It was a curious thing in connection with the matches between Riptonand Wrykyn, that Ripton always seemed to be the bigger team. Theyalways had a gigantic pack of forwards, who looked capable of shoving ahole through one of the pyramids. Possibly they looked bigger to theWrykinians than they really were. Strangers always look big on thefootball field. When you have grown accustomed to a person'sappearance, he does not look nearly so large. Milton, for instance,never struck anybody at Wrykyn as being particularly big for a schoolforward, and yet today he was the heaviest man on the field by aquarter of a stone. But, taken in the mass, the Ripton pack were farheavier than their rivals. There was a legend current among the lowerforms at Wrykyn that fellows were allowed to stop on at Ripton tillthey were twenty-five, simply to play football. This is scarcely likelyto have been based on fact. Few lower form legends are.
Jevons, the Ripton captain, through having played opposite Trevor forthree seasons--he was the Ripton left centre-three-quarter--had come tobe quite an intimate of his. Trevor had gone down with Milton andAllardyce to meet the team at the station, and conduct them up to theschool.
"How have you been getting on since Christmas?" asked Jevons.
"Pretty well. We've lost Paget, I suppose you know?""That was the fast man on the wing, wasn't it?""Yes.""Well, we've lost a man, too.""Oh, yes, that red-haired forward. I remember him.""It ought to make us pretty even. What's the ground like?""Bit greasy, I should think. We had some rain late last night."The ground _was_ a bit greasy. So was the ball. When Milton kickedoff up the hill with what wind there was in his favour, the outsides ofboth teams found it difficult to hold the ball. Jevons caught it on histwenty-five line, and promptly handed it forward. The first scrum wasformed in the heart of the enemy's country.
A deep, swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school'sadvantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarelyceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous butimpressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. Itwas worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change toan excited _crescendo_ as a school three-quarter got off, or theschool back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence.
Sometimes the shouting would give place to clapping when the school wasbeing pressed and somebody had found touch with a long kick. But mostlythe man on the ropes roared steadily and without cessation, and withthe full force of his lungs, the word "_Wrykyn!_"The scrum was a long one. For two minutes the forwards heaved andstrained, now one side, now the other, gaining a few inches. The Wrykynpack were doing all they knew to heel, but their opponents' superiorweight was telling. Ripton had got the ball, and were keeping it. Theirgame was to break through with it and rush. Then suddenly one of theirforwards kicked it on, and just at that moment the opposition of theWrykyn pack gave way, and the scrum broke up. The ball came out on theWrykyn side, and Allardyce whipped it out to Deacon, who was playinghalf with him.
"Ball's out," cried the Ripton half who was taking the scrum. "Breakup. It's out."And his colleague on the left darted across to stop Trevor, who hadtaken Deacon's pass, and was running through on the right.
Trevor ran splendidly. He was a three-quarter who took a lot ofstopping when he once got away. Jevons and the Ripton half met himalmost simultaneously, and each slackened his pace for the fraction ofa second, to allow the other to tackle. As they hesitated, Trevorpassed them. He had long ago learned that to go hard when you have oncestarted is the thing that pays.
He could see that Rand-Brown was racing up for the pass, and, as hereached the back, he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the backgot to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from thecorner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wingthree-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the passin the old familiar way, and lost a certain try.
The touch-judge ran up with his flag waving in the air, but the refereehad other views.
"Knocked on inside," he said; "scrum here.""Here" was, Trevor saw with unspeakable disgust, some three yards fromthe goal-line. Rand-Brown had only had to take the pass, and he musthave scored.
The Ripton forwards were beginning to find their feet better now, andthey carried the scrum. A truculent-looking warrior in one of thoseear-guards which are tied on by strings underneath the chin, and whichadd fifty per cent to the ferocity of a forward's appearance, brokeaway with the ball at his feet, and swept down the field with the restof the pack at his heels. Trevor arrived too late to pull up the rush,which had gone straight down the right touch-line, and it was not tillStrachan fell on the ball on the Wrykyn twenty-five line that thedanger ceased to threaten.
Even now the school were in a bad way. The enemy were pressing keenly,and a real piece of combination a............