat and carried off his bails in the neatest manner possible two wickets for forty-one runs, as the captain had only managed to put on three runs since that fiend in human form had come on to bowl.
Of those who may have been entertained by him, not one of them will thank him, not one of them will pity him, not one of them will help him. Every one has heard of the man who couldn't say No. He was everybody's friend but his own. His worst enemy was himself. He ran rapidly through his means, and then called upon his friends for bonds, bails, and "promises to pay."
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.
Each "wicket" consists of three wooden "stumps," twenty-eight inches long, sharpened at the bottom, whereby they may be stuck perpendicularly in the ground, and grooved at the top, in order to receive two short sticks or "bails," which rest lightly across their tops.
No one went up to tea, everyone was waiting for the end. At last it came. Whitaker, who alone had been able to withstand the School House attack, over-reached himself, Gordon gathered the ball quickly, the bails flew off. The umpire's hand rose. A wild shriek rose from the crowd. Gordon's last game at Fernhurst was over; his last triumph had come; at last "Samson had quit himself like Samson."
They stood close together on the circular top, holding on to the crossed bails, waist-high. Between them rose the whistle, thirty inches tall. Every time they sank in the trough it emitted its dismal bellow. To leeward the dory wallowed at the end of her painter, almost full of water. "Split her bow when we struck," said Spurling. "Just as well not to be in her. At any rate, we're not drifting."
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